ABSTRACT
The concept of parameters has been central to generative inquiry since the inception of Chomsky's principles and parameters approach. While the P&P approach provided great advances in understanding the architecture of the language faculty, Chomsky's minimalist approach propels the project forward. He attributes language variation to the lexicon, which is learned through exposure to externalized Primary Linguistic Data (PLD), so that the computational system/syntax is no longer equipped with parameters but works universally, based on instructions provided by linguistic features which can display variation between I-languages. Chomsky outlines how the three factors determine the nature of human I-languages, including genetic endowment, experience, and principles not specific to the faculty of language. This chapter clarifies how these three factors contribute to the expression of linguistic variation. With respect to linguistic variation, Berwick and Chomsky hypothesize that variation is, perhaps entirely, attributed to externalization: Parameterization and diversity, then, would be mostly possibly entirely restricted to externalization.
