Discussion Details
| Title: | Inclusiveness Condition |
| Submitter: | David Schueler |
| Description: | I was wondering if anyone could help me understand why the
Inclusiveness Condition, as defined in Chomsky 1995 and other work in the Minimalist Program, is so widely assumed as a working hypothesis. In most formulations, it says that in a language with optimal design, the computational system will not add information in the course of the derivation which is not already present in the lexical items. My question is: why? I don't see what's so imperfect about a computational system which adds information. This is a separate question from whether languages in fact have this property, since as Chomsky says many times, languages probably are not optimally designed after all; the SMT is probably false. But my question is, why would satisfying Inclusiveness be a criterion for being optimal in the first place? |
| Date Posted: | 30-Sep-2011 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Linguistic Theories
Syntax |
| LL Issue: | 22.3814 |
| Posted: | 30-Sep-2011 |
