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The anthropomorphosis of syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

J. Raymond Reid
J. Raymond Reid*
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Extract

This paper comprises some of the reactions of a psycholinguist to a book which has already attracted considerable critical attention: D. T. Langendoen’s The Study of Syntax: the Generative-Transformational Approach to the Structure of American English. These views are not essentially at variance with the theoretical and pedagogical criticisms of Sampson (1970), Householder (1971), or Chambers (1971), but rather complement and supplement them. The questions raised here are of a somewhat more fundamental nature in the context of linguistic inquiry, having to do with certain assumptions most formal linguists take for granted – assumptions concerning the validity of introspective data and the formalizability of presuppositions. In a sense, the present critique is a general indictment of some current trends in linguistics, but The Study of Syntax, in its eclectic attempt to epitomize them all, invites the brunt of the criticism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 18 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1974

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