Introduction

In this introductory paper the editors develop arguments in favor of the idea that what appears as redundant in the model of human language faculty is justified first of all by empirical findings and by the supposed nature of language as a means of reading and symbolically representing 'reality'. The editors try to respond implicitly to criticisms that have arisen regarding some aspects of the cartographic theory and present the papers of the volume as a very solid bulk of empirical evidence in favor of a rich hierarchy of strictly ordered functional projections. Moreover, they represent both a challenge and a contribution to minimalism, as the 'other side' of the theory of grammar as an innate device, a side which needs to be integrated in a consistent, unitary model. The fact that at least some functional projections are ordered, or – said in another way – some features appear to be merged with an order that appears to be fixed throughout languages, is a solid generalization. This order – even if it were limited to a few projections - cannot be accounted for in a principled way (see also fn. 1). It is agreed among generative linguists that the Language Acquisition Device is innate, but a limit has never been put on the possible complexity – or richness – of this innate capacity.