Facta Universitatis Series: Linguistics and Literature (Dec 2007)
HALF A CENTURY OF GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS – WHAT HAS THE PARADIGM GIVEN TO SOCIAL SCIENCE?
Abstract
This paper aims to join marking the fiftieth anniversary of generativelinguistics by focusing on some principal contributions the field has given to science in general. In the first part of the paper, I discuss the issue of 'modern linguistics', as it is widely taught in local universities, and examine the importance of the generative school in this notion of modernity. In the second part, I analyze the fundamental conceptions and epistemological framework of this school in the study of language, pinpointing fifteen legacies it seems to have already left to human thought, as follows: breakup withbehaviourism; reinstitution of the hypothetico-deductive method; elaboration of the mind-body issue; revival of the thesis that the only true reality is that of the human mind; reintroduction and extension of the term 'cognitive'; participation in rapidterminological changes in the social sciences; return to the problem of language universals with a strong focus on the genetic origins of language faculty; extended usage of the term 'grammar'; contribution to the deletion of clear boundaries between the natural and social sciences, especially in psychology; rise of reductionism in formalsciences; return to the once forgotten Gestalt principles of perception; radical breakup between lexical and sentence semantics; neo-Darwinism; rise of neuroscience; impetus to the foundation of new fields, often multidisciplinary ones. Reconciliation of cognitiveand generative linguistics in the future is anticipated.
