In this book Juan Uriagereka explores important consequences of the multiple spell-out hypothesis and of the linked notion of cyclicity. He combines the latest thinking in linguistics with perspectives drawn from physics, biology, and animal behaviour.

Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program presents accessible, cutting edge research on an enduring and fundamental question confronting all linguistic inquiry – the respective roles of derivation and representation. Presents accessible, cutting edge research on the respective roles of derivation and representation in syntactic inquiry. Discusses a wide range of phenomena and also includes alternative, representational perspectives. Features papers by M. Brody, C. Collins, S. Epstein, J. Frampton, S. Gutmann, N. Hornstein, R. Kayne, H. Kitahara, J. McCloskey, N. Richards, D. Seely, E. Torrego, J. Uriagereka, C.J.W. Zwart.

The Minimalist Program consists of four recent essays that attempt to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences. In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. The Essays Principles and Parameters Theory Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory Categories and Transformations in a Minimalist Framework

The articles in this volume are inspired by the Minimalist Program first outlined in Chomsky’s MIT Fall term class lectures of 1991 and in his seminal paper “A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory”. The articles seek to develop further some key idea in the Minimalist Program, sometimes in ways deviating from the course taken by Chomsky. The articles are preceded by a 40 page introduction into the minimalist framework. The introduction pays special attention to the question how the minimalist framework developed out of the Principles and Parameters (Government and Binding) framework. The introduction serves as a guide through the entire volume, presenting the issues to be discussed in the articles in detail, and offering a thematic overview over the volume as a whole. Most of the articles in this volume are concerned with issues raised in Chomsky’s first two minimalist papers, namely “A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory” (1993, first distributed in 1992) and “Bare Phrase Structure” (1995a, first distributed 1994). In acknowledgment of this, each article starts out with a quote from Chomsky (1993, 1995a). This quote also serves to highlight the particular grammatical or theoretical issue that is primarily discussed in the relevant article. Several articles relate issues raised in Chomsky’s first two minimalist papers to the basic ideas in Kayne’s book, The Antisymmetry of Syntax (1994, distributed in part in manuscript form in 1993). In many respects, therefore, these articles develop alternatives to ideas proposed in chapter 4, “Categories and Transformations,” of Chomsky’s most recent book, The Minimalist Program (1995b). Some of the articles contain references to chapter 4, and some comments on similarities and differences between ideas developed in these papers and in chapter 4 of Chomsky 1995b can also be found in the Introduction to this volume.

Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

This volume brings together papers which address issues regarding the copy theory of movement. According to this theory, a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component but is available for interpretation at L(ogical) F(orm). Thus far, the bulk of the research on the copy theory has mainly focused on interpretation issues at LF. The consequences of the copy theory for syntactic computation per se and for the syntax–phonology mapping, in particular, have received much less attention in the literature, despite its crucial relevance for the whole architecture of the model. As a contribution to fill this gap, this volume congregates recent work that deals with empirical and conceptual consequences of the copy theory of movement for the inner working of syntactic computations within the Minimalist Program, with special emphasis on the syntax–phonology mapping.

This book provides a concise introduction to work in syntactic theory, drawing on the key concepts of Chomsky's Minimalist Program.