Reply to carnie from LLJ

[Borsley R D]

The problem with Andrew's explanation for the ignoring of Johnson and
Lappin is that it is not the only critical work that has been ignored. An
alternative explanation is that many minimalists think that the criticisms
will go unnoticed and the critics go away if they ignore them. There is
some evidence that they may be right. I frequently come across PhD
students working within Minimalism who are unaware that anyone has
questioned some Minimalist idea, and many critics do decide after a while
that it is not worth the effort. The ignoring of critical work goes
together with the use of terms like 'generative grammar' or 'generative
theory' to refer minimalism, which looks like a crude attempt to suggest
that there are no alternative approaches.

Bob Borsley


--
Prof. Robert D. Borsley
Department of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ, UK

rborsley at essex.ac.uk
tel: +44 1206 873762
fax: +44 1206 872198
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~rborsley