[lbo-talk] Challenge to Chomskyan Linguistics

[bitch at pulpculture.org]

At 09:52 PM 4/23/2007, you wrote:
>On 4/23/07, bitch at pulpculture.org <bitch at pulpculture.org> wrote:
>
>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.

Ok. But I still don't get it. If you have a theory, the point is to test it 
against empirical evidence. You would look at far-flung cultures and study 
their language to see if the claim to universality holds up. So, why would 
this be uninteresting for his theory?

Bitch | Lab
http://blog.pulpculture.org (NSFW)