• Preface


• Acknowledgements


• Introduction: The Plan


• 1: Linguistic Preliminaries


• 2: The Ontology of Generative Linguistics


• 3: Linguistic Data and Linguistic Judgments


• 4: A Role for Normative Rule Governance?


• 5: Worries about Rules and Representations


• 6: Referential Semantics for narrow ?-languages?


• 7: Best Theory Criteria and Methodological Minimalism


• Appendix: Interview with Noam Chomsky


• Bibliography

Peter Ludlow is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto before joining Northwestern

Peter Ludlow presents the first book on the philosophy of generative linguistics. He explains the motivation of the generative framework, describes its mechanisms, and addresses issues of broad philosophical interest, for instance the ontology of linguistics, the nature of data, language/world relations, and best theory criteria.