Minimalist Program and Syntactic linearity

Minimalist Program and Syntactic linearity
What drives the evolution of generative grammar from Government Binding theory (GB) into Minimalist Program (MP)? The constraint of the variation of parameters is an important driving force now that GB does not define clearly the parameter setting, which leads to many theoretical problems. Minimalist Program rises up to the occasion by confining parameter variation to LF and PF, thus, overcoming the previous deficiency and bringing a series of modification to Generative Grammar.
1. Steps toward Minimalism
In spite of its radically different analyses, the Minimalist Program is a progression rather than a complete U-turn. The overall aim continues the tradition of making statements about human language that are as simple and general as possible; ¡®From the early 1960s its ¡®generative grammar¡¯ central objective was to abstract general principles from the complex rule systems devised for particular languages, leaving rules that are ...