Chomsky bashing

[Joan Bresnan]

Several of my friends at MIT have privately told me that they consider
it inappropriate that I spoke up against the public disparagement of
Tom Wasow and Stanford by a post-er to this list, and yet said nothing
about the disparagement of Noam Chomsky in the same message.  It
didn't occur to me that I should speak up for MIT as well as Stanford,
since they are certainly an articulate bunch there at MIT and could
reply even better than I.  But they point out that since I am the
current President of the LSA, my silence in regard to some of the
Chomsky bashing that passes for discussion on this list seems
signficant.

I would therefore like to urge the members of this list to consider
that we are all human beings, even the most famous (and the least
famous!) among us.  It is good fun to have a lively interplay of ideas
and arguments, and we all enjoy witticisms (especially at others'
expense)---but isn't it more enlightening to respect each other enough
to listen and answer with civility?

I have learned a lot from the intelligent postings and queries on this
list in reponse to my recent messages, and I very much respect those
of you who took the trouble to formulate such thoughtful and
interesting questions and criticisms.  I also have great respect for
Noam Chomsky, who was my teacher.

Even John Myhill's very high regard for Noam Chomsky is evident in his
postings--comparing Chomsky in linguistics to Einstein in physics,
referring to those of us who have explored alternative grammatical
architectures as "not as good as the original".  Chomsky is the
original, and we are all of us his students, directly or indirectly.

Joan
P.S. That "we are most of us" construction in my last sentence
surely shows that the V-movement analysis of Q-float under the
internal-VP subject analysis can't be right.

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Joan Bresnan    bresnan at stanford.edu           ______     _`\<,_    _`\<,_
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