Shei (2004) 最重要的兩項主張是：一、心理語言學與生物學研究的相關證據顯示衍生語法學是不可信的，二、詞彙的重要性很可能超過句法；因此語料庫語言學在語法研究上才是較為可行的。本文是對該文的這些論點一一做出回應。我們首先釐清衍生語法學的部分觀點及其現況，並且指出該文論證之不足。本文所提出的相對主張是：一、現有的證據足以顯示衍生語法學是一個值得探索的科學理論，二、衍生語言學與功能語言學或語料庫語言學並不是必然衝突的；本文最終的目的在於證明若要瞭解人類的個別語言以及普遍語法，這兩種不同的理論及其研究方法都是必要的。

This paper is a response to Shei (2004), where the author makes two main claims:(1) the generative grammar is implausible based on evidence from psycholinguistic and biological studies, and (2) lexicon may prove to outweigh syntax and corpus linguistics is thus a more viable alternative. By clarifying some of the generativist views and the current state of affairs and also pointing out some of the inconsistencies in Shei’s arguments, we aim to defend the generative paradigm as a worthy scientific pursuit and, more importantly, also to demonstrate that the generativist approach does not necessarily conflict with the functionalist approach in general or the corpus-based methodologies in particular. We maintain that both approaches may be necessary for a comprehensive view of language and languages.