The rest of us on Chomsky

[Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro]

At 10:55 -0500 16/12/99, david_tuggy at SIL.ORG wrote:

>     In the interests of Chomsky-discussion rather than Chomsky-bashing:
>
>     It seems clear that a number of people on this list think at least
>     some of Chomsky's ideas have been problematic for linguistics rather
>     than helpful.
>
>     I'd enjoy hearing from any who'd like to respond to questions of the
>     following sort.
>
>     What do you see as *the* most problematic/pernicious/unhelpful of
>     Chomsky's theoretical positions / basic analytical stances / posited
>     grammatical mechanisms / etc. ?
>
>     What's wrong with it? Why is it so bad?



Please forgive me for using the words of a member of this list, but I could
not state better than him:

"An undercurrent of hostility to generative grammar arises because many who
identify themselves as linguists believe that Chomsky wishes to define them
out of the field of linguistics" (Newmeyer, 1983: 138).

Of course, this is not the only problematic affair of Chomsky's theories
and attitudes at all, but I think it explains quite well some points of
view showed here.
In other words, it seems to me that the major problem is related, first, to
the fact that Chomsky's program has not been properly understaken and,
second, to the fact that Chomsky and, specially, Chomskyans tend to ignore
what is not Chomskyan. There is mainly a problem of communication.

Best regards,
Jose-Luis.