Theoretical A‐grammatism: The Case for an Eliminativist Minimalism

Abstract This paper explores patterns of cross‐linguistic, intra‐linguistic and individual variation in the acceptability of sentences with extraction from islands, a classic object of attention of generative grammar. It asks which “competence” concept better fits the presented data. We contrast two alternative views: one that ascribes a multilingual competence to individual speakers, in the “rich competence” tradition of acquisition theory, and another one based on a “competence‐free” kind of model, which is framed as an instantiation of the minimalist approach to the language faculty. We conclude that the latter eliminativist approach is better suited to account for variation in the acceptability of island sentences.