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This is Chomsky’s formulation of the Strong Minimalist Thesis, i.e. the working hypothesis underlying the Minimalist Program.

Language = the narrow syntax, i.e. the computational system that builds structure using items from the lexicon. Structure is built using simple, yet powerful, operations.

The narrow syntax builds the structure and then the structure goes off to other systems with which the narrow syntax shares an interface. These other systems (of which Chomsky assumes there are two, one semantic, the other to do with production (speech or signs etc.)) are systems in their own right. This means they can only ‘see’ and deal with certain things. Therefore, the narrow syntax must produce something that an interface system can ‘read’. Since there are two interface systems, the narrow syntax must produce structures which are legible to both interface systems. The interface systems are different and so require different ‘legibility conditions’ to be met. The narrow syntax thus faces a problem of how to satisfy these conditions simultaneously. The hypothesis being followed in the Minimalist Program is that the narrow syntax that we have is an optimal solution to this problem – it meets the conditions of the interface systems in (one of) the best possible ways.

The Strong Minimalist Thesis is not a doctrine – it is a working hypothesis. It’s a bit like the assumption that natural phenomena can be modelled by mathematics – you assume an ideal, see how far the natural phenomenon matches the ideal, identify the areas where it does and does not, then return for more hypothesising. By using the Strong Minimalist Thesis as a working hypothesis linguists (of course this only applies to linguists who make the same assumptions as Chomsky) can try to establish:

(1)  The ‘legibility conditions’ of the interface systems.

(2)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(3)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does NOT meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(4)  Reasons for why language may be optimal/sub-optimal.

Hopefully that has shed some light on what is at first glance…and second, third, fourth glances etc…a pretty obscure little sentence.

In the most recent versions of Chomskyan theory, Merge plays a central (if not the central) role. It is the only structure building operation available in the language faculty. This differs from earlier versions where Move was considered to be a separate structure building operation but Move has since been reconceived as a different type of Merge.

The Minimalist Program has reduced the architecture of the language faculty to the bare essentials (referred to as the ‘(virtually) conceptually necessary’ components). This means that there is a lexicon, a structure building computational system and (at least) two ‘interfaces’ with other cognitive systems (one semantic, the other phonological, broadly speaking). Items are selected from the lexicon and copied into the Numeration if they are to be used to construct a sentence. The Numeration is like a holding bay.

Merge, the structure building operation, takes two items and forms a set, i.e. X and Y merge to form {X,Y} (the theory also involves labelling the set but I’ll ignore that bit). Now, when I said above ‘a different type of Merge’ I did not mean that the operation itself varies, rather the difference between the types of Merge lies in where X and Y come from. There are three possibilities.

1)     X and Y both come directly from the Numeration.

2)     Either X or Y but not both comes directly from the Numeration.

3)     Neither X nor Y come directly from the Numeration.

Option (1) is the type of Merge that gets structure building started. Without (1) there would be no structure.

Option (2) is the type of Merge called External Merge (EM) because one of the merging items is from the Numeration, i.e. comes from somewhere external to the structure that has already been built. Option (2) allows the structure built by option (1) to be extended by merging further items to already existing structure.

Option (3) is the type of Merge called Internal Merge (IM) and this is the current conception of movement. When an item moves, it is going from one place in the structure to another so the items that are merging both come from somewhere internal to the structure that has already been built.

Note that this assumes there is only one monolithic Numeration. If we wanted to merge two existing structures, we would have to add to the options above or modify our assumptions about the nature of the Numeration.

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