In Many Cases It Is A Matter

Where Questions Of Style And Exposition Are Concerned I Try To Follow A Simple Maxim: If You Can't Say It Clearly You Don't Understand It Yourself.

The Intentionality Of The Mind Not Only Creates The Possibility Of Meaning, But Limits Its Forms.

In The Performance Of An Illocutionary Act In The Literal Utterance Of A Sentence, The Speaker Intends To Produce A Certain Effect By Means Of Getting The Hearer To Recognize His Intention To Produce That Effect; And Furthermore, If He Is Using The Words Literally, He Intends This Recognition To Be Achieved In Virtue Of The Fact That The Rules For Using The Expressions He Utters Associate The Expression With The Production Of That Effect.

There Is No Success Or Failure In Nature.

It Seemed To A Number Of Philosophers Of Language, Myself Included, That We Should Attempt To Achieve A Unification Of Chomsky's Syntax, With The Results Of The Researches That Were Going On In Semantics And Pragmatics. I Believe That This Effort Has Proven To Be A Failure. Though Chomsky Did Indeed Revolutionize The Subject Of Linguistics, It Is Not At All Clear, At The End The Century, What The Solid Results Of This Revolution Are. As Far As I Can Tell There Is Not A Single Rule Of Syntax That All, Or Even Most, Competent Linguists Are Prepared To Agree Is A Rule.