> On Jun 9, 2009, at 6:29 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> > "Theory of mind" is a very large topic. C's
> > program was to characterize the human
> > language faculty -- just one component among many of "mind", if
> > you want to talk in those terms.
>
> It's not so much what
> terms I want to talk in ;-), but the terms that might help
> differentiate Chomsky's work (as I see it) from what might have been
> traditional linguistics before him
Yes. Sorry if _I_ sounded snarky -- didn't mean to.
This is very much the right track. Chomsky's approach was strikingly novel wrt earlier approaches to linguistics -- which is not to disparage Grimm or Saussure or Pokorny or Thurneysen or Wackernagel or Jones at all, whose work was and remains awe-inspiring and indispensable.
What was novel about Chomsky's project was the attempt to gain a better understanding of whatever it is in our heads that enables us to speak in the first place.
--
Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org