The achievements of Generative Grammar: a time chart and some reflections

Abstract

In May 2015, a group of eminent linguists met in Athens to debate the road ahead for generative grammar. There was a lot of discussion, and the linguists expressed the intention to draw a list of achievements of generative grammar, for the benefit of other linguists and of the field in general. The list has been sketched, and it is rather interesting, as it presents a general picture of the results that is very ‘past-heavy’. In this paper I reproduce the list and discuss the reasons why it looks the way it does.