Welcome to Grammars Gone Mental
Welcome to GGM (Grammars Gone Mental), a new blog conceived of by Brian Dillon, Tim Hunter, Dave Kush, Ellen Lau, Laurel Perkins, Matt Wagers, and Ming Xiang. We are a group of linguists and cognitive scientists who care about how language – intricate, dynamic and infinite – arises in our finite brains. We are here because we wanted to think through, together, both the enduring questions and the latest developments in language science. We have our own point of view, of course, but we’re writing for anyone who cares about them: linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, students, and the growing number of people in AI who find themselves wondering what language is and how humans manage it.
A little bit about our point of view
We are all trained and working in the generative grammar tradition and consider ourselves, in that sense, mentalists. We care about answering the “three big questions” about humans and language (Chomsky, 1986):
- what a language user knows;
- how that knowledge is put into use, to communicate, among other things; and
- how that ability gets acquired.
Calling ourselves mentalists means that we think the right way to answer those questions is by “making reference to the mental events, capacities, and processes” of the language user (Katz, 1964). Needless to say, all those mechanisms are embedded in brains, which some of us study directly. We take, from the ‘generative’ in generative grammar, a commitment to being explicit in our formal models. We value careful attention to the description of specific linguistic systems and an ecumenical but rigorous approach to methods. We like to conjecture, to kvetch, and even to hear from people who think we’re wrong.
Why this blog?
It is an exciting time to be a linguist. The field has made remarkable progress on (1)–(3), and we think more of that progress goes unappreciated than it should. We want to celebrate it, and to make more room for the synthesis it allows. But while parts of the map are now filled in at high resolution, much terra incognita remains. So the time is ripe to reconnoiter, and to plan new expeditions.
It is also a vertiginous time to be a researcher in these areas. Scientific questions about language are coming into closer contact with neighboring academic fields and with technological advances, at what seems to be a quickly accelerating pace. We are enthusiastic about many aspects of these convergences and what we might be able to learn from them, but sometimes feel that important issues raised by the core questions in (1)–(3) above, which remain our focus, can get lost in the excitement.
That’s all about the moment we find ourselves in.
But then there’s the way we talk to one another. Traditional academic publishing doesn’t let us move as nimbly, range as widely, or speak as authentically as we want to. At the same time, we also wanted something more measured, and less evanescent, than microblogging on social media. We wanted writing that we controlled, published on our schedule, free to read and at whatever length the idea needs – and that others can respond to directly.
Finally, all of us were strongly influenced by Norbert Hornstein’s Faculty of Language blog – and we know we’re not the only ones! – so we wanted to create a space inspired by that, where we could spend some more time together.
How we want to proceed
Like many other blogs, this is a team effort. We don’t necessarily mean to speak in unison, but we hope there is some harmony. We discuss what topics and areas we’d like to say something about and we give each other feedback before publishing. Every post is written by its human authors.
Our posts are not all necessarily about “Big Questions”: we’re interested in many approaches, including targeted reactions, bite-sized tutorials, round-ups of recent research or contemporary reviews (in the spirit of what Glot International used to run as “State-of-the-Article” pieces).
We’re aiming to publish a piece roughly weekly. Eventually we’re also interested in publishing others’ pieces, and we’d love to hear proposals for topics from a wide variety of viewpoints. See the Contributing section of our About page for how to get in touch.
Finally but importantly
Anyone with a GitHub account can comment on posts. See How to comment for a quick guide.
References
Copyright, reuse and citation
Authors retain copyright. This license covers post text; images and other third-party material are excluded unless noted.
Show BibTeX
@misc{dillon2026,
author = {Dillon, Brian and Hunter, Tim and Kush, Dave and Lau, Ellen
and Perkins, Laurel and Wagers, Matt and Xiang, Ming},
title = {{Welcome to Grammars Gone Mental}},
date = {2026-11-12},
url = {https://ggmblog.org/posts/2026-11-ggm-origin-story/},
langid = {en}
}
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