Generative Grammar's Grave Foundational Errors

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73091-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 27, 176 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory

This work critically examines Noam Chomsky’s widely accepted ontological assumptions—now referred to as "biolinguistics"—and demonstrates that they are internally inconsistent. Notably, Chomsky himself has, at least once, acknowledged this issue. Additionally, we challenge a fundamental claim from Chomsky’s linguistic theories of the 1950s: that natural languages, particularly English, operate on constructive (proof-theoretic) grammars, also known as generative grammars. This assertion fails to account for numerous linguistic structures that fall outside its framework. Finally, we scrutinize Chomsky’s frequent assertion that "there is essentially only one language on Earth," revealing it to be more rhetorical than substantive. By exposing these foundational flaws, this work calls for a reassessment of key aspects of Chomskyan linguistics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

M Postal, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Über Autor(innen)

Paul M. Postal is a Ph.D. (Yale University, 1963) and a former professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a former professor of linguistics at the City University of New York, a former Research Staff Member at the IBM Research Center and a former visiting scholar at New York Univesrsity. He has published or edited eighteen books and dozens of articles on linguistic topics.