The history of Swedish grammar and professor Chomsky
pp. 109-119
in: Martin Gustafsson, Lars Hertzberg (eds), The practice of language, Berlin, Springer, 2002Abstract
Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar has sometimes been characterized as a kind of revolution in the history of linguistics.2 Whether it really can be described as a scientific revolution in Thomas Kuhn's sense is controversial,3 but one could perhaps say that no linguist or no linguistic school after Chomsky has been able to ignore totally his theoretical work.4 This is also true for Swedish grammar; in fact, Chomsky's theory was given a very enthusiastic reception in Sweden, particularly in the early 70's. It has, furthermore, left lasting traces on grammatical description, although the general tendency in Swedish linguistics today should perhaps rather be described as anti-Chomskyan.
