Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 19-4, 891-900 Lappin, Levine and Johnson (LLJ) categorize my first reply to their piece as something ’which addresses our main objection to the MP by attempting to present a substantive defense of economy conditions in the theory of grammar’. This is why I chose the paradigm I did, among other […]

Clitics in phonology, morphology and syntax, 405-431 This paper explores the conjecture that clitic doubling in languages like Spanish shares some fundamental aspects of the semantics of inalienable possession, especially if understood in terms of a syntax of the kind originally advocated by Szabolcsi (1983). A few paradigms are discussed where this correlation would explain […]

Artificial Life, 2001, 7(1), 3-31 In the research described here we extend past computational investigations of animal signaling by studying an artificial world in which a population of initially noncommunicating agents evolves to communicate about food sources and predators. Signaling in this world can be either beneficial (e.g., warning of nearby predators) or costly (e.g., […]

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 18 (3), 863-71 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 […]

Digital Repository at the University of Maryland A simulation environment has been created to support study of emergent communication. Multiple agents exist in a two-dimensional world where they must find food and avoid predators. While non-communicating agents may survive, the world is configured so that survival and fitness can be enhanced through the use of […]

Minimalist Syntax: The Essential Readings, 337

A main desideratum of the Minimalist Program is reducing substantive principles to interface (or bare output) conditions, and formal principles to economy conditions. Much energy has been devoted to rethinking constraints and phenomena that appear to challenge this idea, in the process sharpening observations and descriptions. In this chapter, I attempt to reduce a version […]

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 17, 403-444

Current Studies in Linguistics Series 32, MIT Press

DELTA, 16, 221-43, Unicamp, Brazil One of the cornerstones of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program is the role played by economy. This paper discusses different ways in which Chomsky’s notion of economy in linguistics can be understood, given current views on dynamic systems and, in particular, on evolution in biological systems. Um dos pontos principais do Programa […]