make the enterprise unfeasible, and some of the reactions to this stringency (in
particular, the view that any clearly specified procedure of analysis is as good as any
other) detracted substantially from its potential significance.
106 Observe, however, that the discussion in the Port Royal Grammar, if interpreted
quite literally, does not identify the underlying structures with actual sentences. Cf.
pp. 83 84 above, and note 73. It is thus quite close, in conception, to transforma
tional generative grammar of the sort developed in the references of note 93, which
has also been based on the assumption that the structures to which transformational
rules apply are abstract underlying forms, not actual sentences. Notice, incidentally,
that the theory of transformations as originally developed by Harris, outside of the
framework of generative grammar, does regard transformations as relations among
actual sentences and is, in fact, much closer to the conception of Du Marsais and
others, in this respect (see Z. S. Harris, “Co occurrence and Transformation in
Linguistic Structure,” Language 33 (1957), pp. 283 340, and many other refer
ences). See Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, p. 62n., for some
discussion bearing on this point.
107 Humboldt’s picture was, however, a good bit more complex. Cf. pp. 69 73 above.
108 Notice that, when described in these terms, linguistic universals need not be found
in every language. Thus, for example, when a certain set of phonetic features is
claimed to constitute a universal phonetics, it is not proposed that each of these
features functions in every language, but rather that every language makes its
particular choice from among this system of features. Cf. Beauzée, op. cit., p. ix:
“the necessary elements of language… are in fact present in all languages, and their
necessity is indispensable for the analytic and metaphysical exposition of thought.
But I do not intend to speak of an individual necessity, which does not leave anyone
free to reject any idiom; I mean to indicate only a specific necessity [une nécessité
d’espèce], which sets the limits of the choices that one can make.” [This view of a
mind’s ‘choice’ among phonetic features anticipates Chomsky’s later (early 1980s)
principles and parameters approach to the ‘choices’ a child’s mind makes in
acquiring a language. For discussion, see the editor’s introduction.]
109 Translated by M. H. Carré (1937), University of Bristol Studies, No. 6.
110 These developments are familiar except, perhaps, for seventeenth century English
Platonism. See A. O. Lovejoy, “Kant and the English Platonists,” in Essays
Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James (New York:
Longmans, Green, 1908), for some discussion of English Platonism, in particular,
of its interest in the “ideas and categories which enter into every presentation of
objects and make possible the unity and interconnectedness of rational experience.”
Lovejoy’s account, in turn, is based heavily on G. Lyons,
L’idéalisme
en Angleterre
au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1888). See also J. Passmore, Ralph Cudworth (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1951); L. Gysi, Platonism and Cartesianism in the
Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1962). Some relevant quotes
from Descartes, Leibniz, and others are given in Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax, chap. 1, §8, where the relevance of this position to current issues is also
briefly discussed. [Chomsky notes in CL’s conclusion (p. 107 below) that some
figures have been omitted from his survey of ‘Cartesian linguists’, or have been
inadequately discussed. He mentions Immanuel Kant in particular. It is perhaps
significant that the Cambridge Platonists had more to say about the scientific issues
142 Notes to pages 97 100