Round 8: Tossup 19

This thinker developed phase theory as part of a paradigm whose basic operations are Move and Merge. (10[1])This thinker’s “normal form” can express context-free grammars, which are nested between context-sensitive and regular grammars in his namesake hierarchy. This thinker (10[1])developed the minimalist program to replace his earlier X-bar theory. Because children (10[1])have a “poverty of the stimulus,” this thinker argued (10[1])that people have an innate capacity to understand (10[1])recursive language. (10[1])This thinker’s book Syntactic Structures (10[1])discusses the sentence “colorless (10[1])green ideas (10[1])sleep furiously.” For 10 points, name this MIT linguist who developed the theory of universal grammar. ■END■

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