A Traditionalist Looks at Generative Grammar

TL;DRAbstract

TRmEE PRINCIPAL VARIETIES of grammar must be taken into account today: Traditional, Structural, and Generative. A cynical observer has remarked that nowadays those who concern themselves with analysis seem to have a deep emotional need for a flag to wave. Traditionalists are at a disadvantage here. We have no flag to wave -no catchwords, no mystique, no Mecca, no glamour. Many teachers of English equate Traditional grammar with the grammar generally taught in the schools, and quite rightly they feel limited respect for this. Naturally the operators in the profession go where the flags are being waved. To the increasingly powerful bureaucracy intrenched in government and organization offices, Traditional grammar seems downright un-American. Yet we Traditionalists still exist, and I rather think that we have less reason to be pessimistic about the possibility of continued academic survival than we had in the fifties when Paul Roberts, then the smoothest of the Structuralist textbook writ

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