THEORY (WAS: RE: Non-explanations

Jesse:
> I personally think that PP is a wonderful theory, at least in its
> underlying assumptions.  The form that the theory has taken so far isn't
> yet satisfactory, but they seem to be moving in the right direction and
> some really good ideas have been proposed.  The theory does exactly
> what a good theory should--it accounts for (almost) all of the relevant
> data, and predicts that all languages will share some features and no
> languages will have other features.  I'm sure others on the list feel
> differently, though.
By the standard of other people on this list I'm relatively well-disposed
to P&P, but the fact is that if it true that it accounts for (almost)
all of the relevant data (and it probably doesn't), it does so only
by defining 99% of data as irrelevant. For example, take any English
text and for 999 sentences out of a thousand, P&P will have no analysis
for it.

P&P aims to build a theory of Universal Grammar. It holds that languages
are formed from core, UG, properties and from peripheral, language-
specific properties. 99% of a language is in the periphery.

--And.