Published Article

ABSTRACT

The term minimalism is typically associated to certain artistic tendencies whose work is said to

be stripped down to its most fundamental features. In the linguistic agenda developed by Noam

Chomsky and others since the early nineties, this term is endowed with the same aesthetic

concern of searching for the most fundamental features of grammatical theory. As a matter of

importance, the methodological facet is concerned with the “theory of language” under

construction, whereas the substantive facet is concerned with how well designed “language

itself” is. Methodological minimalism seeks those components of a linguistic theory that are

redundant, stipulative, and idiosyncratic, in order to eliminate or reformulate them in the form of

parsimonius, well-grounded, and general principles. Although this would be an impressive

achievement, it would not satisfy the usual scientific ideals of simplicity and solidness. It is on

this note that this study was conducted to critically analyse the Minimalist Program and the

concept of Universal Grammar. From the study it was observed that in the process certain issues

concerning the Minimalist Program and the concept of Universal Grammar have been identified

with their numerous contributions to linguistics. Besides, it did not satisfy the usual scientific

ideals of simplicity and solidness. Equally, the methodological and substantive facets was not

independent and finally, clearly, the MP leads minimalist researchers to a view of Universal

Grammar (UG) that is essentially different from the view in Principles and Parameters (P&P),

from which the MP orginated. One of the recommendations was that methodological and

substantive minimalism are not to be confused as it is possible to construct a theory of how

linguistic properties derive from external principles that postulates a multitude of idiosyncratic

principles, instead of a relatively small set of general and fundamental principles.

KEYWORDS: Minimalism, Strongest Minimalist Thesis