Western linguistics seems to be dominated by the Chomskian transformational generative grammar and its offshoots. My attempts to familiarize myself with these theories however always leave me under the impression that they were designed "by English speakers for description of their native English" - that is they might be not optimal for describing Russian. (Although this may be more due to the fact that the books/reviews are written for the English-speaking audience.)
I will appreciate comments on this subject. More specifically:
- Are transformational generative syntax theories popular among Russian linguists?
- Do these theories encounter specific problems when treating Russian and related languages? What kind of problems?
- What are the alternative theories? Are there any created by Russian-speaking linguists (or native speakers of Slavic languages)?