Park Sung-Hyuk. 1996. On the Meaning of "minimization" in the Minimalist Program. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 9: 57-76. In the minimalist program (MP) of Chomsky (1993; 1995a; 1995b; 1996), it is assumed that a particularly simple design for language would take the two interface levels, PF and LF, to be the only levels, since only these two interface levels seem to be conceptually necessary. Under minimalist assumptions, the linguistic expressions are the optimal realizations of the interface conditions, where "optimality" is determined by the economy conditions of UG. Then, the minimalist program can be defined as a programmatic approach to language study that takes a linguistic expression to be nothing other than a formal object that satisfies the interface conditions in the optimal way. The most remarkable property of the MP is its explicit commitment to explanation through the distinctive method of minimization. Its ultimate goal, which is to reduce grammatical constructs to bare essentials, is claimed to be reached through the following minimizations, among others: (a) minimization of representations and levels of representations and (b) minimization of computational operations and procedure, which further leads to the minimization of computational complexity. Therefore, minimization means economization and optimization. However, minimization may not be interpreted as minimizing to zero (or null) but as minimizing to bare essentials, whose justification is based on conceptual necessity.

• 박승혁 | Sung Hyuk Park