Early Minimalism

3 - Early Minimalism

from Part I - The Big Picture

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2026

Howard Lasnik

Edited by

Kleanthes K. Grohmann and

Evelina Leivada

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Kleanthes K. Grohmann: Affiliation:
University of Cyprus
Evelina Leivada: Affiliation:
Arctic University of Norway

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Summary

Chomsky introduced the Minimalist Program in 1993, but some fundamentals of it were present in the GB approach, e.g. economy of representation; “Full Interpretation,” which requires that every element of PF and LF receive an appropriate interpretation; and the idea that movement is a “last resort.” An NP is moved only when required to escape violation of some principle. Very important was the reinstatement of the generalized transformations of Chomsky (1955), and extension of the device to be the sole structure-building operation, even the source of movement. There is but one syntactic operation – Merge, combining two objects. Movement is the same basic operation but with one of the two objects internal to the other. Another innovation was Inclusiveness: outputs consist of nothing beyond properties of items of the lexicon (lexical features); i.e., the interface levels consist of nothing more than arrangements of lexical features. No new objects are added in the course of computation. This excludes such familiar devices as bar levels and indices. In this chapter, I survey these developments, and their implementation in early Minimalism.

Keywords

economy Full Interpretation greed inclusiveness last resort Merge

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of the Minimalist Program , pp. 48 - 70

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108864152 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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