ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the development of theories of the generative and transformational aspects of human language. It shows how sixty years of generative research has emerged as a system of phrase structure rules and transformations and converged on the framework of "bare phrase structure" (BPS). The chapter discusses a framework incorporates major insights of earlier approaches, and how a single operation hypothesized therein, called Merge. It suggests that the theory of Merge-based syntax, called the framework of BPS, arguably provides a minimal explanation of the generative and transformational aspects of human language. The chapter also shows that the theory of phrase structure evolved into the simple theory of Merge by critically examining the technical devices proposed earlier and reducing them to a conceptual minimum that can still satisfy their target functions. It describes simplification of Merge-based syntax, even more radically departing from earlier theories of conversion rules and X-bar theory.
