Minimalist program
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, the Minimalist Program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar
since the early nineties. It started with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky
.
Chomsky presents MP as a program, not as a theory, following Imre Lakatos
's distinction. The MP seeks to be a mode of inquiry characterized by the flexibility of the multiple directions that its minimalism enables. Ultimately, the MP provides a conceptual framework used to guide the development of grammatical theory. For Chomsky, there are minimalist questions, but the answers can be framed in any theory. Of all these questions, the one that plays the most crucial role is this: why language has the properties it has. That said, the MP lays out a very specific view of the basis of syntactic grammar that, when compared to other formalisms, is often taken to look very much like a theory.
constitutes a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary to meet our conceptual, and physical (phonological) needs.
From a theoretical standpoint, and in the context of generative grammar
, the MP draws on the minimalist approach of the Principles and Parameters
program, considered to be the ultimate standard theoretical model that generative linguistics has developed since the eighties. What this approach suggests is the existence of a fixed set of principles valid for all languages, which, when combined with settings for a finite set of binary switches (parameters), may describe the specific properties that characterize the language system a child eventually comes to attain.
The MP aims to get to know how much of the Principles and Parameters
model can be taken as a result of this hypothetical optimal and computationally efficient design of the human language faculty. In turn, more developed versions of the Principles and Parameters
approach provide technical principles from which the MP can be seen to follow.
.
(sentence building prior to movement) developed by Noam Chomsky
. Interestingly, the introduction of BPS has moved the Chomskian tradition toward the dependency grammar
tradition, which operates with significantly less structure than most phrase structure grammars
.
This theory contrasts with X-bar theory
, which preceded it, in four important ways:
BPS incorporates two basic operations: Merge
and Move. Although there is active debate on exactly how Move should be formulated, the differences between the current proposals are relatively minute. The following description follows Chomsky's original proposal.
Merge is a function that takes two objects (say α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label (either α or β, in this case α). The label identifies the properties of the phrase.
Merge (α, β) → {α, {α, β}}
For example, Merge can operate on the lexical items 'drink' and 'water' to give 'drink water'. Note that the phrase 'drink water' behaves more like the verb
'drink' than like the noun
'water'. That is, wherever we can put the verb 'drink' we can usually put the phrase 'drink water':
I like to _____________ (drink)/(drink water).
(Drinking/Drinking water) __________ is fun.
Furthermore, we typically can't put the phrase 'drink water' in places where we can put the noun 'water':
We can say "There's some water on the table", but not "There's some drink water on the table".
So, we identify the phrase with a label. In the case of 'drink water', the label is 'drink' since the phrase acts as a verb. For simplicity, we call this phrase a verb phrase or VP. Now if we were to Merge 'cold' and 'water' to get 'cold water', then we would have a noun phrase or NP with the label 'water'. The reader can verify that the phrase 'cold water' can appear in the same environments as the noun 'water' in the three test sentences above. So, for 'drink water' we have the following:
Merge (drink, water) → {drink, {drink, water}}
We can represent this in a typical syntax tree as follows:
or, with more technical terms, as:
Merge can also operate on structures already built. If it couldn't, then such a system would predict only two-word utterances to be grammatical. Say we Merge a new head with a previously formed object (a phrase).
Merge (γ, {α, {α, β}}) → {γ, {γ, {α, {α, β}}}}
Here, γ is the label, so we say that γ 'projects' from the label of the head. This corresponds to the following tree structure:
Note crucially that Merge operates blindly, projecting labels in all possible combinations. The subcategorization
features of the head then license certain label projections and eliminate all derivations with alternate projections.
in 1998. A simple sentence is often decomposed into two phases, CP and vP (see X-bar theory
). Movement of a constituent out of a phase is (in the general case) only permitted if the constituent has first moved to the left edge of the phase. This condition is described in the Phase Impenetrability Condition, which has been variously formulated within the literature. In its original conception, only the vP in transitive and unergative verb
s constitute phases. The vP in passives and unaccusative verbs
(if even present) are not phases. This topic is, however, currently under debate in the literature.
and Shalom Lappin published the first detailed critiques of Chomsky's minimalist program. This technical work was followed by a lively debate with proponents of minimalism on the scientific status of the program. The original article provoked several replies
and two further rounds of replies and counter-replies in subsequent issues of the same journal. Lappin et al. argue that the Minimalist Program is a radical departure from earlier Chomskian linguistic practice that is not motivated by any new empirical discoveries, but rather by a general appeal to "perfection" which is both empirically unmotivated and so vague as to be unfalsifiable. They compare the adoption of this paradigm by linguistic researchers to other historical paradigm shifts in natural sciences and conclude that the adoption of the Minimalist Program has been an "unscientific revolution", driven primarily by Chomsky's authority in linguistics. The several replies to the article in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Volume 18 number 4 (2000) make a number of different defenses of the Minimalist Program. Some claim that it is not in fact revolutionary or not in fact widely adopted, while others agree with Levine and Johnson on these points, but defend the vagueness of its formulation as not problematic in light of its status as a research program rather than a theory (see above).
