McCawley's legacy: a response to Pieter A.M. Seuren

In his review of Polymorphous Linguistics: Jim McCawley's Legacy (ed. by Salikoko S. Mufwene, Elaine J. Francis, & Rebecca S. Wheeler, MIT Press, 2005), published in volume 28(5) of Language Sciences (521-526), Pieter A.M. Seuren claims that McCawley's work after about 1980 greatly declined in quality as compared with his earlier work in Generative Semantics and failed to elaborate his earlier ideas in a principled way. He further claims that the book under review fails to properly celebrate McCawley's legacy because it focuses “entirely on his later, much bleaker period” (523). In this response, we argue that McCawley's later work did in fact build on his earlier ideas in a principled manner, shedding new light on many challenging linguistic phenomena. We also show that Seuren is mistaken in his claim that the book focuses entirely on McCawley's later work, and we defend eclecticism, which Seuren regards as a sign of weakness.