i was in a minor bike accident, so didn't have much time to read more, but I think this is a good way to look at it. and I think you are on to something about Kenneally -- if only because that is exactly the trauma I experienced in graduate school: the incessant demand to be so specialized. it took me a year to adjust to it, to accept that this was the demand and recognize that, as my diss advisor said, that i would be penalized for being so all over the place, for not having a clearly bounded research programme. didn't matter if it all made sense to me, it was indeed related and part of a research programme.
Obviously, I have no idea why she didn't take her linguistics Phud and get a job in academia or as a researcher somewhere. It could be like so many in academia, she couldn't move to where the jobs are. Or maybe, because she refused to be pigeonholed, her dissertation made her unhirable. (e.g., when I wanted to get a Phud in Social Science (not sociology) I was told that it would make finding a job much more difficult. Specialize, specialize, specialize. Narrow, narrow, narrow.)
The thing about studying this as the evolution of a language suite (and none of this means that there can't be a capacity for syntax (structure) that is innate (tho nod to miles on that one). Reading it from her perspective, it's hard to understand why these folks are so wound up about it. And it's bizzarre to see people so het up that they are certain Chomsky et al used the word "miracle" when they didn't... What is it about the issue that gets people so het up that they can't see, as Kenneally says, that there is so much they agree on. Well, obviously, the narcissism of small differences -- which is a phrase we use as snarky criticism but, in fact, it's a well-known sociological observation: in order to disagree at all there must be a foundational scaffolding of disagreement.
Anyway Chuck, if you want to send me your address, offlist, I'll send you a copy of the book.
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
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