>That being said, the minimalist program of Chomsky lead to nowhere, because just like programming, it found edge case after edge case, reducing it further and further, until there was no program anymore that resembled a real theory
As someone who has worked in linguistics, I don't really see what you're talking about. Minimalism is not full of exceptions (please elaborate on a specific example if you have one). Minimalism was created to make the old theory, Government and Binding, simpler.
Yes, and the project can be criticised by reducing until there's no value anymore. Well known instances of this process:
- Predicate Fronting in Free Relatives: In sentences like “What John saw was a surprise,” labeling the fronted predicate is not without problems, Merge doesn’t yield a clear head.
- Optional Verb Movement in Persian: Yes-no questions where verbs can optionally move (e.g., “Did you go?” vs. “You went?”) messes up feature-checking’s binary mode.
- Non-Matching Free Relatives with Pied-Piping: Structures like “In whichever city you live, you’ll find culture” mess up standard labeling, needs extra stipulations.
- Some Subjects in Finnish: Nominative vs. non-nominative subjects (e.g., “Minua kylmä” [me-ACC cold]) complicate that Minimalist case assignment.