By Juan Uriagereka
Lappin, Levine and Johnson (henceforth ‘LLJ’) are concerned about the field gravitating towards the Minimalist Program (MP) without having exhausted the possibilities of the ‘Government and Binding’ (GB) theory.1 In this reply, I concentrate on a concrete paradigm that has resisted a GB analysis. Since LLJ attack Chomsky’s system using in large part my book Rhyme and Reason (R&R), I will respond in my own terms. I believe that the analysis I discuss is in the spirit of precisely those general aspects of MP that LLJ find offensive, and it constitutes a good example of what they call a “staple cliche of trendy ‘parascientific’ chit-chat”. After I present the analysis, I discuss its assumptions, and attempt to show how they are not particularly unreasonable, or profoundly different from those that any natural scientist would make. That being the case, the force behind LLJ’s criticism dissipates.