Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Transformational Grammar as a Theory of Language Acquisition: A Study in the Empirical Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of Contemporary Lingu

Transformational Grammar as a Theory of Language Acquisition: A Study in the Empirical Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of Contemporary Lingu

Derwing, Bruce L.

Paperback

Series: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Book 10

Grammar & StyleLinguistics

ISBN10: 0521097983
ISBN13: 9780521097987
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: Jun 21 1973
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The revolution in linguistic thought associated with the name of Professor Noam Chomsky centres on the theory of transformational generation, especially in grammar. This book subjects the main theory and some of its applications to a searching critique. It finds the theory in some places circular, in general descriptively inadequate, but above all aprioristic and dangerously unempirical. Professor Derwing writes as a linguist particularly interested in the psychology of language acquisition, and conscious that the TGG model starts from assumptions about the mind and linguistic universals which dictate the form and the consequences of the argument. They strike Professor Derwing as arbitrary and merely formal, and as contradicting basic scientific mental habits. In brief, Professor Derwing disputes that TGG exemplifies proper empirical scientific inquiry; that something like a TGG is part of the output of normal language acquisition; or that TGG provides a valid heuristic for psychological investigation. He argues therefore for a more experimental approach if we are actually to discover how language is acquired.

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