Round 7: 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 (-5[1])grammars, (10[1])which are nested between context-sensitive and regular grammars in his namesake (-5[1])hierarchy. This thinker (-5[1])developed (10[1])the minimalist program to replace his earlier X-bar theory. Because children have a “poverty of the stimulus,” this thinker (10[1])argued that people have an innate capacity to understand recursive language. (10[1]-5[1])This thinker’s book Syntactic Structures discusses the (10[1])sentence “colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” For 10 points, name this MIT linguist who developed the theory of universal grammar. ■END■ (10[3])

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