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Building on AS.050.320, this course explores and compares generative syntactic theories developed over the past 35 years since the 1990s, with a particular focus on those couched within the Minimalist Program. We will use the Government and Binding theory (familiar from AS.050.320) as a useful first benchmark that minimalist theories are routinely trying to meet or beat in terms of empirical coverage. The main theoretical goal of this course is to show how different proposals to reduce the number of syntactic primitives reshape the architecture of grammar, leading to new theoretical developments, which in turn point to new empirical domains of inquiry. We will see how simplifying our theoretical models in a principled way leads to deeper generalizations about the structure of language. On the practical side, this course is designed to teach you syntactic argumentation. Developing the ability to evaluate and produce logically valid and well-articulated arguments is foundational for understanding and engaging with the current theoretical syntactic literature. A non-exhaustive list of topics for this course is as follows: the T-model and the demolition of d-structure and s-structure, alternative views of phrase structure (such as Bare Phrase Structure and Labeling), theories of phrasal movement (including copy theory and multidominance), theoretical approaches to syntactic well-formedness (e.g., Barriers and Harmonic Grammar), locality and minimality effects (e.g., phases and Relativized Minimality) , binding and anaphora, linearization and the syntax-prosody interface, and derivational economy and externalization.