Chomskyan (R)evolutions

✍ Scribed by Douglas A. Kibbee

• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 501
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

It is not unusual for contemporary linguists to claim that “Modern Linguistics began in 1957” (with the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures). Some of the essays in Chomskyan (R)evolutions examine the sources, the nature and the extent of the theoretical changes Chomsky introduced in the 1950s. Other contributions explore the key concepts and disciplinary alliances that have evolved considerably over the past sixty years, such as the meanings given for “Universal Grammar”, the relationship of Chomskyan linguistics to other disciplines (Cognitive Science, Psychology, Evolutionary Biology), and the interactions between mainstream Chomskyan linguistics and other linguistic theories active in the late 20th century: Functionalism, Generative Semantics and Relational Grammar. The broad understanding of the recent history of linguistics points the way towards new directions and methods that linguistics can pursue in the future.

✦ Table of Contents

Table of contents......Page 8
Foreword and Acknowledgments......Page 12
Chomsky’s Atavistic Revolution (with a little help from his enemies)......Page 14
The equivocation of form and notation in generative grammar......Page 32
Chomsky’s paradigm......Page 56
Part I The young revolutionary (1950–1960)
......Page 86
"Scientific revolutions" and other kinds of regime change......Page 88
Noam and Zellig......Page 116
Chomsky 1951a and Chomsky 1951b......Page 182
Grammar and language in Syntactic Structures......Page 228
Part II The cognitive revolution
......Page 248
Chomsky’s other Revolution......Page 250
Chomsky between revolutions
......Page 278
Part III Evolutions
......Page 312
What do we talk about, when we talk about ‘universal grammar’, and how have we talked about it?......Page 314
Migrating propositions and the evolution of Generative Grammar......Page 328
Universalism and human difference in Chomskyan linguistics
......Page 350
The evolution of meaning and grammar......Page 366
Chomsky in search of a pedigree......Page 390
The "linguistic wars"
......Page 408
British empiricism and Transformational Grammar......Page 436
Historiography’s contribution to theoretical linguistics......Page 458
Name index......Page 486
Subject index
......Page 494
Index of Noam Chomsky's cited works
......Page 500