ravi wrote:
>Albert knows Chomsky, but I am surprised by the above. His dialogues/debates with Foucault, Trivers, Lewontin, even >Dershowitz, points to a person who is not only careful with his analysis but also sensitive enough to not personalise the >argument (in most cases, except when facing Dershowitz, whose style is nothing more than personal attack).
I think what you write here is also true. Due to my laziness and not wanting to quote too much, I selectively quoted from Albert's memoir linked above. There were other passages in that section and others that point to Chomsky's integrity, lack of personal attacks, and strategicness in communication (for lack of a better phrase). For example (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17753 again):
[civility paragraph I cited above]
"But Noam does not denigrate others to build himself up. Likewise, Noam does not evidence the kind of condescending and self-promoting or guilt-salving concern for others that is all too frequent in many circles, particularly, I hate to say it, in progressive (politically correct) circles. Noam's caring is real. There is no pomp or circumstance. He does not weep wildly or gush effusively. But Noam remembers people's needs. He fulfills requests. He notices pain and tries to do real things to alleviate it. He is quite civil. You could even call Noam very conservative in daily life characteristics. If there is a sign to stay off a lawn, Noam obeys. Noam routinely abides almost all rules unless higher values take precedence. "
Also, I wanted to clarify what I said above, related to the charge of linguistic "intellectual hyperconservatism": it's not only sociolinguists and computational linguists who have problems with the theory of generative grammar. There are also semanticists, syntactians, morphologists, phonologists, phoneticians, historical linguists, etc, who think that generative grammar is the wrong way to go about analyzing language. Since I've not kept up with the literature since 2001, unfortunately I can't really say what proportion of each subfield works within the generative framework, what proportion works outside of it, and what proportion works in a blended theory.
Thanks for the welcomes to non-lurker status, and the pointer to the Richelle critique of the B.F. Skinner review, by the way.
-Aaron