1	The Vicissitudes of War 2 February 14, 2002
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4	The Attitude of the Wars Both sides had the same data, but came to opposing conclusions. Neither side thought the other was doing “Real Linguistics.” “Oppenheimer and I often have the same facts on a question and come to opposing decisions – he to one, I to another. Oppenheimer has high intelligence. He can’t be analyzing and interpreting the facts wrong. I have high intelligence. I can’t be wrong. So with Oppenheimer it must be insincerity, bad faith – perhaps treason” (Alvarez, p. 160).
5	Discussion How do you deal with this problem? Shouldn’t there be a right and a wrong answer to every question?
6	Chomsky’s Rhetoric The Straw Man Charge: “x is arguing not against my real position, but against a caricature of my position” (p. 161).
7	Chomsky Attacks Generative Semantics imitates Aspects “No matter what two theories look like, in terms of formalisms, architecture, what-have-you, if they make the same empirical predictions, they are just different ways of saying the same thing” (p. 162).
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9	Chomsky’s other point: Oh, and by the way, Generative Semantics is also wrong.
10	McCawley’s Defense Katz’s arguments against generative semantics aren’t addressing the theory as a whole, “but on the spare parts he has stitched and bolted together to attack” (p. 161).
11	Aspects vs. Generative Semantics a Larry and Tom love their respective wives. b Those men love Susan and Dot respectively. c That man loves Susan and Dot. Aspects: these sentences need at least 3 levels of representation – surface structures, deep structures, and semantic representations. Generative Semantics: 2 levels of representation – a semantic interpretation rule and a transformation.
12	Down with Deep Structure McCawley posited that if the middle level in the Aspects model were tossed out, then one rule would do the trick. “For reasons of simplicity, therefore, deep structure had to go” (p. 166).
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14	What became of this argument? The Generative Semanticists saw good reason to get rid of deep structure. The Interpretive Semanticists had enough reason to keep it. In other words, the arguments go nowhere.
15	Thought Question Do Grammaticality (linguistic knowledge) and Acceptability (linguistic performance) ever diverge?
16	Islands Metaphor There are islands of grammaticality floating in a sea of ungrammaticality. If transformations are going to make something ungrammatical, then ‘filters’ stop transformations from getting too powerful.
17	Language Acquisition Device LAD = Built-In Grammar We couldn’t learn language, create unique sentences, etc, with so little experience without some inherent structure upon which to superimpose language.
18	Chomsky’s Version
19	McCawley Comments “Chomsky’s well-known arguments that language acquisition cannot be accomplished purely by general purpose learning faculties should not lead to the non sequitur of concluding that general purpose learning mechanisms play no role in language acquisition: General purpose learning faculties clearly exist . . . And it is absurd to suppose that they shut off while language is being acquired” (p. 192).
20	McCawley’s Version
21	Rationalist vs. Empiricist approaches to LAD “[McCawley] is interested far more in the properties of the cognitive mechanism, Acquisition Device, than in its specific employment–a definitive rationalist concern. McCawley is interested at least as much in the way the mechanism is put to work, and in the way it interacts with general-purpose learning strategies, and in the character of the acquisition of data–empiricist concerns all” (p. 192).
22	Thought Question Do either of these models adequately address both rationalist and empiricist theoretical frameworks?