Notes on Minimalism
Unitary Grammatical Function Hypothesis
The Unitary Grammatical Function Hypothesis claims that the same functions which appear in syntax (inflectional morphology) also determine the functional L-derivations. This is accomplished by investing deep structures with these functions before lexical insertion, then allowing both L-derivation and I-derivation to operate on them, as described in section 6 of the main text. LMBM assumes that a deep, categorial component is inevitable and that it is not a strictly syntactic component but rather a general grammatical component which feeds both the lexicon and syntax. Details are available in chapter 13 of Beard (1995). Those functions are listed in detail here here. They provide strong constraints on the semantics of inflectional and lexical morphology.