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.
As Goebbels knew so well, and as Orwell exposed so completely, the totalitarian system requires a "new" totalitarian man, one who is unable to even frame in his own mind a disenting thought.
The Soviets were adept at this, and it shows with the careful grooming of words by the Left(example? how about the neat trick of replacing the word NAZI everywhere with the word FASCIST. Why? Obvious! NAZI stands for National Socialist - by replacing with FASCIST you hide the evidence that Hitler was a rabid SOCIALIST, and in NO WAY a capitalist. If Hitler and Stalin were both SOCIALISTS, gives the movement a bit of bad odor, sort of like everything French, n'est ce pas?).
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...
Kudos for posting this article. It provides a succinct and powerful counter to Chomsky, and was great food for (free) thought...
Among your arguments you have resorted to putting words in the mouths of others and then beating them over the head for it - a cheap liberal trick. You have resorted to namecalling - another cheap liberal trick. And you have smeared them with false facts - another cheap liberal trick.
I find the question of how the structure of language reflects the organization of the brain to be a fascinating endeavour. I would hope that you do to - or are you one who has no curiosity about the world?
Brilliant!
Sure he can. Applying an inappropriate and counterproductive paradigm to human language stifles both linguistics and computer science. If you think an analysis of human language that ignores connotation and emotion is actually a study of language, then something's wrong.
Chomshy's linguistics is like Bible Code or the game of casting out nines. It can never be wrong because it is circular. Anything can be fixed by just one more transformation.
Problem is, it sheds absolutely no light on the physical implementation of the mind. It predicts nothing, adds nothing to our understanding.
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.
Yes, Noam, we all use the same brain cells to generate the same electrical activity which, with repetition, becomes thoughts that are formed differently by people speaking different languages.
Major drug use involved here, I suspect...
Except that Chomsky predicts that these kinds of rules are embedded in the mind and do not need to be explicitly learned.
The antidote to liberal ideology is not conservative idiology [sic]. It is rational debate. If you had even passing familiarity with several rather unrelated languages you would also be struck by the similarities in structure between them. For instance, we and the Arabs use prepositions in similar fashion? Why is that? I guess because of fundamental features of human cognition, which is what a "universal" grammar is expressive of. I am curious about the explanation for these things. I presume that you are not. That is fine - but don't count yourself a member of the republic of ideas, even conservative ones.
If one were to believe the great Alan Bloom, the language of the Marxists is a kind of educated German that uses enormously long words that none of the rest of us understand. So, that is the grammar that Noam Chomsky would be trying to impose on us, I suppose. Personally, I have seen no evidence of that.
Linguistics is mildly interesting, but of limited application. Sort of like theoretical physics--if there was an eager need for this knowledge there wouldn't be such a glut of unemployed PhDs. As for being linguistics being rigorous, that's only is in comparison to the other social sciences, which themselves verge on seances and astrology.
I think that Chomsky's real question is, how is it that most people know these things by age 3 without having to have a PhD in linguistics in order to understand it all? It is a very simple question with very profound consequences. But that is often the case with simple questions. Einstein asked a simple question and got the special and general theories of relavitity as a consequence.
In a way this is true, but it could only serve some political purpose if you think the entire foundation of sythetic languages, computabilty, Turing machines, etc. is not universal and equivalent and interchangable.
As it is, there is no alternative to the way Chomsky imposed a framework on what had been a branch of philosophy - there is no other consistent symbolic system for describing linguistics, and there are good reasons to think there can't be.
Much of the linguistics that I have read is every bit as rigorous as the experimental physics research that I am familiar with.
And while I am an experimental physicist, your ignorance about physics is showing as well.
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.
I could tell it was going to be bad when it started off with the author appealing to the validity of his argument by referring to his Ph.D. Whoopey! I've earned two master's degrees, one in communication with an emphasis in ESL, but that doesn't mean much beyond the fact that I was able to spend money and time for my eduction.
This is a pretty poorly written attack piece.
"Universal grammar" is a fascinating concept! I'm a computer software developer, working on voice applications, and any understanding I can gain on "grammars" and so on is very helpful to my craft.
Weak article....
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.
Isn't that exactly what the author of this article did? I agree with your argument, Mamzelle, that propping one's argument up with a reference to one's degrees is weak.
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.