AW: "Generative" serves them right

[Carl Pollard]

>
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.
>>

That's very civil of you, Tibor. Are you sure you're feeling quite
well today?  A little too much jalapeno in the hashbrowns, perhaps?

>
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.
>>

Hey, we all make mistakes in citation. Fortunately peer review and copyediting
catch a lot of them.

>
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.
>>

You have to have an explicit theory in order to prove it wrong. You can't
prove that a RERSEARCH PROGRAM makes wrong predictions.

>
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.
>>

Shades of Lees and Klima 1963, Ross, Langacker, etc.  I thought the
Rays Dougherty and Jackendoff drove the stake through the heart of
pronominalization in the late 60's. Betcha if you dust off their
arguments, and Bach's and Lasnik's and Culicover's, your paper will be
half written already ...

`Thus all things
proceed in a circle, and thus the empire is maintained' -- E. Pound.

>
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).
>>
As I understand it, MP is a program, not a theory. Do you mean there
is an explicit theory within the MP that HL refuted?

>
On the other hand, Shalom has reported that Chomsky publicly accepted
their criticism as valid.
>>

That would be interesting to read, if available.

Cheers,

Carl