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LINGUISTIC THEORY in AMERICA Second Edition LINGUISTIC THEORY IN AMERICA Second Edition Frederick J. Newmeyer DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SEATTLE, WASHINGTON ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers San Diego New York Berkeley Boston London Sydney Tokyo Toronto COPYRIGHT © 1986 BY ACADEMIC PRESS. INC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS. ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL. INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING. OR ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. 1250 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, California 92101 United Kingdom Edition published bx ACADEMIC PRESS INC. (LONDON) LTD. 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Newmeyer, Frederick J. Linguistic theory in America. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Generative grammar-History. 2. Linguistics- United States-History. I. Title. P158.N4 1986 415 86-10802 ISBN 0-12-517151-X (hardcover) (alk. paper) ISBN 0-12-517152-8 (paperback) (alk. paper) PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 88 89 90 91 92 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Preface to the Second Edition Though I had no way of knowing it at the time, I wrote the first edition of Linguistic Theory in America during the only major lull in syntactic research be• tween the mid 1950s and the present. As I was preparing the book in the late 1970s, it had become unquestionably clear that generative semantics had collapsed, yet no other worked-out alternative to the Extended Standard Theory had presented itself as a pole of opposition to it. At the same time, the EST itself, which was bogged down in its "Filters and Control" phase, seemed too unappealing to too many linguists to be able to benefit to any great extent from its lack of competition. This lull afforded me a golden opportunity to undertake a quarter-century retrospective without having to worry that the contents of the next issue of Linguistic Inquiry might render obsolete my overview of current work in the field. But within months after the appearance of the first edition, the theories of govern• ment-binding, generalized phrase structure grammar, and lexical-functional gram• mar were introduced. The resultant explosion in work devoted to syntactic theory exceeded anything the field had ever seen, surpassing even the late 1960s boom that followed the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. More has been pub• lished in syntactic theory and analysis in the past half-dozen years than the previous two dozen. I think that the dust has settled sufficiently on the new frameworks to make the time right for a second edition providing an account of their origins and develop• ment; I have therefore devoted most of the last chapter to outlining these exciting recent trends in syntax. I have restructured the other chapters as well, most impor• tantly by adding a section on morphology and greatly expanding the discussion of work in pragmatics. In order to keep the book to roughly the same length, I ix X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION truncated the possibly overly detailed account of the rise of abstract syntax and generative semantics in the late 1960s. I would like to acknowledge the helpful advice I received from a number of persons, in particular Ron Amundson, A very Andrews, Noam Chomsky, Donald Foss, John Fought, Morris Halle, Laurence Horn, James McCawley, Donna Jo Napoli, Ivan Sag, Karl Teeter, and Alice ter Meulen. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Timothy Sto well, Pauline Jacobson, and Annie Zaenen, who read and commented on portions of the new material. Preface to the First Edition In this book I attempt to document the origins, birth, and development of the theory of transformational generative grammar. Despite the fact that it is now 25 years since Noam Chomsky completed his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, what I have written is, to my knowledge, the only work that combines a comprehensive account of the forging of modern linguistic theory with a detailed elaboration and explanation of its devel• opment. I have not intended the book to be an introduction to linguistics, and it cannot substitute for one. A minimal understanding of modern lin• guistic theory is presupposed throughout. Fortunately, there is no dearth of texts in print whose purpose is to acquaint the reader with fundamentals of theory. To my mind, the best is Neil Smith and Deirdre Wilson's lucid Modern Linguistics: The Results of Chomsky's Revolution, which I can recommend without reservation to the beginning student and advanced scholar alike. To keep this book to a manageable size, I have had to slight develop• ments in generative phonology. In fact, there is no discussion of develop• ments in phonology since the early 1960s. My omission is compensated for in part by the existence of Alan Sommersteins Modern Phonology, which covers the recent history of phonology in some detail. The reader may be puzzled by the "in America" in the title. Why should the discussion of a scientific theory be constrained by a national boundary? In part this is a reflection of the immaturity of our science: It is a sad commentary on the state of the field that we can still talk realistically of "American linguistics," "French linguistics," and "Soviet linguistics." XI xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION But more positively, my choice of title was dictated by the fact that trans• formational grammar HAS begun to internationalize; wkin America" was necessary lest I appear to be slighting recent work of theoretical importance in Japanese, Finnish, Arabic, and other languages unknown to me. Since there is no such thing as totally unbiased historiography, it would be Utopian to imagine that an author could be free from background as• sumptions or beliefs that might color his or her perception of events. As a PARTICIPANT (however noncentral) in the history I describe, I might be particularly open to charges of bias. However, I feel that my participation has given me a real advantage: It has permitted me an inside view of the field that would be denied to the more displaced historian. I hope that the reader will find this to be to the book's advantage. For those who may be interested in my background, I have been in linguistics since 1965, the year I received a B.A. in geology from the University of Rochester. Fortunately, a senior year course taught by the late William A. Coates, called 'The Languages of the World," so intrigued me that I gave up any dreams I may have harbored of a career in petroleum engineering (or worse). I received a Master's in linguistics from Rochester the following year and would have stayed there longer had I not attended Chomsky's lectures at the LSA Institute at UCLA in the summer of 1966. They convinced me to transfer as soon as possible to a transformational grammar-oriented department. In 1967 I was admitted to the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois, where I studied syntax with Robert B. Lees, Arnold Zwicky, and Michael Geis, and phonology with Theodore Lightner. My last year of graduate work was spent as a guest at MIT. After receiving a Ph.D. from Illinois in 1969, I was hired by the University of Washington, where I have been teaching ever since, with the exception of leave time spent at the University of Edinburgh, Wayne State University, and the University of London. My earliest theoretical commitment was to generative semantics, and I contributed several uninfluential publications in defense of a deep-struc• tureless model of grammar (1970, 1971, 1975). By 1972 or 1973, I began to have serious reservations about the direction generative semantics was taking. Since then, I have identified myself loosely as an interpretivist, without committing myself to any one particular model in that framework. Some who know me as a Marxist may be surprised and, perhaps, disappointed that there is no obvious "Marxist analysis" given to the events I describe. For this I make no apology. There is simply no evidence that language structure (outside of limited aspects of the lexicon) is, in the Marxist sense, a superstructural phenomenon. Even if it were, however, it seems inconceivable that events taking place in such a short period of time and involving so few, so sociologically homogeneous, participants could lend themselves to such an analysis. Those interested in my views on the relationship between Marxist theory and linguistic theory may find useful Preface to the First Edition xiii my review of Rossi-Landi's Linguistics and Economics, published in Lan• guage in 1977. A final word on chronology. Throughout the text, I cite books and articles by the year of their first publication, not by the year that they were written. Since publishing delays are uneven, this has resulted in some cases in replies appearing to be older than the publications to which they are addressed and in other possibly confusing aspects of dating. When delays are extreme or when the time lag is significant in some respect, the year of writing (in parentheses) appears after the year of publication in the reference list. Chapter 1 The State of American Linguistics in the Mid 1950s 1.1. A PERIOD OF OPTIMISM If American linguistics was in a state of crisis in the mid 1950s, few of its practi• tioners seemed aware of it. Einar Haugen ( 1951 ), in his overview of the field, wrote that "American linguistics is today in a more flourishing state than at any time since the founding of the Republic" (p. 211).
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