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More on the Publication of Syntactic Structures

Kai von Fintel recently documented some new and recent historical scholarship on the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures. Our own (yes, we are claiming him as our own) Bob Rothstein was, in a sense, present for the historical moment:

Dear WHISC,

February 1957 seems about right for the publication of Syntactic Structures. In the spring semester 1957, as a freshman math major at MIT, I wandered into a course called L78: Syntactic Structures. On the first day of class the instructor, a certain Noam Chomsky, told us that we didn't need to take notes since the class notes for the previous year's course were due to appear in print any day. And indeed, we were soon able to purchase a thin blue Mouton volume at the Tech Coop, and my notes for the course are very minimal, although they do include a two-page dittoed midterm (three questions to be answered in class and one to be done at home) and the several pages of my answers, corrected and graded by Noam.

Best regards,
Bob