Verb movement in Biblical Aramaic: the Minimalist Programme as a general linguistic framework for verb movement

Abstract

This chapter offers a survey of recent developments in the theory of sentence-structure within the Chomskyan generative framework. The emphasis is on the development of syntactic theory up to and including MP. MP is introduced and explained in two of Chomsky’s recent publications, namely A Minimalist Programme for Linguistic Theory (1992) and Bare Phrase Structure (1994). The explanation of MP in this chapter relies on the abovementioned papers while also taking account of the language-specific proposals in Broekhuis & Den Dikken (1993), Marantz (1995), Zwart (1993, 1996), and Oosthuizen & Waher (1996).