Posted on 03/15/2003 4:29:32 AM PST by ultimate_robber_baron
Pariah Against A Prophet By Marc Miyake, Amritas.Com Many conservatives regard Chomsky as a linguist who falters out of his field. Unfortunately, they are giving Chomsky too much credit. Chomsky's linguistics are as warped as his politics. As someone with a PhD in linguistics, I think I am qualified to judge his professional credentials. Prior to Chomsky, linguists engaged in a lot of data collection to understand the diversity of human language. I'm vehemently anti-PC, but in this case, I think the word 'diversity' is justified. There's a lot out there, and someone's got to catalog it. However, Chomsky rejected this approach. He wanted to look into something 'deeper' (academese for 'pretentious and nonexistent'). So he invented something called 'universal grammar' which is somehow programmed into us at birth. Now it is obvious to anyone who's studied a foreign language that there is no such thing as 'universal grammar': there are a lot of differences between any two languages' structures. How does Chomsky account for these differences? He claims that we formulate 'deep structures' in our heads using 'universal grammar'. Then we use 'transformations' to change these (invisible, nonexistent) 'deep structures' into 'surface structures' (which are what we actually say and write). There are innumerable problems with this. For starters: 1. Where did this 'universal grammar' come from, and how did it end up becoming part of our biology? Not many Chomskyans are interested in evolutionary biology. 'Universal grammar' simply IS. (I myself suspect that there may be a universal grammar sans scare quotes, but I doubt that it has much in common with Chomskyan 'universal grammar'.) 2. How can we see this 'universal grammar' and 'deep structures' if they are hidden behind 'transformations'? 3. How can we see the 'transformations'? 4. How can any child learn the 'transformations' (which are extremely complex and often counterintuitive, even to university graduate students in linguistics)? Since no one can see 'universal grammar', 'deep structures', or 'transformations', one can imagine ANYTHING and create a maze of rules to convert ghost forms into what is actually being said and written. The Chomskyan approach to grammar is oddly English-like, even though many languages are UNlike English. This has absurd but dangerous consquences: 1. As a friend of mine pointed out, Chomsky, the enemy of "AmeriKKKa", is actually an ethnocentric advocate of imposing an English-like structure on all of the languages of the world. Imagine if some professor said that there was a 'universal religion' programmed into us at birth. What if this person were, say, Buddhist? How would he explain the diversity of faiths around the world? He would say that all deities are 'transformations' of the 'underlying Buddha', all religious codes (e.g., the Ten Commandments, Sharia) are 'transformations' of the 'underlying dharma (Buddhist law)', etc. But, you then ask, how could a Muslim knowing nothing of Buddhism be an 'underlying Buddhist'? The professor would answer: 'Underlying religion' just IS. Ridiculous? But that's how Chomskyans approach language. 2. This (let's be frank) *junk science* is very convenient for lazy academics who do not want to do real research but want to appear 'profound'. Chomskyans compete to create 'deep structures' that are the furthest from reality and the most complex 'transformations' possible. Never mind that neither of these non-entities can be depicted or tested except in a circular manner: "This transformation Z exists because it is needed to change deep structure X to surface structure Y. Deep structure X exists because if you take surface structure Y and undo transformation Z, you can see X underneath." I know of NO hard science (e.g., neurological) evidence for any of this. But the jargon sure looks impressive. This site parodies Chomskyan obscurantist writing by generating unreadable prose worthy of the master himself: http://rubberducky.org/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl 3. The combination of junk science and junk politics has made Chomsky an attractive - and unstoppable - juggernaut in the academic world. Academics - mostly left-wing to begin with - agree with his politics and assume his linguistics are as 'good'. Linguists who reject the Chomskyan paradigm such as myself are often either marginalized or shut out of the profession entirely. And not a few of Chomsky's linguistic opponents agree with his politics, I'd bet. I am the only linguist I know of who rejects both. The late Nicholas Poppe, a Soviet emigre who was a master of Oriental linguistics, had this to say about Chomskyan linguistics in the US (_Reminiscences_, p. 207): "Unfortunately, _true_ academic freedom, freedom to adhere to a scholarly theory of one's own choice, is often lacking in American universities, and scholars who do not comply with currently fashionable theories have little chance at a university. This makes an American university somewhat like a Soviet university: in the Soviet Union it is Marxism, in the United States it is, say, a currently obligatory method in linguistics." Poppe does not specify what the "current obligatory method" of lingustics was. It was, and is Chomskyanism. Edublogger Joanne Jacobs was forced to learn it - and she hated it: http://www.joannejacobs.com/ ... "Structural linguistics was required for a degree in English at Stanford. I put it off till my last semester; finally I had to take the class. It consisted of uncritical worship of Noam Chomsky. I kept disrupting class by asking questions: Why do we believe this is true? Just because Chomsky says so? How do we know he's right? Why is this class required?" She asks precisely the right questions. Chomsky is not a scientist. He is a prophet who demands that people believe him. I call him 'Noamuhammad'. Since his claims cannot be proved, they have to be taken on faith. And too many place their faith in him. Jacobs took her course in the mid-70s. Little has changed in a quarter of a century. Chomskyanism has been the dominant paradigm in linguistics for nearly forty years, and its major competitors share some of its weaknesses. Even if Chomsky's own version of nonsense dies out, others will continue to pump out 'junk science' that contributes little or nothing to language learning, language teaching, or intercultural understanding. And peer review has done nothing to stop the cult of Noamuhammad. Like James Hudnall said: "Science in this day and age has become one big pimp act for government grants ... 