#legibility conditions

This is Chomsky’s formulation of the Strong Minimalist Thesis, i.e. the working hypothesis underlying the Minimalist Program.

Language = the narrow syntax, i.e. the computational system that builds structure using items from the lexicon. Structure is built using simple, yet powerful, operations.

The narrow syntax builds the structure and then the structure goes off to other systems with which the narrow syntax shares an interface. These other systems (of which Chomsky assumes there are two, one semantic, the other to do with production (speech or signs etc.)) are systems in their own right. This means they can only ‘see’ and deal with certain things. Therefore, the narrow syntax must produce something that an interface system can ‘read’. Since there are two interface systems, the narrow syntax must produce structures which are legible to both interface systems. The interface systems are different and so require different ‘legibility conditions’ to be met. The narrow syntax thus faces a problem of how to satisfy these conditions simultaneously. The hypothesis being followed in the Minimalist Program is that the narrow syntax that we have is an optimal solution to this problem – it meets the conditions of the interface systems in (one of) the best possible ways.

The Strong Minimalist Thesis is not a doctrine – it is a working hypothesis. It’s a bit like the assumption that natural phenomena can be modelled by mathematics – you assume an ideal, see how far the natural phenomenon matches the ideal, identify the areas where it does and does not, then return for more hypothesising. By using the Strong Minimalist Thesis as a working hypothesis linguists (of course this only applies to linguists who make the same assumptions as Chomsky) can try to establish:

(1)  The ‘legibility conditions’ of the interface systems.

(2)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(3)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does NOT meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(4)  Reasons for why language may be optimal/sub-optimal.

Hopefully that has shed some light on what is at first glance…and second, third, fourth glances etc…a pretty obscure little sentence.