ABSTRACT
It became possible to ask these theoretical questions because of a better understanding of the empirical phenomena in many human languages. This better understanding in tum was made possible by developments in the mid 1980s: the VP internal subject hypothesis (Koopman and Sportiche (1985, 1991), Speas and Fukui (1986) and many others), the VP internal object hypothesis (objects move to a position outside the VP, Koopman and Sportiche (1985, 1991) and many others), the development of VP shells (Larson 1988), the split I hypothesis (Pollock 1989), in conjunction with V movement, the development of the DP (Abney (1987), Szabolcsi (1987)), in conjunction with head movement within the D (Ritter (1991), Valois (1991)), and so on, the importance of the Spec head relation (Kayne (1989), Koopman (1987), Kinyalolo (1990), Mahajan (1990),
Rizzi (1994), Sportiche (1992) among others).The Minimalist framework is based on the assumption that this understanding is basically correct and complete.
