| The Minimalist Program (MP) model postulates that derivations proceed phase by phase. This idea is desirable and well motivated. The notion “phase” itself is central in recent work, but is not coherent. Chomsky (2001a, 2001b) suggests that the sentence includes two propositional phases spelled out cyclically. He defines the boundary of the lower phase as the little-v projection. The little-v phase is motivated by the behavior of expletives, movement phenomena, and reconstruction sites (Fox 2000, Legate 2003). But beyond the structural advantages the little-v projection has, Horvath and Siloni (2002) argue that this category is unmotivated, and empirically inadequate. If this is correct, the relevance of the little-v projection to phase theory must be reexamined. In addition to the two propositional phases (CP and vP), it is also suggested, but not pursued, by Chomsky that DP may constitute a phase as well. Other current proposals have extended the notion of phase to words, thereby accounting for the impenetrability they manifest (Marantz 2000, 2001, Arad 2003). The alleged applicability of the notion phase to words is taken in these works as indication that they are constructed in the computational system, not in the lexicon. In the seminar, we will examine the notion phase in detail. |