Posted on 09/26/2006 10:16:14 AM PDT by NutCrackerBoy
Noam Chomsky's popularity owes little or nothing to the eminent place that he occupies in the world of ideas. That place was won many years ago in the science of linguistics, and no expert in the subject would, I think, dispute Prof. Chomsky's title to it.
He swept away at a stroke the attempts of Ferdinand de Saussure and his followers to identify meaning through the surface structure of signs, as well as the belief, once prevalent among animal ethologists, that language could be acquired by making piecemeal connections between symbols and things. He argued that language is an all-or-nothing affair, that we are equipped by evolution with the categories needed to acquire it, and that these categories govern the "deep structure" of our discourse, no matter what language we learn. Sentences emerge by the repeated operations of a "transformational grammar" that translates deep structure into surface sequences: As a result, all of us are able to understand indefinitely many sentences, just as soon as we have acquired the basic linguistic competence. Language skills are essentially creative, and the infinite reach of our understanding also betokens an infinite reach in what we can mean.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Well, gee...Clinton was plugging Richard Clarke's book and Chavez was plugging Noam Chomsky's book. Wow! What a coincidence...
Even his syntax theories have been largely discredited (including by himself) and these have set back the study of human language fifty years as his sycophants drowneded out nearly all legitimate research.
Idiot in genius clothing.
His ideas about tranformational grammar are "luminiferous ether" designed to make him look more mathematical and therefore more scientific. It will take years to rid the field of useless Universal Grammar scholars just like it will take years (if ever) to rid academia of socialists even though their ideas are on (under) the rubbish pile of history.
"For the sigificance of a symbol is not that it is a disguised indication of something that is generally known but that it is an endeavor to elucidate by analogy what is as yet completely unknown and only in the process of formation." C. G. Jung
OK, Smoke that Chomsky you piker.
We should have stayed with the Aristotelian categories, but since Kant everybody is making up his own categories, not all at the level of Whitehead but all differing in detail, which has resulted in six billion blabbering apes no two of whom are blabbering about the same thing.
Everybody is plugging everybody else's book and there is a universal call of existential aengst there. Enough progress, we have achieved the ultimate Answer! Stop right here!
I was surprised Scruton so unconditionally accepted the validity of Chomsky's linguistics work, even though I know him (Scruton) to be enamored of Bertrand Russell.
The guy is well known in the field of Computer Science theory, he laid a lot of groundwork back in the day. Every CS undergrad learns about reducing regular languages to Chomsky Normal Form AKA CNF.
He's still a leftist turd.
I studied Chomsky's works and partook in various phonemic inventories. Math is the more perfect language yet there are no absolutes--a thoroughly fascinating realm of nonsense.
This is a pretty highbrow thread....we need more like it.
I take it that epluribus you see a connection between the nonsense in linguistics with his nonsense in politics? Or is that just coincidence?
If you could put a short bibliography for the generally educated but non-linguist reader about why Chomsky's linguistics are wrong, that would be greatly appreciated.
I think we would all appreciate a bit of elaboration on the Aristotelian and Kantian categories, as well. What is the Aristotelian source on that? Metaphysics? And Kant...is that Critique of Pure Reason? Not that any of those are easy reads, but anything you could do to narrow the focus here would be welcome.
I take it that epluribus you see a connection between the nonsense in linguistics with his nonsense in politics? Or is that just coincidence?
That would be a big 10-4 good buddie. (to be less highbrow)
His approaches have always - always - been about self- agrandizement through mystical notation.
He absolutely hates the idea that languages are somewhat random in how language elements end up in reality and wants to shoehorn them into predetermined theoretical boxes.
If the box does not fit, then every decade or so he redefines the box. He says he is tuning his theory with intelligent refinements but what he does is say "oh a box? I meant this stretchy-bag here, see it fits now, uhhuh, always knew it had to be a bag. Didn't you read that between the lines in my earlier work Syntactic Boxes XYZ triple omega theory? Well my advanced students would have forsaw this interpretation, Boxes, after all, nobody really believed that...
(fast forward ten years)
Stretch Bags? Well, from a theoretical view they are a correct but inaccurate model of what I am calling a modifiable non-flat box matrix - so you see in fact they are boxes after all but just not the kind of box anyone less intensely studying this would see... " and it goes on.
I could build a resume but google "post-chomsky", "post-chomskyan" and you will find some and there have been arguments for a non-transformational grammar (Hudson et al) for years now. Language and Independence (Sampson) is a good title. Challenging Chomskey (IIRC) is all about facing off in the garden of logic rather than hype.
MIT has a course about Bloomfield (real american linguistics giant) and other non-Chumpskyites that the students call "the Bad Guys".
They know its garbage but its Their Garbage and they defend it like the French Revolution.
It's a bit like the Intelligent Design paradigm it's modeled after. Looks brilliant; leads nowhere. Says nothing useful about human language or communication.
Actually, anything practical or useful about real human communication is shouted down as distracting, inappropriate to Linguistics and nonconformant to the "Standard Model".
And I do believe his academic nonsense directly leads to his political kindergarten style. He demands the world take for granted his blustering blather in spite of concrete and iron evidence directly contradicting it. But in politics he never skewers himself, like he did with his earlier transformational grammar ideas. Probably just to get more attention.
I'm sure he never believed he was truly wrong about anything. This is typical of people who spend too much time on university campi and not enough in the real world. (I love campi and school, actually GO UM! but love the real world a lot more)
That would be a big 10-4 good buddie. (to be less highbrow) His approaches have always - always - been about self- agrandizement through mystical notation.
Chomsky was wrong about linguistics for the same reason that Minsky was wrong about Artificial Intelligence - they were profoundly mistaken about the primacy of symbol manipulation in human cognition. What you call self-aggrandizement I take as the desire to carve out and lead research programs -- an ambition they hold in common with scientists whose programs were not failures.
Chomsky's history as a political intellectual is inseparable from his mental illness. He's crazy and imaginative and perceptive and messianic. His subversive idealism is irresistable to the many who crave winning out over all the supposed fools.
If I have to draw a parallel between his failures as a linguist and political visionary, I would say it is in the Cartesian quest to supply a revolutionary, correct system. The modernist who wishes to instruct has to overcome that fatal flaw of the Enlightenment.
:)
His subversive idealism is irresistable to the many who crave winning out over all the supposed fools.
Wow. You have distilled the essense of the 'rat party. Utterly.
I pay more than enough syntax...
"Chomsky's history as a political intellectual is inseparable from his mental illness."
This is probably the main reason I never read more than a few sentences of this fella's writing! I have many better things to do with my time. If somebody can't write whereby all can understand, then I'm just not interested because the chances are excellent, a puffed-up bully masquerading as someone who is smart exists in those dern pages...
"I would say it is in the Cartesian quest to supply a revolutionary, correct system. The modernist who wishes to instruct has to overcome that fatal flaw of the Enlightenment."
Conservatism properly understood would supply Chomsky and others a better starting point....you are right on. I have not heard modernity described like that, but you are correct.
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