Alternatives to Chomsky

John Myhill john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL
Thu Dec 9 13:42:11 UTC 1999


While I agree fully with Bruce Richman's assessment of the value of Chomskyan
linguistics, I disagree that we should spend much effort on `simply
explain(ing) why the entire Chomskyan method must be thrown away.'
Chomskyism is a religion, not an intellectual program. It is not something
which can be rationally argued with. Chomsky himself does not even attempt
to give rational arguments for the allegedly sweeping paradigm changes he
seems compelled to make every decade or so to give the appearance of
progress--he simply says that the new approach seems more attractive, or
something like that, and that's enough to change the minds of his apostles.
Several years ago I challenged funknetters to identify themselves if they
had been convinced for or against a Chomskyan position after graduate
school. Although I repeated this challenge several times in the context of
a heated debate which many people were involved in, and although many
people responded to other points in my messages, only a single person
(Ellen Prince, towards Chomskyan linguistics) reported having had such an
experience. I concluded that any convincing arguments against Chomsky must
be directed at people who have not yet completed graduate school (in any
case, Chomskyan devotees have a tendency to stop doing active research and
detach from research affairs when they have been away from The Master for a
few years, so I would not say 'conversions' like, e.g. Tom Wasow are worth
anything). And since almost all graduate schools now are already clearly
pro-Chomsky or anti-Chomsky (I include places such as Stanford as
'pro-Chomsky', although some of the faculty members have made names for
themselves as professional gadflies), there is no realistic way to compete
for the loyalties of graduate students either.

Arguing with Chomsky is a waste of time. I'm all for alternative
approaches, but
Chomskyism is only going to die with Chomsky--and the man is 71 years old.

John



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