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, the Minimalist Program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar
Generative grammar
In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
since the early nineties. It started with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
.
Chomsky presents MP as a program, not as a theory, following Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...
's distinction. The MP seeks to be a mode of inquiry characterized by the flexibility of the multiple directions that its minimalism enables. Ultimately, the MP provides a conceptual framework used to guide the development of grammatical theory. For Chomsky, there are minimalist questions, but the answers can be framed in any theory. Of all these questions, the one that plays the most crucial role is this: why language has the properties it has. That said, the MP lays out a very specific view of the basis of syntactic grammar that, when compared to other formalisms, is often taken to look very much like a theory.
Perfection
The MP appeals to the idea that the language ability in humans shows signs of being incorporated under an optimal design with exquisite organization, which seems to suggest that the inner workings conform to a very simple computational law or a particular mental organ. In other words, the MP works on the assumption that Universal GrammarUniversal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
constitutes a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary to meet our conceptual, and physical (phonological) needs.
From a theoretical standpoint, and in the context of generative grammar
Generative grammar
In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
, the MP draws on the minimalist approach of the Principles and Parameters
Principles and parameters
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off...
program, considered to be the ultimate standard theoretical model that generative linguistics has developed since the eighties. What this approach suggests is the existence of a fixed set of principles valid for all languages, which, when combined with settings for a finite set of binary switches (parameters), may describe the specific properties that characterize the language system a child eventually comes to attain.
The MP aims to get to know how much of the Principles and Parameters
Principles and parameters
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off...
model can be taken as a result of this hypothetical optimal and computationally efficient design of the human language faculty. In turn, more developed versions of the Principles and Parameters
Principles and parameters
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off...
approach provide technical principles from which the MP can be seen to follow.
Economy
The MP aims at the further development of ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation, which had started to become significant in the early 1990s, but were still peripheral aspects of Transformational grammarTransformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
.
- Economy of derivation is a principle stating that movements (i.e. transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features. An example of an interpretable feature is the plural inflectionInflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
on regular English nouns, e.g. dogs. The word dogs can only be used to refer to several dogs, not a single dog, and so this inflection contributes to meaning, making it interpretable. English verbs are inflected according to the numberGrammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
of their subject (e.g. "Dogs bite" vs "A dog bites"), but this information is only interpretable once a relationship is formed between the subject and the verb, so movement of the subject is required. - Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, i.e. the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality, which are equivalent to constraints on the mapping between the conceptual/intensional and sensori-motor interfaces in the optimal system that minimalism seeks to explore.
Technical innovations
The exploration of minimalist questions has led to several radical changes in the technical apparatus of transformational generative grammatical theory. Some of the most important are:- The generalization of X-bar TheoryX-bar theoryX-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in a presupposed framework...
into Bare Phrase Structure (see below). - The simplification of representational levels in the grammatical model, eliminating the distinction between Deep StructureDeep structureIn linguistics, specifically in the study of syntax in the tradition of generative grammar , the deep structure of a linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures. For example, the sentences "Pat loves Chris" and "Chris is loved by Pat" mean...
and Surface Structure in favor of more explicitly derivational approach. - The elimination of the notion of government.
- The inclusion of a single point of interaction between syntax and the interfaces (conceptual/intensional and sensori-motor), commonly called the point of Spell-Out.
- The idea that syntactic derivations proceed by clearly delineated stages called phases (see below).
Bare Phrase Structure
A major development of MP inquiry is Bare Phrase Structure (BPS), a theory of phrase structurePhrase structure rules
Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts namely phrasal categories and lexical categories...
(sentence building prior to movement) developed by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
. Interestingly, the introduction of BPS has moved the Chomskian tradition toward the dependency grammar
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar is a class of modern syntactic theories that are all based on the dependency relation and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière. Dependency grammars are distinct from phrase structure grammars , since they lack phrasal nodes. Structure is determined by...
tradition, which operates with significantly less structure than most phrase structure grammars
Phrase structure grammar
The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammars as defined by phrase structure rules, i.e. rewrite rules of the type studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue...
.
This theory contrasts with X-bar theory
X-bar theory
X-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in a presupposed framework...
