ABSTRACT
The theory of phrase structure has been playing an increasingly important role in the theory of grammar as one of the few remaining core components of the human language faculty. As the “minimalist program” (Chomsky 1993a) has been developed, a variety of the subcomponents of grammar that had been assumed in earlier work have been critically scrutinized in light of minimalist assumptions and, in many cases, eliminated from grammar as conceptually unwarranted from the strictly minimalist viewpoint. However, to the extent that linguistic expressions in human languages have hierarchical structures, not just strings of words and formatives, which is a fairly well-established point, the theory of Universal Grammar (UG) must have a procedure that is responsible for the “structures” embodied in human languages. Of course, the theory of phrase structure itself has to be subjected to minimalist scrutiny, as it has been in recent works (Chomsky 1995a, b, Kayne 1994; see also Fukui 1986). It should not contain any stipulations that are not motivated by such considerations as economy/optimality or by properties of the interface levels (conceptual/intentional (“LF”) and articulatory/perceptual (“PF”); see Chomsky 1993a for detailed discussion).
