[lbo-talk] munchers

[shag carpet bomb]

At 08:48 PM 6/10/2009, Michael Smith wrote:
>On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:10:03 +0800 Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> 
>wrote: > >> As Kenneally points out, Chomsky ... Â didn't think linguistic 
>fieldwork > >> mattered to his claims. He poo'd poo'd anyone who bothered. 
>He has since > >> changed his mind on that from what I gather. > > > > One 
>would like to see specific references for these three (3) > > claims. > > 
>Applied Linguistics and language teaching were certainly outside > 
>Chomsky's main area of concern. Well, to be sure. But that's not quite the 
>same thing. > As a language teacher, I'd > say generative grammar is 
>mostly useless to me. As is the Fourier transform, one imagines. Which 
>says nothing uncomplimentary about language teaching or the Fourier 
>transform.  -- Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net 
>http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org ___________________________________ 
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

this is what i got in  my email. i can't figure out who's asking what.

the reference is Kenneally's book (there are some useful tools here: 
library[big building with books] and online, there's powell's books, 
amazon, barnes and nobel, as well as Google Books) and a New Yorker article 
that I once posted about here. i'm not going to transcribe from the book, 
too many mentions, but you can go to amazon, look in the index and then 
look at kenneally's book at google books to read relevant passages.

for his thoughts about field linguistics, pp 26, 31
for his changing theory, there's a section, pp 30ish IIRC. Then, there's a 
whole lengthy section on an article as well as a famous, fractious conference.

The article:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20021122.pdf

Kenneally spends several pages on the happenings and impressions from this 
conference, summarizing some of the responses.

(library: big building with books!)

It's fascinating reading for the in-fighting that was going on. Some people 
thought Hauser and Fitch had, to paraphrase Kenneally, hijacked Chomsky 
they were so outraged by what they thought was his complete reversal. 
Others, obviously long time chomsky critics, thought Chomsky was just 
selling his old wine in new bottles under the Hauser & Fitch label.

the other place was not Harper's as I'd mentioned, but NYer. Carrol posted 
about it and I hunted it and the related paper.

here,
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-April/008105.html

here,
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-April/008105.html

My query, here:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-April/008151.html

(I didn't understand how this could be so -- to be uninterested in 
empirical testing of his theory -- and thought maybe the article was biased.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto#editorsnote

"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. Chomsky's view had 
prevailed. Everett began to wonder if this was an entirely good thing."

you can read portions of Kenneally's book at Google.