ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago Noam Chomsky presented a paper at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists entitled ‘The logical basis of linguistic theory’ (henceforth ‘LBLT’). In this paper, he outlined his programme for linguistic theory, an approach to language then known to all and still known to some as ‘transformational generative grammar’. This paper was particularly memorable for a number of reasons. First, it marked the first international exposure for the theory and the first international recognition for the 33-year-old Chomsky, whose fledgling theory had been encapsulated five years earlier in the monograph Syntactic Structures (Chomsky 1957). Chomsky was one of only five plenary speakers at the Congress, the others being the European luminaries Jerzy Kurylowicz, Emile Benveniste, André Martinet, and N.D.Andreyev. Second, ‘LBLT’ introduced several important theoretical innovations that were to affect profoundly the shape of the theory and technical terms that were to become everyday generative parlance. And finally, the paper is famous-‘notorious’ is perhaps a better wordfor the internecine polemics that it engendered, though surely not over those aspects that Chomsky would have considered most central. It was primarily as a result of ‘LBLT’ that generative grammarians acquired the reputation of relishing-indeed, seeking-intellectual combat to defend their views and challenge those of their opponents.
