In this paper, I review how formal features are currently regarded and used in the Minimalist Program. Although features are the cornerstone in Minimalism, they are used in many different and conflicting ways. Features may seem particularly relevant to affix-hop because the affix has to be checked against a higher verb or auxiliary. Chomsky’s (1957) analysis of affix-hop has the affix connected with an auxiliary, e.g., the -en of have-en, move to a verb on its right, as in have see-en. This analysis is one of the high points of early generative grammar but, with each new instantiation of the generative model, it has needed adjustments and the phenomenon is still debated. I will elaborate on a proposal made in van Gelderen (2013) who argues that interpretable tense, mood, or aspect are in a low position being probed by the relevant uninterpretable features in a high position. This view I claim is consistent with data from change and acquisition. I also discuss the implications of this reliance on features for learnability and Universal Grammar.
Adger, David . 2003. Core syntax. A minimalist approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baker, Mark . 2008. The syntax of agreement and concord. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benincà, Paola and Nicola Munaro. 2011. Introduction. In P. Benincà and N. Munaro (eds.) Mapping the left periphery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3–15.
Bloom, Lois . 1973. One word at a time. The Hague: Mouton.
Butler, Jonny . 2003. A minimalist treatment of modality. Lingua 113. 967–996.
Bybee, Joan L . 1985. Morphology. A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Chomsky, Noam . 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, Noam . 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam . 1973. Conditions on transformations. In S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky (eds.) A Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. 232–286.
Chomsky, Noam . 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, Noam . 1993. Language and thought. Wakefield: Moyer Bell.
Chomsky, Noam . 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam . 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds.) Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 89–155.
Chomsky, Noam . 2001. Derivation by phase. In Kenstowicz (2001. 1–52).
Chomsky, Noam . 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 1–22.
Chomsky, Noam . 2007. Approaching UG from below. In U. Sauerland and H.-M. Gärtner (eds.) Interfaces + recursion = language? Chomsky’s minimalism and the view from syntax–semantics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1–29.
Chomsky, Noam . 2008. On phases. In R. Freidin, C. P. Otero and M. L. Zubizarreta (eds.) Foundational issues in linguistic theory. Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 134–166.
Cinque, Guglielmo . 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cinque, Guglielmo and Luigi Rizzi. 2008. The cartography of syntactic structures. CISCL Working Papers on Language and Cognition 2 2. 43–59.
Emonds, Joe . 1976. A transformational approach to English syntax. New York: Academic Press.
Freidin, Robert . 2004. Syntactic structures redux. Syntax 7. 101–127.
Geach, Peter . 1957. Mental acts. London: Routledge, Kegan, and Paul.
Gelderen, Elly van . 2011. The linguistic cycle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gelderen, Elly van . 2013. Clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gelderen, Elly van . 2014. A history of the English language. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Hacquard, Valentine . 2009. On the interaction of aspect and modal auxiliaries. Linguistics and Philosophy 32. 279–315.
Hacquard, Valentine . 2010. On the event-relativity of modal auxiliaries. Natural Language Semantics 18. 79–114.
Haumann, Dagmar . 2007. Adverb licensing and clause structure in English. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Hughes, Arthur and Peter Trudgill. 1996. English accents and dialects. London: Edward Arnold.
Jackendoff, Ray . 2002. Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kayne, Richard S. 2005. Some notes on comparative syntax, with special reference to English and French. In G. Cinque and R. S. Kayne (eds.) The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3–69.
Kenstowicz, Michael (ed.). 2001. Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Laenzlinger, Christopher . 2004. The feature-based theory of adverb syntax. In J. R. Austin, S. Engelberg and G. Rauh (eds.) Adverbials. The interplay between meaning, context and syntactic structure. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 205–252.
Landau, Barbara, Linda Smith and Susan Jones. 1988. The importance of shape in early lexical learning. Cognitive Development 3. 299–321.
Lasnik, Howard . 1999. Minimalist analysis. Cambridge, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.
Lebeaux, David . 1988. Language acquisition and the form of grammar. Doctoral dissertation. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Medeiros, David . 2011. Economy of command. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona.
Muysken, Pieter . 2008. Functional categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pesetsky, David and Esther Torrego. 2001. T-to-C movement: Causes and consequences. In Kenstowicz (2001. 355–427).
Pesetsky, David and Esther Torrego. 2004. Tense, case, and the nature of syntactic categories. In J. Guéron and J. Lecarme (eds.) The syntax of time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 495–538.
Pesetsky, David and Esther Torrego. 2007. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In S. Karimi, V. Samiian and W. K. Wilkins (eds.) Phrasal and clausal architecture. Syntactic derivation and interpretation. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 262–294.
Pollock, Jean-Yves . 1989. Verb movemet, universal grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 365–424.
Radford, Andrew . 2000. Children in search of perfection: Towards a minimalist model of language acquisition. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 34. 57–74.
Richards, Marc . 2008. Two kinds of variation in a minimalist system. Varieties of competition. In F. Heck, G. Müller and J. Trommer (eds.) Linguistische Arbeits Berichte 87. Leipzig: Universität Leipzig. 133–162.
Rizzi, Luigi . 1990. Relativized minimality. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann . 2011. Conditions on argument drop. Linguistic Inquiry 42. 267–304.
Slobodchikoff, Con . 2010. Alarm calls in birds and mammals. In M. D. Breed and J. Moore (eds.) Encyclopedia of animal behavior. Volume 1. London: Academic Press/Elsevier. 40–43.
Travis, Lisa . 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Doctoral dissertation. MIT.
Visser, Frederikus Theodorus . 1963–1973. An historical syntax of the English language. 3 volumes. Leiden: Brill.
Warner, Anthony . 1985. The structuring of English auxiliaries. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Warner, Anthony R . 1993. English auxiliaries. Structure and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zagona, Karen . 2007. Some effects of aspect on tense construal. Lingua 117. 464–502.