Noam Chomsky: Fake Linguist

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'?

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.

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:

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:

"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."

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.

"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."

Many other subjects could be substituted for "linguistics" in the above paragraph, and it would still be true.

The author wrote:"Imagine if some professor said that there was a 'universal religion' programmed into us at birth...."

The truth is that many of us believe that a Creator in fact **did** create us, and that that Creator put in us a sense that He exists.

Once again, the author *may* have something valid to say, but it's obscured by poor logic, an anti-godly perspective, an appeal to his expertise as a "Ph.D., a subtle arrogance....

> Linguistics is mildly interesting, but of limited application.

Yikes! This in a place
where Ayn Rand is respected...
Language is a tool

of cognition. Thought
is language! Understanding
linguistics can help

understand thinking.
Can anything have a more
broad application?!

We can't afford every "serious field of study" that passes itself off as such. The universities are already a hideously expensive hotbed of fraud and waste and dithering.

Understanding the inner workings of language acquisition is a fine thing...until I see those same linguists trying to prevent immigrant children from learning English due to some hairbrained "sociolinguistic" theory construct--or deconstruct. We've come a long way from the Oxford philolgists like Tolkein--now we have bossy nannies with lofty-sounding degrees formulating policies which should be left to local administrations.

And nattering on about the difference between "transformational" grammar and "generative" grammar is a fine enough hobby. But I'm not enough of a true believer to endow it with much seriousness.

As for there being no glut, I'd like some fries with that.

I suspect many Freepers are into computer science, and Chomsky may have contributed to the analysis of computer languages. I have long suspected that this is the underlying reason for the failure of AI.

Chomsky did make some very important contributions to CS with his theories on grammars, but as I like to point out, John Backus was working on virtually the same thing at virtually the same time, to the point where it's not at all unreasonable to say that he independently discovered much of what Chomsky did.

I'm not sure that the failures of AI are really traceable to Chomsky, though - I think it's more that the problem has turned out to be much deeper and harder than anyone originally thought it would be. Really, nobody, IMO, has adequately framed the "problem" of artificial intelligence, let alone "solved" it.

Ironically, it's the evangelicals (through Wycliffe and SIL), who are leading the world in the effort to collect, catalogue, and "save" the diversity of languages (and hence, cultures) in the world. This always strikes my funnybone.

I don't see anything "ironic" about that. Evangelicals are a diverse bunch -- from those whose lives are a shambles and who recognize their severe need of a kind and forgiving Savior, to those who are keen on using all their energies and creativity to explore and honor the wonder of what the Lord has created. The father of the modern computer, Pascal, is but one example of many who fit into this second category.

I guess I'm a bit of both: one who daily recognizes my need of a forgiving Savior, and at the same time I'm bent toward using all my energies and creativity to relish the Lord and His creation (which includes the mystery of language)....

You are as bad as all of the other Chomsky detractors. His politics is despicable, but his science is not. If you want to be taken seriously you also need to take seriosly the fundamental contributions to what we regard as modern thoght.
-AJ-

On the other hand, a descriptively adequate grammar is unspecified with respect to irrelevant intervening contexts in modern thought.
Furthermore, your earlier analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of features cannot be arbitrary in the requirement that branching is not tolerated within the dominance scope of a complex symbol.
By combining adjunctions and certain deformations, this selectionally introduced contextual feature is, apparently, determined by the system of base rules exclusive of the lexicon. However, this assumption is not correct, since the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition does not readily tolerate a general convention regarding the forms of the grammar.
To characterize a linguistic level as a subset of English sentences is interesting on quite independent grounds it is not to be considered in determining a parasitic gap construction.

It can never be wrong because it is circular. Anything can be fixed by just one more transformation.

And therein lies the link between his linguistic approach and his politics.

You're confusing, I believe, a system of descriptive phonetic and grammatical analysis with the philosophy of rhetoric. I suspect you think linguistics is something other than what it is. Language is a tool of ideas, and you learn to wield it chiefly from long practice actually composing and using. In metaphor, you don't play a violyn by studying the constuction of the instrument.

Chomsky is a moron. Surface structures are thoughts, Deep structures are electromagnetic brain waves, and universal grammar is nothing more than the common way in which our synapses interconnect.

Do you really believe what you wrote, now that you've had time to re-read it and think about what you wrote? Are you really that much of a materialist? Do you really believe that all we are is a collection of electrically charged pieces of matter, and that there's no meaning beyond what we can touch? What a tragic and uncreative and boring and meaningless and hopeless existence if that's what you believe!

There is more, my friend. There is a Meaning-Giving.

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).

I'm not a linguist and I don't even play one on the internet. My only thought on the matter is that the author's description of the complexity and convolutedness of Chomsky's linguistics made me think of how the movement of planet's could be satifactorily explained by Ptolomy's complicated system of circular orbits with "epicycles". Now we describe them much more simply as elipses. If Chomsky's explanations are too complicated (which I do not have the background to judge), perhaps it is because they are circles where they should be elipses.

Your ignorance is showing.

Linguistics is a sound rigorouse and valuable field of study.

Ah, sweet, sweet irony.

It may be rigorous(e), it may be valuable. So is wiring a house for electricity. The fundamental question is, "Is it intellectually challeging?" Or, equivalently, "What kind of mathematics is involved?"

I think one of the points of this discussion is that before Chomsky, linguistics was not a hard science. It was like anthropology. Now it is connected to the theory of computation.

This will, of couse, not be satisfactory to those who believe something other than, or in addition to, computation is going on in your head. But it is no longer true that lingusitics is second-rate philosophising.

The EXACT SAME PRINCIPAL is at work with Politically Correct speech. The goal of PC is to make it impossible to even say something that goes against the PC agenda, since the words and concepts themselves no longer even exist. A scary example of the totalitarian attack on freedom of thought...

You're a Chomskyphobe ;-)

I think that Chomsky and other academics in 'soft disciplines' who come up with this kind of stuff can be explained by simply observing the marketing/human resources/community outreach departments at any large company. Ninety percent of what these people do is nonsense and they know it. However, they are excellent at justifying every bit of it as completely crucial to the company's survival.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.