ABSTRACT
So 'the major endeavour of the linguist must be' to 'enrich the theory of linguistic form' and 'restrict the range of possible hypotheses by adding structure', 'constraints, and conditions' to 'the notion "generative grammar" , and 'to reduce the class of attainable grammars' until 'a formal evaluation measure' can be applied (AT 35, 46, 41). 'This requires a precise and narrow delimitation of the notion "generative grammar" - a restrictive and rich hypothesis' about 'universal properties that determine the form of language' (AT 35). 'Given a variety of descriptively adequate grammars' we need to discover if they are 'unique' or share 'deep underlying similarities attributable to the form of language as such'. Only the latter discovery yields 'real progress in linguistics'.
