Round 9: Tossup 19

This thinker developed phase theory as part of a paradigm whose basic operations are Move and Merge. 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 developed the minimalist (-5[1])program to replace his earlier X-bar theory. Because children have a “poverty of the stimulus,” this thinker argued that people have an innate capacity to understand recursive language. This thinker’s book Syntactic Structures discusses (10[1])the sentence “colorless green (10[1])ideas (10[1])sleep furiously.” For 10 points, name this MIT linguist who (10[1])developed the theory of universal grammar. ■END■ (10[2])

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