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From: zohrab_p@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Zohrab)
Subject: Re: Chomksy, Significance, and Current Trends
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Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 08:25:27 GMT
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In article <jguy.12.302EB65E@trl.oz.au>, JAQUES GUY <jguy@trl.oz.au> wrote:
> zohrab_p@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Zohrab) writes:
> 
> >But the Generativists solve this problem by office politics, conference 
> >politics, and journal politics.
> 
> Non mais, je vous demande un peu! Quel est cet iconoclaste atlanteen
> avec un nom digne d'un alchimiste mauresque! Time for me, I think, to dig out 
> that paper I once wrote to collect a rejection slip, and post it here complete 
> with its rejection slip. As soon as I can find it, you're going to cop it. And 
> if I can't find it within a reasonable time, you're in for the last 
> installment of Metalleus.
> 
> (Posted, screamingly, thanks to Trumpet (tm)  that can't keep its voice down)
> 
Jokes aside, the point I am making is that the so-called
Competence-Performance Distinction is treated as a unitary distinction at the
theoretical level, but treated as several distinct distinctions at the
practical, descriptive level.

This theoretical incoherence of Generative Grammar is ignored, on the whole,
because Linguists are interested primarily in jobs -- and what creates jobs is
adherence to paradigms -- not destroying them without obvious replacement.

No amount of reference to trumpets or rejection-slips will obscure that fact.

As a matter of fact, I have published on this topic -- but I would hope a
serious scholar, such as yourself ?, would be able to conduct a serious 
discussion on the basis of its intrinsic merits -- not on the rather dubious 
cachet awarded by some journal editor.

Peter Zohrab 

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