LSA (bashing)

[Gregory L Ward]

Carl Mills writes:

> Actually, many of us who went to LSA in the late 1970s and '80s
> discovered that the "genuine criticism" our papers received, most of
> it from Chomskyans, was so ill-informed and narrow minded that we
> stopped going.  So I don't blame Chomsky for not going.

A R writes:

> You know, Funknetters, I don't know that I'd call myself either
> a formalist or a functionalist.  But one of the most damning things
> I know about Chomsky is that he *never* goes to LSA, the one place
> where he might face genuine criticism.  A friend of mine, a formalist,
> used to argue that he simply never went to academic conferences.

To sum up: Chomsky doesn't go to the LSA because he'd face "genuine
criticism", and Mills doesn't go to the LSA because he faced 'genuine
criticism' ("in the late 1970s and '80s").  So the LSA is a conference
where the work of functionalists and formalists alike is criticized,
presupposing the presence of both.  Sounds like my kind of conference...
;-)

Gregory

_____
Gregory Ward
Professor and Chair

Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
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Evanston IL  60208-4090

e-mail: gw at nwu.edu
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