Remarks on Processing, Constriaints, and the Lexicon

Linguists have long recognized the desirability of embedding a theory of grammar within a theory of linguistic performance (scc, e.g., Chomsky (1965;10-15)). It has bccn widely assumed by transformationalists that an adequate model of a language user would inchlde as one component some sort of generative granlm:.~r. Yet transformational grammarians have devoted relatively little energy to the problem that Bresnan (in press) calls "the grammatical realization problem": "How would a reasonable model of language use incorporate a transformational grammar?" When this question has been raised, little support could be adduced for the hypothesis that the operations of transformational grammar play a part in speakers' or hearers' processing of sentences (see Fodor, et a l (1974; chapter 5)). Instead of concerning themselves with questions of processing, transformationalists have concentrated their efforts (at least in the last decade or so) on the problem of constraining the power of their theory. The goal of much recent research has been to construct as restrictive a theory of grammar as possible, within the bounds set by the known divcrsity of human languages (scc, e.g., Ross (1967), Chomsky (1973), Bresnan (1976), Emonds (1976), and Culicover and Wexler (1977) for examples of this type of research).