Genuine explanation

Abstract

Abstract Explanation is advanced with greater simplicity and elimination of stipulations. For language, a genuine explanation must satisfy conditions that appear contradictory: learnability, which appears to require rich innate endowment; evolvability, which requires simple endowment; coverage of widely varying languages. There are prospects for resolution of the conundrum within the minimalist program, which seeks to account for phenomena of language within the narrow bounds of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT). SMT has a disciplinary function, restricting the means for description to general principles of computational efficiency, with as few language-specific assumptions as empirical conditions allow. SMT also has an enabling function, offering an explanation for why certain linguistic modules exist at all. This chapter explores these questions in a variety of areas.