A History of English Language

The english language in america
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defended and modified, various parts of the extended standard theory of generative
grammar. 73 In the 1960s participants in the debate often viewed their discipline as parallel
to the natural sciences in its pattern of advancement, and Chomsky’s model was seen as a
“paradigm change” in the sense described by Thomas S.Kuhn. 74 The lively attacks on
Chomsky’s model and the counterattacks on competing theories were inspired in part by
the belief that further changes in the paradigm were imminent. After a period of extreme
fragmentation in the 1970s, the major linguistic theories have developed in a general
direction of convergence, at least to the extent that some form of generative grammar is
the overwhelmingly preferred orientation for any discussion of theoretical syntax and
phonology. The most obvious challenges to Chomsky’s Government-Binding approach to
syntax, including Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical-Functional
Grammar, are themselves generative grammars. 75 A criticism sometimes made of all
generative grammars is that they deal with marginal sentences invented by the linguist
rather than with empirical surveys of actual language use. Such a criticism misses the
point that the marginal sentences lead to a distinction between a “core” language (the
idealized structures that are determined arbitrarily by universal grammar) and a
“periphery” (the parts of a particular language or dialect that are unsystematic: the results
of borrowings, historical residues, inventions, and so on). With this distinction, better
descriptions of English in all its varieties are possible, as for example, in the studies of
pidgins and creoles by Derek Bickerton and others (see § 230). In identifying both what
does not occur in a dialect, the gaps, and also the historical accretions, one can provide a
more adequate description of the dialects of American English or of any other variety.
256. American English and World English.
In bringing the history of the English language to a conclusion with a chapter on
American English, it is clear that the United States and the United Kingdom are countries
whose national varieties of the language (each with varieties within it) serve as major
points of reference and contrast. As regards the formal written language, the differences
between British English and American English are so minor that often a para-
73
Among the hundreds of books, articles, and papers on syntactic theory during the past three
decades, the advanced student will find important developments in John R.Ross, “Constraints on
Variables in Syntax” (Dissertation, MIT, 1967), published as Infinite Syntax (Norwood, NJ, 1985);
Noam Chomsky’s Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (New York, 1986) and The
Minimalist Program (Cambridge, MA, 1995); James D.McCawley, The Syntactic Phenonmena of
English (2 vols., Chicago, 1988); and Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer, Semantics in Generative
Grammar (Malden, MA, 1998).
74
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed., Chicago, 1970).
75
See Carl Pollard and Ivan A.Sag, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Chicago, 1994); and
Joan Bresnan, Lexical-Functional Syntax (Malden, MA, 2001).