From GB to minimalism
This course takes its participants from Chomsky’s (1981-LGB) original
Government-Binding Theory all the way to the most recent incarnation of
the principles-and-parameters approach to generative grammar: the
minimalist program (Chomsky 1995). Along the way, it addresses, among
other things: (i) Lasnik & Saito’s (1984) theory of ‘gamma-marking’ and
intermediate trace deletion at LF, (ii) Chomsky’s (1986–Barriers) densely
successive-cyclic derivations for Aʹ–movement via intermediate
VP–adjunction, (iii) the unification of the theories of government and
bounding, (iv) the interdependency of A–movement and head-movement, (v)
the general premises of the minimalist programme of Chomsky (1995), (vi)
the connection between hierarchical relationships between constituents and
their linear sequencing (‘antisymmetry’; Kayne 1994), and (vii) the latest
theoretical developments.