Optimality Theory and the Minimalist Program

The Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000) and Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) are not alternative theories logically inconsistent with each other. Optimality Theory is a theory of how universal constraints of grammar interact (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Grimshaw 2005). Minimalism, as Chomsky notes (2000:41), is a research program –not a theory– investigating to what extent the language faculty provides an optimal design for the satisfaction of conditions at the interface with the sensory-motor system (PF) and the system of thought (LF). It is thus possible to pursue an OT-perspective of human grammar while maintaining minimalist goals, a fact highlighted by many contributors to the DEAL 2005 conference at ZAS (Berlin) on the relation between OT and Minimalism and also explicitly pointed out by Chomsky (2000:141). In this paper I argue that an OT-approach to grammar is actually essential to minimalist investigations, because it dramatically widens the set of linguistic properties potentially reducible to interface conditions while at the same time dispensing with interface-external language specific provisos. The discussion will hopefully also dispel some common misconceptions about OT.