Journal
LINGUISTIC INQUIRY
Volume 36, Issue 1, Pages 1-22Publisher
MIT PRESS
DOI: 10.1162/0024389052993655
Keywords
minimalism; principled explanation; extended standard theory; principles-and-parameters; internal/external merge; single-cycle derivation; phase
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The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an organ of the body, along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena.
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