ABSTRACT
The introduction presents the general idea of the book. The Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) builds the theoretical background against which the issue of coordination is going to be debated. Consequently, the book sets out to discuss SMT, its impact on the minimalist view on language and the fundamental components of Universal Grammar (UG) first. The discussion is followed by a careful investigation of coordination in generative grammar presenting theoretical options and challenges, which have to enter an account of the phenomenon in terms of SMT. Crucially, the relation among conjuncts seems to be flat, which contradicts the hierarchical basis of human language. Resorting to special devices is an unwanted complication of UG, and as such a departure from SMT. A new proposal referring to Simplest Merge, labeling, and to a simple SMT-architecture is formulated as the main objective.
