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5 - Minimalism and Optimality Theory

from Part II - Modern generative approaches to the study of sentence structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

By
Hans Broekhuis  and
Ellen Woolford
Edited by
Marcel den Dikken
Marcel den Dikken
Affiliation:
City University of New York
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Summary

This chapter discusses the relation between the Minimalist Program (MP) and Optimality Theory (OT) and shows that, contrary to popular belief, MP and OT are not inherently incompatible or competing frameworks/theories. The second section of this chapter provides some background on some characteristic features of MP and OT. The third section of this chapter shows that the hybrid system makes it possible to eliminate the EPP-features from MP by replacing them by an OT-evaluation of the output of the computational system. The third section discusses certain aspects of Scandinavian Object Shift. By splitting up the Minimal Link Condition into two separate conditions, we can derive Burzio's Generalization, and also capture differences between languages (and between constructions within a language) in whether nominative case can be licensed on an object in dative and ergative subject constructions.

Keywords

generative syntaxlanguage developmentlinguistic variationX-bar theorysyntactic theorylocus of variationphrase structure rules
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax , pp. 122 - 161
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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