David E. Johnson (born December 21, 1946, in
Princeton, New Jersey
The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...
) is an American
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
. He is the co-inventor of
arc pair grammar.
Work
Johnson is best known for his work on
relational grammar, especially the development with
Paul Postal
Paul Martin Postal (born November 10, 1936, in Weehawken, New Jersey) is an American linguist.
Biography
Postal received his PhD from Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New ...
in 1977 of
arc pair grammar.
In the late 1990s, Johnson and
Shalom Lappin published the first detailed critiques of
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
's
Minimalist program
In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky.
Following Imre Lakatos's distinction, Chomsky presents minima ...
. This work was followed by a lively debate with proponents of minimalism on the scientific status of the program
[Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David E. Johnson (2001). "The Revolution Maximally Confused." '']Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
''Natural Language & Linguistic Theory'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering theoretical and generative linguistics. It was established in 1983 and originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Since 2004 the journal is pub ...
'' 19, 901-919
References
Sources
*Johnson, David E. (1974/1979). ''Toward a Theory of Relationally-based Grammar.'' Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series, ed. Jorge Hankamer. NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.
*Newmeyer, Frederick (1980). Linguistics in America. New York: Academic Press.
1946 births
Living people
Linguists from the United States
Syntacticians
{{US-linguist-stub
bn:পল পোস্টাল