#generative linguistics

[therussianmajor]

*is trained in Chomskian/generative linguistics but works with indigenous languages so is very aware how shit his theories are*

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

[jdvancefreefeetpics]

hot take: Generative linguists need to get over themselves. for example:

“Generative linguistics assumes that once a speaker has reached ultimate attainment, his linguistic knowledge is set and stable.” I’m assuming they mean in the absence of pathology.

But how far up your own ass does your head have to be to ignore all the data the proves otherwise? Like, they’ll say you can lose your language, but then you need some input and it’s back. Like, bitch, that works for L2 learners as well.

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

I made a video on the history of modern linguistics and it was really fun! You watch, yes?

[transliterations]

The Linguistics Wars is a colloquial term for a protracted academic dispute in American generative linguistics, stemming from a falling-out between Noam Chomsky and some of his early students and colleagues, which took place mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. Linguists such as Paul Postal, "Haj" Ross, George Lakoff, and James McCawley—self-dubbed the "four horsemen of the Apocalypse"—proposed an alternative theory of generative semantics, which essentially flipped Chomsky's theory on its head by focusing on semantics rather than grammar as the basis of Chomsky's concept of deep structure.

Wikipedia, The Linguistics Wars. There's a book on this, too, that I now want to buy.

We're not learning about generative linguistics, and I don't know what this is referring to, really - I happened on this today, during one of my lectures when I was Googling one of the terms the lecturer had used, and I just. What.

"—self-dubbed the "four horsemen of the Apocalypse"—"?

[me-ne-vado]