Re: X-Bar Theory

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, julien eychenne wrote:

> Just keep
> in mind that this theory has been given up,
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Generative Grammar is still very
widely practiced. X-bar theory as you described it is no longer in use,
but that is because it has been substantially modified, particularly by
Chomsky himself. (Bare Phrase Structure contains many of the properties of
X-bar theory, but with a whole bunch of the ad hoc stipulations removed
[new ones were introduced of course, but there are less of them].)

> mainly because it is too
> powerful (even if the theory was strongly constrainted, by restricting
> transformations to movement operations),


> and it doesn't deal with
> semantics (according to Chomsky, syntax is the core of the grammatical
> theory), or at least in satisfying way.
One of Chomsky's original arguments was that syntax and semantics had to
be seperated to some degree. His famous example was "Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously". There is nothing wrong with this sentence syntactically,
it just doesn't have a coherent meaning.

He has retracted from that position to a fair amount in recent years.
According to a former-roommate of mine who is one of Chomsky's current
students, he now believes there is very little difference between syntax
and semantics. This is becoming a very prominent view among Generative
Gramamrians, though there is as of yet no concensous on how this should be
incorporated into existing theory.

> read some more specific stuff. But do not try to read Chomsky : it is
> borring, hard and linguist-oriented.
Amen to that. He's an awful writer.

Marcus