Alternative Minimalist Visions of Language

1. Goals and constraints The primary goal of modern linguistic theory (at least in the circles I inhabit) is an explanation of the human language capacity and how it enables the child to acquire adult competence in language. Adult competence in turn is understood as the ability (or knowledge) to creatively map between sound and meaning, using a rich combinatorial system – the lexicon and grammar of the language. An adequate theory must satisfy at least three crucial constraints, which I will call the Descriptive Constraint, the Learnability Constraint, and the Evolutionary Constraint.

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