I've been reading Christine Kenneally's _The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language_ which is an overview to the debates in the field.
She starts out with Chompsky, since he revolutionized the field. I'm finding it luscious to learn that my criticisms of Chompsky cherry picking of the science, his insistence that his critics are just plain stupid, his arrogance, his boring writing style are all criticisms he's also earned in academia, and for several decades.
Kenneally doesn't make clear yet where she stands. But while that information matters (to me anyway), she's introducing the reader to the debates in the field and isn't pretending to separate them from a pointed, honest look at the hijinks the opponents get up to in their attempts to eviscerate one another. In other words, since the opponents in these debates use logical fallacies (as just one example) in their attacks on one another, Kenneally doesn't pretend that you can objectively assess the field by excluding that information from the discussion.
Apparently, in regard to an article criticizing Chomsky in Harper's a couple of years ago, he has since decided that it is OK to actually go out into the field and study language -- something the article pointed out he laughed at as a waste of time. I guess he's changed his mind.
Am also reading _Fresh: A Perishable History_ which is quite good, though it certainly demolishes the wisdom behind the Pollanade adage that you should eat like your grandmother. I think any sane person recognized how foolish the adage was, but it's fun to have a history of why it's so foolish at your fingertips.
shag
"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."
-- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws