A Study of Economy Conditions in the Minimalist Program

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The assumption that considerations of operational/computational complexity matter for the grammar as a cognitive system requires that economy conditions be local, Suggesting that the economy conditions proposed so far can be classified into three subtypes : local, derivational, and global, I have pointed out that the problem is how we can deal locally with the phenomena accounted for by the global economy conditions. As far as we assume that economy conditions apply only to the convergent derivations, non-locality like look-ahead always emerges, which Procrastinate is a representative case of. The strength feature, which forces overt movement, was one of the means that seek to preserve locality. This feature itself, however, contradicts the fundamental spirit of the minimalist program. The recent attempt to eliminate both the strength feature and Procrastinate is still not convincing, because it needs several assumptions which do not necessarily harmonize with the basic minimalist approach. Notice that one of those assumptions is to give a special status to the EPP feature.Some of the remaining urgent problems will be those concerning multiple Spell-Out, the system of Agree/Merge, and the concept of phase. The following, I suggest, will be cited as long-range problems : what are the exact properties of the legibility conditions imposed on the interface levels, and how we should consider the trend in which the scope of the linguistic phenomena treated is extremely restricted. The latter has been a recalcitrant methodological problem.