최소주의 프로그램과 확대 투사 원리

The Extended Projection Principle in the Minimalist Program

The Extended Projection Principle (EPP), which requires that clauses have subjects, has been playing a central role in Chomsky’s generative grammar ever since it was proposed in Chomsky (1981, 1982). The EPP, however, shifts from a requirement on clausal structure to a requirement on feature checking in the Minimalist Program, i.e., a feature on the head T of TP. From its inception on to the present, the EPP has had a flavor of oddity in that it is not a principle of its own standing, despite its name. In Chomsky’s (1981, 1982) original formulation, the “principle” is incorporated into the clause-expanding phrase structure rule, whereas in the Minimalist Program, the EPP feature is assumed to be a “feature of a feature.” All in all, the EPP is largely stipulative and redundant, hence it may be suggested that the principle should be eliminated from the grammar. Proposals have been presented by quite a few syntacticians to derive the EPP effect from some independent principle(s) and/or module(s) of the grammar. Among these proposals, Bošković (2001) seems to be the most promising one. His explanation of the so-called “intermediate EPP” effect, however, needs some qualification if it is to be true to the basic tenet of the Minimalist Program that every movement is feature-driven.