o. Theoretical linguistics is a term not very often used in Soviet
Linguistics. The terms 'structural linguistics', 'mathematical
linguistics', 'applied lin- guistics' (which, incidentally, has another
meaning here than in other parts of the world) all may cover theoretical
work in linguistics. In older days serious theoretical work was done
under the heading 'machine translation'. Very often the need for a
special term for theoretically oriented studies in linguistics does not
even arise. Does this mean that there is no real theoretical linguistics
in the Soviet Union? This would be, of course, a completely false
conclusion. Some lin- guists tend to identify theoretical linguistics
with generative grammar. Though it might be true - and I am myself very
much inclined to subscribe to this view - that generative grammar has
been the most fruitful linguistic theory up to now, this does not
justify, however, the above identification. Incidentally, as we shall
see later on, generative grammar has not been left unnoticed in the
Soviet Union either. There are different trends within theo- retical
linguistics, one of which is generative grammar. While generative
grammar (though one can worry about the content of this notion for many.
internal and external reasons) seems to be the mean theoretical trend in
the United States and in Western Europe, it represents only one of the
main trends in Soviet linguistics.