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REVIEWS

REVIEWS Owen Thomas: Transformationalgrammar and ihe teacher of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965. Pp. x +240. This work, in the words of its author, "seeks to describe those aspects of transformational grammar [henceforth, T-grammar] that... have the greatest relevance for teachers and prospective teachers of English." The type of grammar which serves äs the basis of this text has been touted by some äs the "New English", probably by analogy with the "New Math". Aside from the fact that neither of these disciplines is very "new" in any historical sense1), the implication that they are merely fads which have gained recognition mainly because of their supposed novelty is a dangerous one. The widespread acceptance of T-grammar among linguistic scholars both in this country and abroad is due, I would claim, to the fact that it offers the only viable alternative to other linguistic theories which have been proven inadequate for the description of natural languages such äs English. This is not to say that T-grammar offers an explanation for all linguistic phenomena, that the general theory will not change äs it is applied to more and more data, or even that new theories will not http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching de Gruyter

REVIEWS

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0019-042X
eISSN
1613-4141
DOI
10.1515/iral.1967.5.1-4.39
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Owen Thomas: Transformationalgrammar and ihe teacher of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965. Pp. x +240. This work, in the words of its author, "seeks to describe those aspects of transformational grammar [henceforth, T-grammar] that... have the greatest relevance for teachers and prospective teachers of English." The type of grammar which serves äs the basis of this text has been touted by some äs the "New English", probably by analogy with the "New Math". Aside from the fact that neither of these disciplines is very "new" in any historical sense1), the implication that they are merely fads which have gained recognition mainly because of their supposed novelty is a dangerous one. The widespread acceptance of T-grammar among linguistic scholars both in this country and abroad is due, I would claim, to the fact that it offers the only viable alternative to other linguistic theories which have been proven inadequate for the description of natural languages such äs English. This is not to say that T-grammar offers an explanation for all linguistic phenomena, that the general theory will not change äs it is applied to more and more data, or even that new theories will not

Journal

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 1967

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