'Peer review' is just another word for log rolling. It's as useful as what David Duke thinks of Mein Kampf." Our tax dollars are funding Chomskyanism. And linguists like me are paying the price in another way. I have been looking for a professorship in linguistics for four years with very little success - a semester here and a year there amidst countless rejections. I don't attack Chomsky in my cover letters, interviews, etc. but I don't pretend to worship him either. Exile from academia is my reward. Is Chomsky a double fraud in both science and politics? I honestly don't know. I have never met him and don't want to - the urge to verbally attack him is too strong. Maybe he really believes what he says in one or both fields. But in any case, Chomsky is a troublemaker on two fronts. He is like Lenin and Lysenko rolled into one. If you liked this editorial, you can read more of Marc's work at Amaravati: Abode Of Amritas.
I think the political linkage is Marxism. Transformational grammar is like depicting an economic system by its results rather than its principles. It is just a simple form of linguistic deconstruction.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but my understanding of Chomsky's theory is that deep down, all human languages are equivalent to each other. This would imply the possibility of perfect translation, even by computers. So why, after decades of trying, are computer translations so horrible? And why is it so difficult to translate literature and poetry?
I mentioned in an earlier post that there is a specific genetic defect that supports Chomsky. There are people with a single gene variant who cannot learn the rule for regular verbs. They learn language just fine, but for them, all verbs are irregular and must be explicitely learned. In one way it supports Chomsky, but it also supports theories that assert that human language ability evolved from tiny, incremental variations, and is not simply an engine dropped in, completely developed.
What you are getting to is the basic question of whether Chomsky is right or not. All non-trivial synthetic language are equivalent in expressive power. So, either this has some bearing on natural language or it doesn't. But it is proven true.
The reason automatic translation is easy to trip up is that humans (except those translating Japanese or Chinese product instructions) understand what they are translating - they understand both the original and the translated result. No machine or mechanical process can be said to "understand" anything. Which goes back to the more basic question: Is there something going on in your head, called "intelligence" that cannot be implemented in a machine?
I don't think it has to be intelligence. It's more like motive. Doing a little thought experiment, consider the word "dog". Does it have the same meaning to a child playing with a golden retriever as it does for a child who has been mauled by a pit bull?
In my humble opinion, meaning is an attribute of consciousness and cannot be tokenized. Human language is motivated by the intention of influencing other people's behavior. The deep meaning and purpose of language is not syntactical. Because we live in a culture dominated by written language, and actors and pundits reading scripts, it is easy to lose track of pre-literate language. A lot of what goes on in conversation is "between the lines."
Unfortunately, he is even worse. He is a crank professional. These kinds of crackpots show up in every field, even theoretical physics, and their attributes are always the same - usually taking pot shots at a well establsihed central tenant of the field while calling its supporters names. But even the Chomskyan analysis of English is suspect. How do children learn invisible words and constructions that no one ever pronounces or writes - that never existed until Chomsky and his followers invented them? These invisible entities only 'exist' if you believe they exist.
I am not a Chomskyan, I am a physicist and don't have a dog in this fight. I do have a dog in the fight of those who think that they can reject empirical science because they don't like its author. And I assure you that this guy is a nutcase. You can tell. He does not state that thus and such is a theory of Chomsky which is demonstrably false based on the following observations. Instead he attacks "Chomskians." It is like the folks around here who attack "Darwinians." Chomsky's theories can stand or fall on their own without the baggage of unnamed followers who hold unspecified things that we can never check up on.
Furthermore, this passage has problems. I have also watched my child learn English. The Chomsky question is a sound question, namely, why does my child know how to correctly put together complex English sentances, and without benefit of a PhD in linguistics. It must be because there is something about the human language facility that directs that language works in certain ways and not others. Perhaps my 13 year old is also a Chomskian. I won't refute that argument. I would add that language is culture is history is politics....Chomskyans have not only relegated language into a mystical pseudoscience of invisible 'underlying' forms, but have also robbed language of its context. What is language without its past, without the society that used it, cultivated it, or in some cases, abandoned it? Give me the wealth of Sanskrit philology any day over sterile speculations about phantom pronouns.
