Local Economy (Paper): 29 (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

Any theory of grammar must contain a lexicon an interface with the mechanisms of production and perception (PF) and an interface with the interpretational system of semantics (LF). A traditional way to relate these three components in generative theory is through a derivation. Noam Chomskys Minimalist Program postulates that grammatical derivations are constrained by economy conditions requiring that derivations be minimal. One of the most important questions of syntax is what the economy conditions are and how they operate. In Local Economy Chris Collins proposes that economy conditions are local. According to this theory evaluating economy conditions does not involve comparing whole derivations. Rather economy conditions are evaluated at each step in the derivation. Collins shows that locative inversion and quotative inversion provide strong arguments for local economy. In addition he explores the far-reaching consequences of this proposal for other areas of syntax including the strict cycle binary branching successive cyclicity and expletive constructions. He demonstrates that local economy is superior to global economy on conceptual as well as empirical grounds. Local Economy is one of the first books other than Chomskys The Minimalist Program (MIT 1995) to deal in a general way with economy of derivation and Minimalism. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 29