Chomsky

john at research.haifa.ac.il john at research.haifa.ac.il
Mon Oct 25 12:56:56 UTC 2010


Yep, you're right, except I'm not sure of the genesis of the A over A
constraint. I'm pretty sure that it was Ross who made the observations
about the data.

Actually for me the one indispensable article of Chomsky's is 'On Wh-movement.'

But there is another point in this. Our exchange here has demonstrated
that to the extent that Chomsky's work has had lasting value, it's been because
he's been a conduit for other people's ideas. Nothing wrong with that, very few
of us can claim to have been more than that. But this is NOT the way that
Chomsky is popularly understood, and this has been because of the way he has
been packaged--neither he nor his acolytes refer at all to Jespersen, Saussure,
or Harris, and even Ross has been largely purged from their history. To the
extent that generative linguistics really does have cross-disciplinary prestige
(and this obviously depends upon one's perspective), it is due to people having
ascribed supernatural genius to Chomsky, and a crucial part of this program
has been consciously or unconsciously excising history. The major reason that
some people believe Chomsky to be a really original thinker is that Chomsky
himself has not referred to his own intellectual antecedents and his followers
have not thought to read for themselves.

This is directly related to the original posting of Fritz's which began this
discussion. Apparently, such is the nature of the generative enterprise that
its practitioners see fit to devote their energy to demonstrating--at least to
themselves-- that their own line of research is highly prestigious. This really
is weird, if you think about it, just as it is also weird Chomsky and his
acolytes behave as though (and apparently believe that) real linguistics sprung
full-grown from Chomsky's head. And these two peculiarities are, I would argue,
intimately related to each other--when Chomsky is no longer on the scene, the
advertising campaign around him will have to be redirected entirely to his
dynasty, so that its practitioners will be able to justify their own positions.
And the article which Fritz is commenting is obviously part of this.
John












Thanks John. But:
(1) It was Chomsky who re-introduced Jespersen's contrast into recent
linguistics, and argued the case so cogently.
(2) It was Chomsky who suggested the first island constraint (A over A)
and Haj Ross was just improving on his suggestion.
(3) It was Chomsky who introduced the contrast between knowledge and
behaviour into USA linguistics, and thereby triggered a lot of
psycholinguistic work; whether it's the same as langue/parole we could
debate, but as you say, it's similar.
(4) It was Chomsky who developed Harris's ideas with the help of
formalisms from maths.
And it was Chomsky who inspired a host of giants who later rejected some
of his main ideas: think of Bresnan, Ross, Fillmore, Lakoff, ...  I
doubt if any of them would agree that Chomsky's influence has been 100%
negative.

Dick

On 25/10/2010 09:44, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> Dick,
> (1) Chomsky's descriptive observations about nominalizations were not at all
> original--Jespersen made the same observations.
> (2) The observations about island constraints were from Haj Ross' thesis.
> (3) The competence/performance distinction is basically Saussure's
> langue/parole.
> (4) At Penn (where I studied) it was commonly acknowledged that the idea
> of generative grammar was lifted from Zelig Harris (Chomsky's mentor there),
> although I'm not sure that I believe this.
> John
>


>> Thanks Aya, Alex and Mark for your views. It's very odd for me to be
>> defending Chomsky, since I've spent most of my life criticising him, but
>> he's an ordinary human being just like the rest of us, with good points
>> and bad points. When I said he couldn't be all wrong, I actually meant
>> he wasn't all wrong - I can easily think of plenty of things that he did
>> that were right, and inspired good work.
>>
>> My personal list of achievements by Chomsky:
>> - His 1970 article on nominalisation, with its clear distinction between
>> gerunds and nominalisations.
>> - His insights into the structure of the English auxiliary system (but
>> not his morpheme-based analysis).
>> - His observations on island constraints in syntax - but not his
>> conclusions.
>> - His contrast between knowledge (competence) and behaviour
>> (performance) - but not his catch-all use of 'performance'.
>> - His idea of formal 'generative' grammar - but not his later
>> abandonment of the substance.
>> I dare say I could add some more if I thought a bit longer. These are
>> all things that he did which influenced my own (generally non-Chomskyan)
>> work, and which I know have influenced plenty of other non-Chomskyans.
>>
>> And I don't agree that the whole field is so dominated by his doctrines
>> that other views can't be heard - just think of all the books and
>> articles and university departments oriented towards other approaches,
>> from non-Chomskyan formal theories such as HPSG and LFG, to
>> non-Chomskyan informal work on discourse and the like. I'm sure some
>> people on this list both disagree with Chomsky and have tenure.
>>
>> Dick Hudson
>>