This is bullshit as an attack on underlying structure. Of course only an idiot would hold that the meaning of language can be stripped of context. I don't think that Chomsky tried to answer the question "what does language mean?" This would fall into the what is the meaining of "is?" trap. Again, he "merely" asks the difficult enough, but much more workable question about whether there are deeper structures in common among languages. The existance of such common structures can be demonstrated empirically - i.e. by demonstrating common structures in known languages - which is all that any empirical science can do - physics included.
The author may find this dull, boring, uninteresting stuff. He is entitled to that opinion. But that does not mean that Chomsky is wrong, or that he is immoral because he has followers called Chomskians.
what is this guy's problem? For instance I have a passing familiarity with Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Only an idiot would claim that there are no rules for transforming the sounds of a word in one language into one of the other lanaguages. There are similar rules to get from German to Old English. They are too obvious to be discounted.
You are BS'ing. This is not an example of anything.
Well, you can go in either direction: from the deep structure to the surface structure or from the surface structure to the deep structure.
By using the constructs, I could figure out where the verbs and nouns and other parts of speech were without a dictionary to tell me the actual meaning.
That is the difference between syntax and sematics. So you were able to tell where the verbs and nouns were. Any grammar will do that. It doesn't have to be a transformational grammar. That's also the difference between a dictionary and a set of grammar rules.
It is a way to explain to non-linguists how a transformational grammar works. It's also a way to explain how most linguists have bought into an absurd theory.
There is no evidence that this "deep structure" exists. The BS is with Chomsky and his followers.
Well I am not a linguist. I am a physicist. I know a little bit about linguistics and a whole lot about silly numerical examples that purport to demonstrate something but demonstrate nothing. Yours demonstrates nothing.
A better example would have been a Captain America Decoder Ring. You put a message in and you get a message out - same way every time. Whether there is such a decoder ring - a transformational grammar is a matter to be proven or disproven through empirical demonstration. Contending you are playing craps instead, is not an argument.
I have tried to give Chompsky credit where it is due and point out where I think his theory is limited. So far no one else has spoken to this.
Shouldn't linguistics be dealing with human language rather than computer languages? Shouldn't it address the problem of translation and the problem of meaning?
Chomsky is (was) brillant as linguists go. How brilliant can any linguist be? There has to be some point at which these precious academics are excpected to produce something practical.
Some of these posts just make my eyes roll. If a linguist cannot construct a coherent, lucid sentence, who can? If a linguist doesn't want to communicate properly, who does? Goes to show how useless is about 95% of the discipline. Outright pernicious, too, if you consider the influence that some of these babbling nimrods have over language education in the schools.
What a simple, mechanical and outdated view you must have of transformational grammar! It is absurd to believe that the human mind transforms even the exact same statement exactly the same way twice in a row. Language and meaning IS a floating crap game, and they change from second to second, based on our moods, our last thoughts, and in general our most recent contextual milieu. Trying to freeze meaning into a static set of formulas and rules is iffy at best. As for the universality of a universal grammar, I believe you would be well served in breaking away from the Europpean mindset and study Chinese or Japanese. They are conceptually *QUITE* different from English or even Finnish. Your comment, for example:
For instance, grammar within a particular language and melieu is pretty much fixed, varying little from person to person. Except among the ill-educated, for instance, there is little statistical about the rule of subject-verb agreement as to number and person.
Japanese and Chinese typically don't distinguish either person OR number and of course subject verb agreement in this case is absolutely a moot point -- except when the the semantic intention dictates that they be expressed by other means...
Tell them the FReeper's name is AmishDude. And he's still not impressed. On the academic food chain, they're still herbavores.
I don't know about
Chomsky's history, but I
know such a twist hit
behavorism.
Originally, many
behavorists balked
at the "creative
writing" parts of Freudian
analysis, where
a therapist can
pretty much see anything
the therapist is
creative enough
to imagine and fit in.
Behavorists fought
to affirm the role
of individuals in
their own behavior.
Behavorists fought
to marginalize input
that was subjective.
But, then, over time,
behavorist got pegged as
de-humanizing
monsters, mis-treating
humans as ersatz robots --
the opposite of
their original
motivations. Pop science
often flip-flops life
in a market quest
or in carefully contrived
defense of dogma...
Can transformational grammar analyze the meaning of this quote, found on another thread: "If the phone don't ring you know it's me."
If it can't detect the underlying meaning, what good is it? And if we were to agree that it does have some useful function, why hasn't it progressed in the last 40 years?
I'm going to contine asking this question until the Chomsky supporters respond.
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