Relatives et Nominalisation: Quand Guillaume se Fait Transformationnaliste

RELATIVES AND NOMINALIZATION: WHERE GUILLAUME TURNS TRANSFORMATIONALISTIt is a little-known fact that by 1940 G. Guillaume had already developed a genetic syntax in which most embedded clauses were generated transformationally. But while the mechanism he postulated — internal or external nominalization — claims to reflect mental reality, an examination of the data shows, at least as far as relative clauses are concerned, it does not meet even the minimum requirement of observational adequacy. Although the falsification of an inadequate hypothesis is a step forward for any theory, the fact that in this case it has taken nearly fifty years to make it denotes a disturbing lack of rigour in the methodology of Psychomechanics.