Introduction

Abstract

Restrictiveness has long been a major concern within the framework of transformational generative grammar. Substantive proposals for limiting the descriptive power of individual transformations began to appear in the very early 1960’s, and such constraints as the A-over-A condition and the principle of recoverability of deletion date from that time. The goal then, as now, was to provide the basis for an account of the selection by the language learner of the correct grammar on the basis of limited data. To the extent that complicated and seemingly idiosyncratic properties could be abstracted out of transformations, their effects deduced from the interactions of general principles, the field moved closer to that goal. Beginning with the publication in 1973 of Chomsky’s “Conditions on Transformations”, the goal, perhaps for the first time, began to seem attainable. The articles collected here, largely inspired by the program of “Conditions on Transformations”, represent a series of investigations and proposals on restrictiveness, dating from the mid 1970’s to the mid 1980’s.