Editing Syntactic category (section)

==Labels in the Minimalist Program==
Early research suggested shifting away from the use of labelling, as they were considered to be non-optimal for the analysis of syntactic structure, and should therefore be eliminated.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Collins|first1=Chris|title=Eliminating Labels |journal=In Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program|date=2002 |pages=33–49}}</ref> Collins (2002) argued that, although labels such as Noun, Pronoun, Adjective and the like were unavoidable and undoubtedly useful for categorizing syntactic items, providing labels for the projections of those items, was not useful and was, in fact, detrimental to structural analysis, since there were disagreements and discussions about how exactly to label these projections. The labeling of projections such as Noun Phrases (NP), Verb Phrases (VP), and others have since been a topic of discussion amongst syntacticians, who have since then been working on labelling algorithms to solve the very problem brought up by Collins. 

In line with both [[Phrase structure grammar|Phrase Structure Rules]] and [[X-bar theory]], syntactic labelling plays an important role within Chomsky's [[Minimalist program|Minimalist Program (MP)]]. Chomsky first developed the MP by means of creating a theoretical framework for generative grammar that can be applied universally among all languages. In contrast to Phrase Structure Rules and X-bar theory, many of the research and proposed theories done on labels are fairly recent and still ongoing.