On the Format and Locus of Parameters: The Role of Morphosyntactic Features.

In this article, I will start with a quick survey of the historical development of the notion of parameter by referring to the two key notions of the format and locus of parameters across different successive models of comparative generative grammar. Then I will address the question of how and where parameters are expressed within current minimalist models. I will make explicit a conception of parameters as morphosyntactic features expressed on functional heads and providing explicit instructions for the triggering of syntactic operations. This will lead to introducing a typology of features, hence of parameters, on the basis of the operations they trigger: there are merge parameters, operating on structure building, movement parameters, triggering different kinds of movement, and spell-out parameters, giving instructions on the syntactic positions that are or are not pronounced