ABSTRACT
A longstanding hope of research in theoretical linguistics has been that linguistic characterizations of formal grammar would shed light on the speaker’s mental representation of language. One of the best-known expressions of this hope is Chomsky’s (1965) competence hypothesis: “a reasonable model of language use will incorporate, as a basic component, the generative grammar that expresses the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of the language … [p. 9]. Despite many similar expressions of hope by linguists, and despite intensive efforts by psycholinguists, it remains true that generative-transformational grammars have not yet been successfully incorporated in psychologically realistic models of language use (Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974).
