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영어

This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of Generative Grammar and understand the Minimalist Program advanced by Chomsky(1995), with specific focus on the concept of minimization. In particular, this paper introduces the philosophical and theoretical background of Generative Grammar and presents the core concepts of syntactic theories existing under the Generative Grammar framework. It also discusses which aspects of each theory have been changed to achieve minimality. Since minimization revisions had already been made to the Standard Theory, the Extended Standard Theory, and the Government and Binding Theory, this paper concludes that the Minimalist Program is not completely different from other theories but rather an extension of them, which particularly emphasizes the economics and minimality of theory.