ON TNE NATURE OF THE EPP

Abstract

The EPP, though empirically well-motivated, has been ill-understood and has remained a stipulation in the study of generative grammar. This paper considers the EPP in the minimalist setting. I argue that labeling is not the answer to the EPP and claim, instead, that the EPP is reducible to externalization at the Sensory-Motor level. I show that the proposal can explain both problematic and unproblematic examples of the EPP under a labeling approach and has theoretically and empirically favorable implications. This paper endorses the language design hypothesized in the Minimalist Program, which assumes that language consists of Merge (the simplest computational operation) and other systems interacting with it.