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An often emphasized trait of Minimalism is its programmatic nature. If nothing else, this offers a broad perspective on language, forcing us to reflect on what is commonly taken for granted. It is this eclectic approach that at first sight defines the present volume, which is devoted to the study of the interaction between the computational system and the interfaces. Fortunately, the book is more than just that, although it takes a close reading to recognize this.
The volume starts with Chomsky's latest paper, 'Approaching UG from below' (AUB), written after but published prior to Chomsky's (2005) 'On Phases' (OP). The remainder of the book explores a wide range of topics, among them extraction, binding, and focus. Even though the different chapters are intended to embody the formula in the book title, it is hard to find a truly unifying leitmotiv in this volume that justifies a rigorous interpretation of the equation (and at least one paper in the book questions the equation in the title). To comment on the different papers in as integrated a way as possible, we will present them against the background of AUB.
Chomsky's OP and AUB were written in close succession, which leaves little room for fresh discussion and might explain why in AUB, Chomsky essentially limits himself to sketching the tenets of the biolinguistics program, adding a few specific qualifications about phase theory. Perhaps the paper's most remarkable contribution is to emphasize that the Minimalist Program (MP) in a sense aims to 'deflate' Universal Grammar (UG). This may seem perplexing, but it is squarely within the program, if this theory about the faculty of language (FL) is taken, in classical fashion, to be 'rich and highly structurated to satisfy ... empirical conditions' (3). Chomsky seeks to reduce these empirical conditions to 'principles of neural organization that may be even more deeply grounded in physical law' (3).
AUB phrases its reductionist twist by invoking two strategies that are commonly deployed in science: the top-down and bottom-up methods (see also Boeckx 2006: 95-98):
Throughout the modern history of generative grammar, the problem of determining the character of FL has been approached 'from top down': How much must be attributed to UG to account for language acquisition? The MP seeks to...