Editing Minimalist program (section)

=== Technical innovations ===
The exploration of minimalist questions has led to several radical changes in the technical apparatus of transformational generative grammatical theory. Some of the most important are:<ref>For some conceptual and empirical advantages of the MP over the traditional view see: Bošković, Željko. 1994. D-Structure, Θ-Criterion, and Movement into Θ-Positions. Linguistic Analysis 24: 247–286, and for more detailed discussions Bošković, Željko and Howard Lasnik (eds). 2006. ''Minimalist Syntax: The Essential Readings''. Malden, MA: Blackwell.</ref>
*the elimination of the distinction between [[deep structure and surface structure]] in favour of a '''derivational approach'''
*the elimination of [[X-bar theory]] in favour of '''bare phrase structure''' (see below)
*the elimination of indexation in favour of Move or Agree
*the elimination of the notion of [[Government (linguistics)|government]] in favour of feature-checking
*the idea that '''feature-checking'''—which matches interpretable and uninterpretable features, and subsequently deletes the latter—might be responsible for all structure-building operations, including Merge, Move, and Agree (see below)
*the idea that syntactic derivations proceed by clearly delineated stages called "'''phases'''" (see below)
*the specification that there are exactly '''two points where syntax interacts with other components''': a "spell-out" point between syntax and the interface with phonetic form (PF), and an additional point of interaction with logical form (LF)