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I am not a linguist, and I am hardly qualified to write an article on this topic, but I remember studying transformational grammars in my college linguistic class years ago, and thinking to myself, my God, this seems like such a kludge. He creates this nice formal grammar, and when he finds out that it doesn't actually describe real world languages that humans actually speak, he does a little presto magic (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), and "transforms" the sentences to fit them into real world syntax. The whole process struck me as the linguistic version of pre-Copernican epicycles, where all sorts of magic had to be done to make the geocentric system work. Then again, I am not a linguist, so what do I know? Still, I have often wondered since then how other linguists react to his theories, since in my linguistics class it was basically just taught as a factual description of human language.
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