AW: "Generative" serves them right

[Tibor Kiss]

Hi,

I fully agree to Ash, and again, I want to point out that my kind of
exclusive use of "generative" was an allusion to earlier e-mails on this
list.

I don't think that Chomsky can be cured in his style of citation, and also,
it is not necessary to get quoted by Chomsky. An alternative strand has been
followed by Bresnan/Gazdar et al. in the late 70s to around 1985: Beat them
by showing them that they are wrong, i.e. make provably wrong predictions.
Very little attempts have been made in this direction in recent years, an
exception being the work done by Lappin/Johnson.

In the meantime, we find a lot of work in the MP framework which is open to
discussion or criticism. For instance, I am preparing a discussion of
Hornstein's recent (and in my eyes strangely flawed) attempt to eliminate
binding theory in favour of movement and pronominalization. Lasnik
(2000:185) points out that MP cannot explain the ungrammaticality of '*John
left not.' and '*John not left' (believe it or not, it's true). Also (cf.
Lasnik 2000:182) the whole Pollock-contrast (embrasse souvent -- often
kisses) cannot be handled within Chapter 4 (Categories and Transformations,
Chomsky 1995).

Perhaps, Sergio or other guys don't get quoted by Chomsky if they tackle
these problems, but they presumably find their audience elsewhere. (On the
other hand, Shalom has reported that Chomsky publicly accepted their
criticism as valid.)

Best

Tibor



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Tibor Kiss -- Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum
+49-234-3225114 // +49-177-7468265 // +49-234-3214137 (fax)
You come here, you must think about minimalism