This course is intended to serve as a concise introduction to the evolution and current state of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2013, 2021, 2024), building on the course content of ‘Introduction to Phrase and Sentence Structure’ but requiring no prior background in Minimalism. Taught in five classes, the course will explore the core components of Minimalist syntax with the aim of enabling students to read the primary literature in the field critically, understand and evaluate its theoretical claims, and apply Minimalist concepts to a diverse set of empirical data. We will begin by considering [1] the motivations and architecture of the Minimalist framework and its central computational operation Merge (Chomsky et al. 2023; Hornstein 2024; Marcolli, Chomsky & Berwick 2025). From there we will move to a discussion of [2] the computational mechanisms and principles underlying syntactic displacement (Chomsky 2000, 2004, 2024), which will be followed by closer examination of [3] the operation Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001; Pesetsky & Torrego 2007) and the role of syntactic features (Chomsky 2001, 2008; Adger 2010). Having gained an understanding of structure building and feature interaction, we will address [4] syntactic labelling (Chomsky 2013, 2015, Collins 2017) and, finally, [5] phase theory (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2008; van Craenenbroeck, Pots & Temmerman 2020).

Pre-Course Readings
Alexiadou, Artemis & Terje Lohndal. 2021. From the origins of Government and Binding to the current state of Minimalism. In Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey (eds), A companion to Chomsky, 25-51. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Baker, Mark C. 2015. Hypothesis testing in the Minimalist Program. In Silvia Luraghi & Claudia Parodi (eds), The Bloomsbury companion to syntax, 22-31. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

References
Adger, David. 2010. A Minimalist theory of feature structure. In Anna Kibort & Greville G. Corbett (eds), Features: Perspectives on a key notion in linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 1993. A Minimalist Program for linguistic theory. In Ken Hale & Samuel J. Keyser, The View from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 1-52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels & Juan Uriagereka (eds), Step by step: Essays on Minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, 89-155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Kenstowicz, Michael (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 104-131. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, 104-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 1-22.

Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On Phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos P. Otero & Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (eds), Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, 132-166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130, 33-49.

Chomsky, Noam. 2015. Problems of projection: Extensions. In Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann & Simona Matteini (eds), Structures, strategies and beyond: Studies in honour of Adriana Belletti, 1-16. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Chomsky, Noam. 2021. Minimalism: Where we are now, and where we can hope to go. Gengo Kenkyu 160, 1-41.

Chomsky, Noam. 2024. The miracle creed and SMT. In Matteo Greco & Davide Mocci (eds), A Cartesian dream: A geometrical account of syntax in honor of Andrea Moro, 17-40. LingBuzz Press.

Chomsky, Noam, T. Daniel Seely, Robert C. Berwick, Sandiway Fong,
M. A. C. Huybregts. Hisatsugu Kitahara, Andrew McInnerney & Yushi Sugomoto. 2023. Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Collins, Chris. 2017. Merge(X,Y) = {X,Y}. In Leah Bauke & Andreas Blümel (eds), Labels and roots, 47-68. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Hornstein, Norbert. 2024. The Merge hypothesis: A theory of aspects of syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marcolli, Matilde, Noam Chomsky & Robert C. Berwick. 2025. Mathematical structure of syntactic Merge: An algebraic model for generative linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pesetsky, David & Esther Torrego. 2007. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian & Wendy Wilkins (eds), Phrasal and clausal architecture, 262-294. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen, Cora Pots & Tanja Temmerman (eds), Recent developments in phase theory. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.