Quoting Henrik Rosenkvist <Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se>:

> Hi!
>
> Some quotes from Talmy Givֳ³n, that might be of interest:
>
> [...] after first trivializing the notions of theory and explanation,
> transformational-generative linguistics proceeded to trivialize the
> notion of data beyond all recognition. What followed was an orgy of
> empirical irresponsibility [...] with linguistics as a whole becoming a
> sad caricature of late medieval scholasticism (Givֳ³n 1979:26).
>
> "When this volume was written in the early 1980s, I thought it was
> possible to treat grammar responsibly, in terms of both its adaptive
> motivation and typological diversity, without an explicit account of the
> more formal aspects of syntactic structure. These aspects ג€“
> constituency, hierarchy, grammatical relations, clause-union, finiteness
> and syntactic control ג€“ were matters I took for granted but chose to
> defer. In retrospect, it was a bad mistake." (Givֳ³n 2001:xv)
>
> "[...] functions without structures are downright lame" (Givֳ³n 2001:xv)
>
> "The research program outlined here pays heed to Chomsky's exhortation
> to seek universal principles, while affirming the mental reality of
> syntactic structures" (2001:xvi).
>
> I think one can see true development here...
>
> Henrik R.
>



On 25/10/2010 09:44, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> Dick,
> (1) Chomsky's descriptive observations about nominalizations were not at all
> original--Jespersen made the same observations.
> (2) The observations about island constraints were from Haj Ross' thesis.
> (3) The competence/performance distinction is basically Saussure's
> langue/parole.
> (4) At Penn (where I studied) it was commonly acknowledged that the idea
> of generative grammar was lifted from Zelig Harris (Chomsky's mentor there),
> although I'm not sure that I believe this.
> John
>

> >
> > Quoting Richard Hudson <dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk>:
> >
> >
> >> Thanks Aya, Alex and Mark for your views. It's very odd for me to be
> >> defending Chomsky, since I've spent most of my life criticising him, but
> >> he's an ordinary human being just like the rest of us, with good points
> >> and bad points. When I said he couldn't be all wrong, I actually meant
> >> he wasn't all wrong - I can easily think of plenty of things that he did
> >> that were right, and inspired good work.
> >>
> >> My personal list of achievements by Chomsky:
> >> - His 1970 article on nominalisation, with its clear distinction between
> >> gerunds and nominalisations.
> >> - His insights into the structure of the English auxiliary system (but
> >> not his morpheme-based analysis).
> >> - His observations on island constraints in syntax - but not his
> >> conclusions.
> >> - His contrast between knowledge (competence) and behaviour
> >> (performance) - but not his catch-all use of 'performance'.
> >> - His idea of formal 'generative' grammar - but not his later
> >> abandonment of the substance.
> >> I dare say I could add some more if I thought a bit longer. These are
> >> all things that he did which influenced my own (generally non-Chomskyan)
> >> work, and which I know have influenced plenty of other non-Chomskyans.
> >>
> >> And I don't agree that the whole field is so dominated by his doctrines
> >> that other views can't be heard - just think of all the books and
> >> articles and university departments oriented towards other approaches,
> >> from non-Chomskyan formal theories such as HPSG and LFG, to
> >> non-Chomskyan informal work on discourse and the like. I'm sure some
> >> people on this list both disagree with Chomsky and have tenure.
> >>
> >> Dick Hudson
> >>
> >> --
> >> Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University
> >
>
>
> --
> Henrik Rosenkvist
> docent, nordiska sprֳ¥k
> Sprֳ¥k- och litteraturcentrum
> Lunds universitet
> Box 201
> 221 00 Lund
> tel: 046-222 87 04
> e-post: Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se
>
> Henrik Rosenkvist
> Associate Professor, Scandinavian Languages
> Dept. of Languages and Literature
> Lund University
> P. O. Box 201, SE-221 00 Lund, SWEDEN
> Tel.: +46 46 222 87 04
> E-mail: Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se
>
>
>
>




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