Overview

This selection of papers opposes what has been the dominant linguistic theory in Western academies for the past fifty years. Deriving initially from the structuralist ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, the theory was proposed by Noam Chomsky as transformational generative grammar. Though it proved hugely influential and has gone through many modifications and revisions, J. Paul N. Cant argues that it is based on a number of false assumptions, which he terms Chomsky's 'sleights of mind', and on much epistemological confusion. Further, in elaborating the theory, Chomsky and his followers often failed to observe the rigour and disciplines of science. Cant therefore rejects de Saussurean structuralism and Chomsky's generative grammar and proposes a radical re-establishing of linguistic theory based on empirical realilty, the capting/speaking distinction, neurone firing programs, naming and indicating associations, the phonemic distinction, indivisible word units, and word types and experience types. He also analyses the phenomenon of word-class metaphorising and its misleading role in much philosophical and theoretical linguistic discourse.

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9781782224129

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