Linguistics and Pseudo-Linguistics: Selected Essays, 1965–1985

The doctrines of transformational-generative grammar (as promulgated in 1957, with frequent later emendations) have on occasion been criticised, sometimes severely. Such criticism have, however, appeared mostly in article-form, and mostly in relatively inaccessible places. Discussions in bookform have been rare. In this book, the criticism offered by Professor Hall over more than twenty years have been brought together. They cover the range of linguistic structure (phonology, morphosyntax, and semantics), general theory, and the history of linguistics. In these essays, the many short-comings of transformational-generative grammar are revealed by critical examination, with inevitably negative conclusions. The two final essays of the book deal with parallel aberrations in current literary theory, especially Derridian “radical skepticism concerning language” and “deconstruction”, as viewed from a linguistic stand-point.