This chapter reviews all the assumptions deployed in Chapters 2–5 and indicates the specific roles played in the derivation of the requisite grammatical effects discussed therein. Bringing all the assumptions together in one place and showing what specific role they play in the derivations should allow dissenters to pick and choose what parts of the proposal they would like to keep and what to dump and the price of each move.

This chapter argues that labeling is the key linguistically bespoke operation. I trace the recursive property of Gs to the fact that they employ labels. The chapter argues that labels are the device for taking an expression in the range of Merge and putting it into the domain of Merge. Thus labels close Merge in the domain of the lexical atoms. So closing the operation effectively delivers a recursive system of unbounded hierarchy. The chapter also critically reviews some arguments for the simplicity of Merge based on the role it is intended to play in explaining the evolution of language. I dispute this and argue that what needs explanation is something quite different: What is the source of the power to form inductive definitions? Recursion is a consequence of closure afforded by labels.

This chapter discusses A’-chain binding effects, in particular pronominalization, resumption and long-distance anaphora. If the EMH/FPG is correct, these dependencies must be mediated by I-merge. A-chains are not expansive enough to cover such cases, so the chapter proposes that these dependencies live on A’-chains, or, more accurately, improper chains involving at least one A’-link. The virtues of the proposal are discussed. So too is the necessity of some such approach if we adopt a movement theory of reflexivization.

This chapter is based on earlier work on Obligatory Control and Reflexivization in terms of movement. The point here is not to rehash the arguments for movement approaches to control and reflexive binding but to illustrate how movement approaches to construal are consequences of the EMH incorporating the FPG. The EMH/FPG implies that the non-local relation between an antecedent and Obligatory Control PRO (OCPRO) and a reflexive must be mediated by I-merge. In other words, descriptively speaking, such construal relations must “live on” A-chains. As this is effectively what movement theories of OC and Reflexivization have argued, and as the EMH/FPG implies movement theories of both, insofar as such movement theories are successful, to that extent they support the encompassing EMH/FPG theory. I review some arguments showing that movement plausibly underlies such dependencies. However, the discussion is not exhaustive; it is mainly illustrative. The reader is referred to the considerable literature on both topics for the full-scale defense of these movement approaches.

This chapter argues for adding labeling to the combination operation, thereby returning to an earlier conception of Merge. The main motivation for this is that it allows one to strengthen the Merge Hypothesis by having Merge extend to all grammatical dependencies, not just the eight reviewed in Chapter 2. I dub this the Extended Merge Hypothesis (EMH). The core principle of the EMH is the Fundamental Principle of Grammar (FPG). FPG states that all grammatical dependencies must be Merge mediated. For example, selection, subcategorization, control, binding, case, etc. must all be licensed under Merge.

This chapter reviews features of FL that cannot be reduced to properties of Merge and their standing in a Merge-based account. These include the modularity of FL, the ECP, the Y-model, subjacency/barriers/phase theories of bounding, relativized minimality, and Wh-in-situ constructions.

The chapter locates the Minimalist Program (MP) in the wider context of the Generative Program (GP). It argues that MP is the next logical step for GP to take given the relative success of two prior projects: (i) explaining how linguistic creativity (the capacity to use and understand an unbounded number of different hierarchically organized linguistic objects) is possible and (ii) explaining how linguistic flexibility (the human meta-capacity to acquire the grammatical recursive procedures that undergird linguistic creativity) is possible. The argument is that given that we (roughly) understand what kinds of recursive procedures natural language grammars (Gs) contain, and given that we (roughly) understand key aspects of the fine structure of the faculty of language (FL), MP asks the obvious next question of why FL has the particular structure it has.

The book argues that the research program of modern Generative Grammar (GG) has been a resounding success. More particularly, it argues that the most current stage of this more general enterprise, the Minimalist Program (MP), has provided profound insights into the structure of the faculty of language (FL). The book outlines the central Minimalist thesis (the Merge Hypothesis) and suggests ways of extending its explanatory reach.

This chapter identifies the central theoretical-empirical claim of MP, the Merge Hypothesis (MH). It rehearses the motivations for a simple combination operation that takes two objects, combines them in the simplest way possible, and treats the combination so constructed as capable of further combination. I review and explicate the claim that the simplest combination operation would do no more than combine its inputs. This means that the combination operation should not impose a serial order on what it combines, nor should it change the properties of what it combines in any way (as either would involve more than “mere” combination). So construing “simplicity” implies the No Tampering Condition (a principle that forbids changing the structures of the elements combined) and supports the idea that expressions so formed have set-like structure. I further provide a more technical specification of the combination operation by specifying its inductive definition. I then show how to derive a bunch of recognized properties of natural language Gs from this Merge conception of combination and review eight of these, again largely following and elaborating Chomsky’s earlier suggestions.

This chapter rounds off the book by recapitulating the argument that the research program of modern Generative Grammar has provided profound insights into the structure of the faculty of language (FL) to explain both linguistic creativity and linguistic flexibility. The proposal is that the Generative enterprise has allowed us to examine what kinds of recursive procedures natural language grammars contain, and to understand key aspects of the fine structure of FL. The Minimalist Program then asks the obvious next question of why FL has the particular structure Generativists discovered it to have. It is argued that the central Minimalist thesis, the Merge Hypothesis (MH), explains how linguistic creativity is the product of a very simple combinatoric operation (i.e. Merge), and then showed how the MH can be extended (into the EMH) by the addition of labels to cover most of the generalizations discovered in the past sixty years of Generative research.