'It is certainly a measure of how deeply they have cut that Chomsky's critiques have received the attention they have; indeed, a number of the academic arguments in which he has been involved have become so concentrated and so fraught with controversy that they have managed to catch the notice of those who might otherwise have had no interest in the scientific issues themselves. Among these, Chomsky's dispute with the Generative Semanticists in the late 1960s particularly stands out.' Chomsky's debates with the Generative Semanticists caused divisive arguments in the field and led to an enduring split among linguists over the nature of meaning. When the Generative Semantics research program dissolved two decades ago, it was taken by many as a sign that the battle for legitimacy had been decisively won by Chomsky. In Ideology and Linguistic Theory two students of principals on both sides of the argument, Geoffrey J. Huck and John A. Goldsmith, reappraise the outcome of this debate. They question the conclusions and the theoretical basis of both camps and propose that a reassessment of the period is overdue.
Supplemented by interviews with four of the major participants in the debate, Ray Jackendoff, George Lakoff, Paul Postal, and John Robert Ross, this book shows that the paradigm which has dominated American linguistics for the last twenty years has failed to settle some of the most basic questions about the nature of language. This book will appeal to any with an interest in the study of language and mind or the history of the human sciences.