The Minimalist Program: The Nature and Plausibility of Chomsky's Biolinguistics

Cambridge Studies in Linguistics

by Fahad R Al-Mutairi

The development of the Minimalist Program (MP), Noam Chomsky's most recent generative model of linguistics, has been highly influential over the last twenty years. It has had significant implications not only for the conduct of linguistic analysis itself, but also for our understanding of the status of linguistics as a science. The reflections and analyses in this book contain insights into the strengths and the weaknesses of the MP. These a clarification of the content of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT); a synthesis of Chomsky's linguistic and interdisciplinary discourses; and an analysis of the notion of optimal computation from conceptual, empirical and philosophical perspectives. This book will encourage graduate students and researchers in linguistics to reflect on the foundations of their discipline, and the interdisciplinary nature of the topics explored will appeal to those studying biolinguistics, neurolinguistics, the philosophy of language and other related disciplines.

Genres: Linguistics

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 7, 2014

Reviews

[Brent Woo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unusual book. Even among theoretical syntacticians, it will likely appeal to a very narrow audience, but I enjoyed it immensely as a graduate student currently working on critically examining the fundamentals of syntax. This book is mostly an extended, critical review of select pieces of literature in Minimalist Syntax. I would say its primary accomplishment is highlighting thematically-related passages from diverse pieces of the primary literature and proposing clarifications to the definitions of tenets of Minimalist Syntax. The first chapter is devoted to a critical rebuttal of Boeckx & Hornstein's (similar) "clarification" piece. The rest of the material focuses on various Chomsky articles and offering clarifications of Chomsky's often obscure writing.

Given the subject matter, the material will again appeal only to those who already have a background in the MP, and are interested in deepening their understanding of it. For example, there is a whole section on what the term "virtual conceptual necessity" means as used by Chomsky in his publications. Only after a few hundred pages do we arrive at a conclusion about what the Strong Minimalist Thesis is. It doesn't expand empirical coverage at all and it doesn't purport to (although it discusses the empirical consequences of adopting some definition, etc), and many of the sections come off as a sort of 'rhetorical analysis' of what Noam Chomsky could've meant by saying X. I don't mean that is a bad thing. Perhaps the unique or inimitable contribution of the book is Al-Mutairi's interdisciplinary perspective -- there is lots of fascinating discussion of Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Physics (e.g., in the gripping discussion of whether Shortest Move or principles like it has an actual Physic-al basis) and the MPs connections to each of these domains.

It is a good read, but depends on the reader having an background in the Minimalist Program, and is best read beside Chomsky's The Minimalist Program and some other important articles (Beyond Explanatory Adequacy, etc.).