Word: martian
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Then, on the Fourth of July, Viking Orbiter I will cut loose Lander I for its descent to Mars' surface. The lander, almost 10 ft. wide and 7 ft. tall overall, will start work at once. In the Martian atmosphere, only 1% as dense as earth's, its radio reports on atmospheric pressure, composition, temperature and ion concentrations will be relayed to earth by the Viking orbiter. Slowed by a parachute, the lander will spread its three spidery legs and will be braked by retrorockets for what is hoped will be a gentle setdown near the mouth...
When he is not posing as a Martian, he compares himself to the boy who sees that the Emperor has no clothes--the Emperor, of course, being a contemporary linguistics garbed in imaginary transformational rules and fanciful levels of "deep structure...
...crediting himself with the "Martian view" doesn't get Percy very far toward debunking the Chomskians, and adds nothing but a gratingly false modesty to his broad assertions about the state of linguistics...
Unless the Martian is very much mistaken and it is here that he does resemble somewhat the boy who noticed something wrong with the king--it appears to him that while the prevailing behaviorist theory has been dismantled, no other theory has been advanced to take its place, this in spite of all the talk by transformationalists about "explanatory models...
...wait," says the Martian. "What about the actual event of language? The central phenomenon? What happens when people talk, when one person names something or says a sentence about something and another person understands...