Dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky at 90

DW ^ | 12/7/2018

[Yaelle]

Dang, I thought it was an obituary too.

[lurked_for_a_decade]

Gettin great mileage out of an old saw! See, Saw, Saw, See ... irony, Etcetera.

[YogicCowboy]

He is just another over-educated non-producer.

Yeah, he’s smart (though foolish), and has a big vocabulary. So what?

I scored 99%ile in English. A lot of big words to promulgate communistic propaganda does not favorably impress me.

[Borges]

Well linguistics is what he’ll be remembered for. His politics will be a sad footnote.

[Buckeye McFrog]

When he is gone he will be quickly forgotten IMO.

Unlike his fellow parasitic intellectual Howard Zinn, who inflicted enormous damage upon this country by infesting the history curriculum of every school with his rampant Marxist anti-Americanism.

[SunkenCiv]

Well, d***. I can still dream, can't I?

[Albion Wilde]

This horrible waste of biomatter is now gone to his deserved reward. But is it a safe space? I think not.

[Albion Wilde]

Dang. I got excited for a moment thinking this might be an obituary for that old scumbag.

I, too, was fooled. Heck.

[Borges]

Syntactic Struvctures is one of the most influential books of all time. Howard Zinn will be forgotten.

[Bonemaker]

So sorry you misinterpreted. My statement was directed at the article...not you. Apologies. PS my "meds" - Wild Turkey 101 - are fine, thank you!😎

[Buckeye McFrog]

Syntactic Struvctures has a limited release.
Zinn’s work has wormed its way into literally every textbook on this continent.

[Borges]

Indirectly though it’s hugely influential. It’s like Cybernetics. Few people actually read it but it’s omnipresent.

[palmer]

Linguistics is the one thing he actually knows something about. His theories have been a large influence on computer science as well.

The essence of the problem with his work is the nominalism of "deep structure". His hypothesis is essentially the homunculus hypothesis, the little man inside the man who understands deep structure. He has sort of dropped that hypothesis but still refuses to acknowledge that grammar is part of learning and understanding language, not some innate capacity for grammar.

I studied the Chomsky theory taught by a Chomskyite (also a leftist) in graduate studies and tried to make it work. It didn't.

[Pelham]

A friend of mine only knew Chomsky as a linguist and was really surprised when I told him Noam was some sort of communist. Apparently old Noam actually contributed something valuable as a linguist.

[Amberdawn]

Only the good die young?

[Amberdawn]

Non-producer is right-most of his books are written by his grad students!

[Yaelle]

It is true. I had to study him in linguistics too, and I had no idea about his politics back then either.

[Borges]

92 today.

[Borges]

He’s 93 today.

[Widget Jr]

The linguist is Daniel Everett his study and conclusions of the Pirahã language got Chomsky's riled up. Here are links to his homepage, Wikipedia entry, and Angry Words, By Tom Bartlett, Chronicle Magazine, on the Pirahã issue and, which is not complementary toward Chomsky.