Here together for the first time are all of Frederick J. Newmeyer's writings on the origin and development of generative grammar. Spanning a period of fifteen years, the essays address the nature of the 'Chomskyan Revolution', the deep structure debates of the 1970s, and the attempts to apply generative theory to second language acquisition.

These articles, many of which have never been published before, will inevitably fan the fames of controversy still raging in this field. Newmeyer's audacious conclusions and his argument that generative semantics collapsed because it was empirically disproved challenge much current thinking.

Written by one of America's most prominent linguists, the essays in Generative Linguistics provide a challenging re-appraisal of the 'Chomskyan Revolution' - the implications of which are still being debated some thirty years further on.