Minimalism in Morphological Theories

This chapter reviews the main theories and proposals that in current debates have received a substantial influence from the so-called Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). This research program has been reflected in different types of morphological theories through three main properties: (i) a change in focus from the internal rules of combination of heads to the interface properties of morphological structures and the influence that third factor considerations have on them; (ii) a trend to derive, rather than to postulate as a lexical property, as many properties of morphological objects as possible, and (iii) a trend to remove from the computational system some classical morphological properties, such as agreement, in order to associate them to the externalization component of grammar.