Chapter One: Language, Thought, and the Linguistics Wars
Chapter Two: The Beauty of Deep Structure
Chapter Three: Generative Semantics 1: The Model
Chapter Four: Generative Semantics 2: The Heresy
Chapter Five: The Vicissitudes of War
Chapter Six: Generative Semantics 3: The Ethos
Chapter Seven: Generative Semantics 4: The Collapse
Chapter Eight: Twentieth Century Linguistics at Closing Time
Chapter Nine: The Aftermath: 21st Century Linguistics
Chapter Ten: Chomsky Agonistes
Glossary
Works Cited
Randy Allen Harris is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His books include Voice Interaction Design: Crafting the New Conversational Interfaces, Rhetoric and Incommensurability, two volumes in the Routledge Landmark Essays series, both in aspects of Rhetoric of Science; and The Linguistics Wars.
The Linguistics Wars is an indispensable resource for anyone
interested in the dispute it covers and its aftermath, as long as
its limitations are kept in mind.
*Nicholas Allott, Journal of Pragmatics*
The book is generative, indeed.
*Judith Kaplan, Journal of the History of Science Society*
The first edition of this volume recounts the "war" between
linguists based at MIT from 1967 to 1977. It pitted Noam Chomsky
and supporters of his then-current theory, interpretive semantics,
against proponents of generative semantics, with the relation of
syntax to meaning in dispute. In 2021, the "war" read very
differently....Disputants were overwhelmingly male and students of
the same teachers. Papers included insider jokes, and public
confrontations turned personal...this second edition presents new
material charting the careers of the major figures, regretting the
tradition of rhetorical belligerence and celebrating a more open
discourse in the emerging subdisciplines. Harris increases
prominence of female scholars, particularly Robin Lakoff, and
concludes by describing Chomsky's scholarly practice and
speculating on his lasting legacy. Tracking the evolution of
linguistic theory, this volume supersedes the first.
*J. Adlington, McMaster University, CHOICE*
Harris ... demonstrates a deep knowledge of the issues in the
conflict; he also brings a needed sense of perspective to the
story. His stunning bibliography runs a monograph-length 65 pages,
with over 1600 entries, and he appears to have absorbed it all.
*Andy Rogers, LINGUIST List 33.3261*
Randy Harris has written an extremely engaging account of the rise
of generative syntax and of some of the linguists who participated
in this development, focusing on the scruffy fights that held a lot
of people's attention in the second half of the 1960s, and then
tracking the trajectories of the linguists after that very
belligerent moment. The book is great fun to read-Randy is a
terrific writer, the likes of which we rarely see among
academics-and along the way, the reader learns a lot of
linguistics.
*John Goldmith, History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences,
University of Chicago*
Linguists, whatever your persuasion, please read this book.
Seriously, it's hard to understand the current field without
knowing this history. It's unbiased (no one is immune), accurate,
and most importantly, entertaining.
*Adele Goldberg, Princeton University*
Randy Harris has done the intellectual world a remarkable
service.
*Geoffrey Sampson, LingBuzz*
[Harris's] style is direct and informal. He is sharp and clear even
on quite technical topics, his grasp of competing theories is
sound, and his tales of the rise and fall of GS are well
documented. . . . Anyone who wants insight into what has been going
on in Chomskyan linguistics this past half century should read the
new edition of The Linguistics Wars.
*Geoffrey K. Pullum, National Review*
If you want to know how Chomsky's Minimalism and Lakoff's Cognitive
Linguistics developed such different views on how knowledge of
language is organized in the human mind, I strongly recommend
reading the second edition of The Linguistics Wars. This new
edition extends the history to the present in the same
well-informed and lively way for which the first edition received
so much praise.
*Ad Foolen, Radboud University*
Praise for the First Edition
This is intellectual history crossed with a Shakespearean history
play.
*David Berreby, The Sciences*
A fascinating tale of ambition and animus that makes the linguistic
analyses (and antics) of a bygone day accessible to
non-linguists.
*Stephen O. Murray, Language Sciences*
"[The Linguistic Wars] is extraordinarily well written, far more
enjoyable and interesting than anything I've ever read in the
history of linguistics, approachable by any non-linguist interested
in the topics covered -- and utterly fascinating for linguists. ...
the standard of scholarship exemplified in this book is simply
stunning.
*John Lawler, The LINGUIST List*
[Harris] documents in meticulous detail, with great sensitivity and
unswerving impartiality, how Chomsky's early theories captured the
imagination of the new generation cognitive scientists and resulted
in the overthrow of Bloomfieldian linguistics and behaviourist
psychology more generally. He explains the elegance of 'deep
structure' and the power of Chomsky's conception of language as
expounded in the 'standard theory', and then shows how a disparate
group of young scholars, the generative semanticists, effectively
hijacked the fledgling theory and developed it in ways so radical
that Chomsky soon came to be seen as a reactionary fighting a
rearguard action against the forces of progress. . . .I can vouch
for the accuracy and fairness of Harris's dissection. . . .Harris
has achieved the near impossible: being fair to both sides in a
civil war.
*Neil Smith, Nature*
Randy Harris... brilliantly combines human interest with a skilful
and often highly technical commentary on analyses favoured by the
opposing camps.
*John N. Green, Modern Language Review*
The Linguistics Wars^ Rcontributes to knowledge by way of bringing
academic life down from its pedestal, allowing us to see it in
human terms, and in the process showing us that it is both less
pristine and more exciting than its image in the general culture
would lead most people to expect. Doing so makes academic work more
accessible and academic behavior more accountable. The great
strength of Harris's account is that he combines the linguist's
understanding of the technical issues involved in research and
theory construction with the historian's appreciation of the role
that social and psychological factors play in a scientific
community.
*John Laurence Miller, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research*
In this evenhanded, trenchant and witty academic chronicle, Harris
looks at the fierce, acrimonious controversies that have rocked
linguistics since the 1950s. At center stage is Noam Chomsky whose
search for the innate structures underlying language revolutionized
what had been primarily a descriptive, behavioristic science.
Chomsky's followers, notably George Lakoff, James McCawley, Paul
Postal and Haj Ross, came to view Chomskyan deep structure"" as a
barrier to forging a link between sound and meaning.
*Genevieve Stuttaford, Publishers Weekly*
Harris's book is a strikingly ambitious one, combining historical
accuracy, conceptual detail, satirical humour, and theatrical
imagery, written in a careful style that alternates between more
formal and more casual tones and registers.
*Cameron Morin, Cognitive Linguistics Studies*
This book provides an interesting example of recent history and is
an important milestone in Chomsky historiography.
*J. Léon, Histoire Ãpistémologie Langage*
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