, which preceded it, in four important ways:
- BPS is explicitly derivational. That is, it is built from the bottom up, bit by bit. In contrast, X-Bar Theory is representational - a structure for a given construction is built in one fell swoop, and lexical items are inserted into the structure.
- BPS does not have a preconceived phrasal structure, while in X-Bar Theory, every phrase has a specifierSpecifierIn X-bar theory in linguistics, specifiers, head words, and complements together form phrases. Specifiers differ from complements because they are not sisters of the head, but rather sisters of the phrase formed by the head and the complement...
, a headHead (linguistics)In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
, and a complementComplement (linguistics)In grammar the term complement is used with different meanings. The primary meaning is a word, phrase or clause that is necessary in a sentence to complete its meaning. We find complements that function as an argument and complements that exist within arguments.Both complements and modifiers add...
. - BPS permits only binary branching, while X-Bar Theory permits both binary and unary branching.
- BPS does not distinguish between a "head" and a "terminal", while some versions of X-Bar Theory require such a distinction.
BPS incorporates two basic operations: Merge
Merge (linguistics)
Merge is one of the basic operations in the Minimalist Program, a leading approach to generative syntax, when two syntactic objects are combined to form a new syntactic unit . Merge also has the property of recursion in that it may apply to its own output: the objects combined by Merge are either...
and Move. Although there is active debate on exactly how Move should be formulated, the differences between the current proposals are relatively minute. The following description follows Chomsky's original proposal.
Merge is a function that takes two objects (say α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label (either α or β, in this case α). The label identifies the properties of the phrase.
Merge (α, β) → {α, {α, β}}
For example, Merge can operate on the lexical items 'drink' and 'water' to give 'drink water'. Note that the phrase 'drink water' behaves more like the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
'drink' than like the noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
'water'. That is, wherever we can put the verb 'drink' we can usually put the phrase 'drink water':
I like to _____________ (drink)/(drink water).
(Drinking/Drinking water) __________ is fun.
Furthermore, we typically can't put the phrase 'drink water' in places where we can put the noun 'water':
We can say "There's some water on the table", but not "There's some drink water on the table".
So, we identify the phrase with a label. In the case of 'drink water', the label is 'drink' since the phrase acts as a verb. For simplicity, we call this phrase a verb phrase or VP. Now if we were to Merge 'cold' and 'water' to get 'cold water', then we would have a noun phrase or NP with the label 'water'. The reader can verify that the phrase 'cold water' can appear in the same environments as the noun 'water' in the three test sentences above. So, for 'drink water' we have the following:
Merge (drink, water) → {drink, {drink, water}}
We can represent this in a typical syntax tree as follows:
drink
/ \
drink water
or, with more technical terms, as:
VP
/ \
drink water
Merge can also operate on structures already built. If it couldn't, then such a system would predict only two-word utterances to be grammatical. Say we Merge a new head with a previously formed object (a phrase).
Merge (γ, {α, {α, β}}) → {γ, {γ, {α, {α, β}}}}
Here, γ is the label, so we say that γ 'projects' from the label of the head. This corresponds to the following tree structure:
γ
/ \
γ α
/ \
α β
Note crucially that Merge operates blindly, projecting labels in all possible combinations. The subcategorization
Subcategorization
Subcategorization is a natural language phenomenon, which denotes the tendency of heads to have restrictions on the arguments they can take. For example, some verbs do not take a noun-phrase complement, while some verbs do take a complement, or even two complements , typically cast in traditional...
features of the head then license certain label projections and eliminate all derivations with alternate projections.
Phases
A phase is a syntactic domain first hypothesized by Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
in 1998. A simple sentence is often decomposed into two phases, CP and vP (see X-bar theory
X-bar theory
X-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in a presupposed framework...
). Movement of a constituent out of a phase is (in the general case) only permitted if the constituent has first moved to the left edge of the phase. This condition is described in the Phase Impenetrability Condition, which has been variously formulated within the literature. In its original conception, only the vP in transitive and unergative verb
Unergative verb
An unergative verb is an intransitive verb distinguished semantically by having an agent subject. For example, in English, run, talk and resign are unergative verbs ....
s constitute phases. The vP in passives and unaccusative verbs
Unaccusative verb
In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose subject is not a agent; that is, it does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action of the verb. Unaccusative verbs thus contrast with unergative verbs...
(if even present) are not phases. This topic is, however, currently under debate in the literature.
Further Readings on the Minimalist Program
Much research has been devoted to the study of the consequences that arise when minimalist questions are formulated. This list is not exhaustive.Works by Noam Chomsky
- Chomsky, Noam. 1993. "A minimalist program for linguistic theory". In Hale, Kenneth L. and S. Jay Keyser, eds. The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1-52
- Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: the framework. In Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, eds. Roger Martin, David Michaels and Juan Uriagereka, 89-155. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2000. New horizons in the study of language and mind. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by Phase. In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. Michael Kenstowicz, 1- 52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond Explanatory Adequacy. In: Structures and Beyond. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, ed. Adriana Belletti, 104 – 131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2005. Three Factors in Language Design. Linguistic Inquiry 36:1–22.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2007. Approaching UG From Below. In Interfaces + Recursion = Language?, eds. Uli Sauerland and Hans Martin Gärtner, 1-29. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On Phases. In Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory. Essays in Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, eds. Robert Freidin, Carlos Peregrín Otero and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta, 133-166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Linguistic Textbooks on Minimalism
- Adger, David. 2003. Core Syntax. A Minimalist Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Boeckx, Cedric. 2006. Linguistic Minimalism. Origins, Concepts, Methods and Aims. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Bošković, Željko and Howard Lasnik (eds). 2006. Minimalist Syntax: The Essential Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Cook, Vivian J. and Newson, Mark. 2007. Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Third Edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Hornstein, Norbert, Jairo Nunes and Kleanthes K. Grohmann. 2005. Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Lasnik, Howard, Juan Uriagereka, Cedric Boeckx. 2005. A Course in Minimalist Syntax. Malden, MA: Blackwell
- Radford, Andrew. 2004. Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.
- Uriagereka, Juan. 1998. Rhyme and Reason. An Introduction to Minimalist Syntax. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Webelhuth, Gert (ed.). 1995. Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program: Principles and Parameters in Syntactic Theory. Wiley-Blackwell
Works on the main theoretical notions and their applications
- Boeckx, Cedric (ed). 2006. Minimalist Essays. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Bošković, Željko. 1997. The Syntax of Nonfinite Complementation. An Economy Approach. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Brody, Michael. 1995. Lexico-Logical Form: a Radically Minimalist Theory. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.
- Collins, Chris. 1997. Local Economy. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.
- Epstein, Samuel David, and Hornstein, Norbert (eds). 1999. Working Minimalism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Epstein, Samuel David, and Seely, T. Daniel (eds). 2002. Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- Fox, Danny. 1999. Economy and Semantic Interpretation. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.
- Martin, Roger, David Michaels and Juan Uriagereka (eds). 2000. Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Pesetsky, David. 2001. Phrasal Movement and its Kin. Cambridge,MA:MIT Press.
- Richards, Norvin. 2001. Movement in Language. Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Criticism
In the late 1990s, David E. JohnsonDavid E. Johnson
David E. Johnson is an American linguist. He is the co-inventor of arc pair grammar.- Work :...
and Shalom Lappin published the first detailed critiques of Chomsky's minimalist program. This technical work was followed by a lively debate with proponents of minimalism on the scientific status of the program. The original article provoked several replies
and two further rounds of replies and counter-replies in subsequent issues of the same journal. Lappin et al. argue that the Minimalist Program is a radical departure from earlier Chomskian linguistic practice that is not motivated by any new empirical discoveries, but rather by a general appeal to "perfection" which is both empirically unmotivated and so vague as to be unfalsifiable. They compare the adoption of this paradigm by linguistic researchers to other historical paradigm shifts in natural sciences and conclude that the adoption of the Minimalist Program has been an "unscientific revolution", driven primarily by Chomsky's authority in linguistics. The several replies to the article in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Volume 18 number 4 (2000) make a number of different defenses of the Minimalist Program. Some claim that it is not in fact revolutionary or not in fact widely adopted, while others agree with Levine and Johnson on these points, but defend the vagueness of its formulation as not problematic in light of its status as a research program rather than a theory (see above).
See also
- Generative grammarGenerative grammarIn theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
- Generative linguisticsGenerative linguisticsGenerative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. The term "generative grammar" is used in different ways by different people, and the term "generative linguistics" therefore has a range of different, though overlapping,...
- TGG theoryTransformational grammarIn linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
- Principles and parametersPrinciples and parametersPrinciples and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off...
- Government and binding theoryGovernment and binding theoryGovernment and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s...
- BiolinguisticsBiolinguisticsBiolinguistics is the study of the biology and evolution of language. It is a highly interdisciplinary field, including linguists, biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and others...
- Merge (linguistics)Merge (linguistics)Merge is one of the basic operations in the Minimalist Program, a leading approach to generative syntax, when two syntactic objects are combined to form a new syntactic unit . Merge also has the property of recursion in that it may apply to its own output: the objects combined by Merge are either...
- X-bar theoryX-bar theoryX-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in a presupposed framework...