The Decade of Private Knowledge

Summary A review of the dissemination of information among linguists and the epis-temological basis of the transformational movement leads to the suggestion that the decade from the early 1960’s to the early 1970’s was a decade of private knowledge for persons engaged in the theoretical study of human languages. This decade of private knowledge was not caused directly by Chomsky’s disavowal of empiricism and his espousal of rationalism. Rather, it was caused indirectly by the shift from empiricism to rationalism and the subsequent attempt to base the data for theory building on native speaker intuition. The period of private knowledge in linguistics will probably continue until there is a shift in the epistemological basis of transformational thought.