Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T11:22:49.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Failure of Generative Grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Maurice Gross
Maurice Gross*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique, Université de Paris VII
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An attempt to construct a generative grammar of French with a coverage comparable to that of traditional grammars has failed. A description has been arrived at in the course of this work, however; it is much more complex than expected, and turns out to be entirely taxonomic. This result calls into question the validity of the so-called theory of generative grammar.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 859 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Blakemore, Colin. 1977. Mechanics of the mind. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Boons, Jean-Paul. 1971. Métaphore et baisse de la redondance. Langue Française 11. 15–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boons, Jean-Paul, Guillet, A.; and Leclère, Ch. 1976a. La structure des phrases simples en français, I: les verbes intransitifs. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Boons, Jean-Paul, Guillet, A.; and Leclère, Ch. 1967b. La structure des phrases simples en français, II: quelques classes de verbes transitifs. (La structure des phrases simples en français, II: quelques classes de verbes transitifs) Paris: L.A.D.L.Google Scholar
Buck, Carl B. 1929. Words for world, earth and land, sun. Lg. 5.215–27.Google Scholar
Chapín, Paul G. 1967. On the syntax of word derivation in English. Bedford, MA: MITRE Corp.Google Scholar
Chevalier, Jean-Claude. 1968. Histoire de la syntaxe: naissance de la notion de complément. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1956. Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions in Information Theory, IT-2, 113–24.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1962. A transformational approach to syntax. Proceedings of the 3rd Texas Conference on Problems of Linguistic Analysis in English, ed. by Hill, Archibald A., 124–58. Austin: University of Texas Press. [Reprinted in The structure of language, ed. by Jerry Fodor & J. Katz, 211–45. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.].Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1964. Current issues in linguistic theory. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1971. Conditions on transformations. A Festschrift for Morris Halle, ed. by Anderson, Stephen R. & Kiparsky, Paul, 232–86. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1972. Language and mind. Enlarged edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1975. Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam, and Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam, and Schützenberger, M. P. 1963. The algebraic theory of context-free languages. Computer programming and formal systems, ed. by Braffort, P. & Hirschberg, D., 119–61. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Dreyer, J. L. E. 1906. History of the planetary systems from Thaïes to Kepler. Cambridge: University Press. [Reprinted as A history of astronomy from Thales to Kepler. New York: Dover, 1953.].Google Scholar
Elia, Annibale. 1978. Pour un lexique-grammaire de la langue italienne: les complétives objet. Lingvisticae Investigationes 2. 233–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaatone, David. 1978. Phonologie abstraite et phonologie concrète: à propos du h aspiré en français. Lingvisticae Investigationes 2. 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giry-Schneider, Jacqueline. 1978. Les nominalisations en français. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Gouet, Michel. 1976. On a certain class of circumstantial deletion rules. Linguistic Inquiry 7. 693–7.Google Scholar
Gross, Maurice. 1968. Grammaire transformationnelle du français: syntaxe du verbe. Paris: Larousse.Google Scholar
Gross, Maurice. 1972, Mathematical models in linguistics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gross, Maurice. 1974. Some remarks on syntax: acquisition of a first language. Problèmes actuels en psycholinguistique, Colloques du CNRS, 28–32. Paris.Google Scholar
Gross, Maurice. 1975. Méthodes en syntaxe. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Gross, Maurice. 1977. Grammaire transformationnelle du français: syntaxe du nom. Paris: Larousse.Google Scholar
Harman, Gilbert H. 1963. Generative grammars without transformation rules. Lg. 33.597–616.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1946. From morpheme to utterance. Lg. 22.161–83.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1951. Structural linguistics. Chicago: University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1952. Discourse analysis. Lg. 28.1–30.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1968. Mathematical structures of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1970. The two systems of grammar: report and paraphrase. In his Papers in structural and transformational linguistics, 612–92. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1976. Notes du cours de syntaxe. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Householder, Fred XV., Jr., et al. 1964-65. Reports, Linguistics Research Project. Bloomington: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1909. A Modern English grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kuroda, S.-Y. 1968. English relativization and certain related problems. Lg. 44.244–66.Google Scholar
Labelle, Jacques. 1974. Études de constructions avec opérateur avoir. Doctoral thesis, L.A.D.L., University of Paris VIII.Google Scholar
Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The methodology of scientific research programmes. Philosophical papers, vol. 1, ed. by Worrall, John and Currie, Gregory. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Lightner, Theodore M. 1972. Problems in the theory of phonology. Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
Lightner, Theodore M. 1975. On the role of derivational morphology in generative grammar. Lg. 51.617–38.Google Scholar
Meunier, Annie. 1977. Sur les bases syntaxiques de la morphologie dérivationnelle. Lingvisticae Investigationes 1. 287–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Négroni-Peyre, Dominique de. 1978. Nominalization par être en et réflexivation. Lingvisticae Investigationes 2. 127–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, Hermann. 1886. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, 2nd ed. Halle. [Translated into English by H. A. Strong. London: Longmans Green, 1891.].Google Scholar
Peters, Stanley P., and Ritchie, R. W. 1973. On the generative power of transformational grammars. Information Sciences 6. 49–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, Karl R. 1963. Conjectures and refutations. 3rd ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul. 1974. On Raising. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul. 1977. Antipassive in French. Lingvisticae Investigationes 1. 333–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poutsma, H. 1904-29. A grammar of Late Modern English. Groningen: Noordhof.Google Scholar
Salkoff, Morris. 1973. Une grammaire en chaîne du français. Paris: Dunod.Google Scholar
Stéfanini, Jean. 1973. Modèle transformationnel et linguistique historique. The formal analysis of natural languages, ed. by Gross, Maurice, Halle, M., & Schützenberger, M.-P., 281–95. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Stockwell, Robert P., Schachter, Paul; and Partee, Barbara H. 1973. The major syntactic structures of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Sussmann, Hector J. and Zahler, R. S. 1978. Catastrophe theory as applied to the social and biological sciences: a critique. Synthèse 37. 117–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar