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It has been pointed out in recent literature that there is a tension between minimalism and the cartographic approach put forth by Rizzi (1997) and Cinque (1999). While minimalism argues for a minimal role of UG, the cartographic model assumes a very rich system of features, organized in one rich functional hierarchy. An oft‐cited example is the following, which is Cinque's (1999, p. 106) proposal for a universal sequence of functional heads that host adverbials in their specifiers. The lexical items here are intended as examples of each category, and there is an Italian example (tutto) because there is no English example of this category.

1 (24) [frankly Moodspeech act [ luckily Moodevaluative [allegedly Moodevidential[probably Modepistemic [once T(Past) [then T(Future) [perhaps Moodirrealis [necessarily Modnecessity [possibly Modpossibility [usually Asphabitual [again Asprepetitive(I) [often Aspfrequentative(I) [intentionally Modvolitional [quickly Aspcelerative(I) [already T(Anterior) [no longer Aspterminative [still Aspcontinuative [always Aspperfect(?) [just Aspretrospective [soon Aspproximative [briefly Aspdurative [characteristically(?) Aspgeneric/progressive [almost Aspprospective [completely AspSgCompletive(I) [tutto AspPlCompletive [well Voice [fast/early Aspcelerative(II) [again Asprepetetive(II) [often Aspfrequentiative(II) [ completely AspSgCompletive(II) ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

In opposition to this view, typically minimalist syntacticians assume a rather poor functional architecture, e.g. only the projections illustrated in (25).

1 (25) [CP C [TP T [vP v [VP V ]]]]

The CP domain is the discourse domain where, e.g. topicalized constituents would move, as in John, Mary really likes. The TP domain typically hosts the (derived) subject and certain adverbs, wheras the vP and VP domains together are the domains for argument structure properties. However, frequently formulations such as the following can also be found: “C is shorthand for the region that Rizzi (1997) calls the ‘left periphery,’ possibly involving feature spread from fewer functional heads (maybe only one), […]” (Chomsky 2008, p. 9). This suggests that it is actually rather unclear what the size of the functional architecture across languages is, and how to capture the cross‐linguistic generalizations that can be found.

Ramchand and Svenonius (2014) engage with this controversy (see also Wiltschko 2014). Their argument is that a fine‐grained hierarchy of functional heads cannot be part of UG as it does not fit with a minimal UG whose origin needs to be evolutionarily plausible. While such hierarchies emerge in some languages, Ramchand and Svenonius argue that these emerge in a highly constrained way. Specifically, there is a core tripartition of the clause into three domains, V, T, and C (much like in (25)). Put differently, no language exists that has any different order, which is to say that V never appears above C in the hierarchy, and T never appears above C. In terms of why this hierarchy is the way it is, Ramchand and Svenonius argue that the tripartition has its source in extralinguistic cognition. As the authors state: “the most important source that we identify is grounded, we argue, in extralinguistic cognition: A cognitive proclivity to perceive experience in terms of events, situations, and propositions […]” (Ramchand and Svenonius 2014, p. 172). They continue by saying that “Granted, we have little direct evidence for these posited proclivities apart from the explananda themselves; but at present we do not know of plausible alternatives” (Ramchand and Svenonius 2014, p. 172). In years to come, it will be an important task to develop this approach further and better understand the relationship between the linguistic hierarchies and extralinguistic cognition.