[lbo-talk] Challenge to Chomskyan Linguistics

[Gar Lipow]

On 4/23/07, bitch at pulpculture.org <bitch at pulpculture.org> wrote:
> At 04:12 PM 4/22/2007, Carrol Cox wrote:
> >New Yorker, April 16, pp. 117ff. Long and interesting article.
> >
> >Carrol
>
> So, people more familiar with C's linguistics, I'm curious. On p. 126 the
> author of the article writes: "Chomsky, however, believed that culture
> played little role in the study of language, and that going to far-flung
> places to record the arcane babel of near-extinct tongues was a pointless
> exercise."
>
> Is this an accurate assessment? It makes little sense to me, to be so
> scientific, and yet uninterested in empirical testing. I'm finding it
> really hard to believe that this is a fair characterization. Is there a
> better, perhaps more flattering way, to characterize C's views here?
>

It is unfair only in that it leaves off an important qualifier: he
thought it was pointless as far as his theories went. That is he
thought that there was universal grammar (actually not quite a
grammar--but lets stick with his earlier oversimplification)  and that
would be the same among all peoples. He never said it would not detect
things of interest, just not things of interest about  HIS theories.
(Of course he also wanted to define stuff that went much beyond his
theories as not being linguistics, so perhaps not so unfair.) However
of course it seems that these empirical tests have revealed something
of interest about his theories: that some of them may not be true.
Even if on further examination they end up not disproving any of his
later theories, it was perhaps a bit arrogant to assume this was
beyond the realm of possibility. None of this changes the fact that
some of his basic theories remain the foundation of modern
linguistics.

-- 
Please note:  Personal  messages  should be sent to [garlpublic]
followed by the [at] sign with isp of  [comcast], then [dot] and then
an  extension of net