Eliminating Empty Categories - A Radically Minimalist View on Their Ontology and Justification

This collaborative book has a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the authors present a new framework - Radical Minimalism. The development of such a framework, with a strong basis on mathematics and physics, was born out of the conviction that, if language is really a natural object, there is no a priori reason to study it in isolation from other natural systems. On the other hand, this work represents a significant simplification of the theory of displacement and so-called "empty categories" within the latest development of Chomsky's Strong Minimalist Hypothesis, applying Occam's razor and fulfilling Lakatos' requirements for scientific evolution. Radical Minimalism thus accounts not only for the phenomena orthodox minimalism has explanations for, but also for empirical problems that have not yet been taken into consideration.

List of contents

Contents: Radical Minimalism - Pro-Drop Theory - ECP (Empty Category Principle) - OT (Optimality Theory) - MP (Minimalist Program) - Survive Minimalism - Faculty of Language - Merge - Interfaces - Empty Categories.

About the author

Diego Gabriel Krivochen is assistant lecturer and researcher at the University of Potsdam, Slavistics Department. His recent publications include articles on theoretical Radical Minimalism and its applications, as well as co-authored papers on comparative syntax and semantics, and a monograph in this series.
Peter Kosta is Chair and Full Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the Slavic Department of the University of Potsdam. He is author of monographs and articles on generative syntax, biolinguistics, theory of language, language typology and universals in natural languages.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Kosta, Diego Gabriel Krivochen
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2013
• EAN: 9783631627280
• ISBN: 978-3-631-62728-0
• No. of pages: 203
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 18 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 360 g
• Series: Potsdam Linguistic Investigations / Potsdamer Linguistische Untersuchungen / Recherches Linguistiques à Potsdam; Potsdam Linguistic Investigations / Potsdamer Linguistische Untersuchungen / Recherches Linguistique; Potsdam Linguistic Investigations / Potsdamer Linguistische Untersuchungen / Recherches Linguistiques à Potsdam; Potsdam Linguistic Investigations / Potsdamer Linguistische Untersuchungen / Recherches Linguistique
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures