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<DIV> <STRONG>Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real Language</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG> </STRONG>A conference to be held on April 26 and 27, 2003 at</DIV>
<DIV> Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania</DIV>
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<DIV> For the past 40 years progress in the study of language has been set back by the huge influence of Chomsky's model of studying language. Linguists, language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery about language of great scientific importance.</DIV>
<DIV> (See the pro-Chomsky article that appeared in the Science News section of the New York Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.)</DIV>
<DIV> The time has come for those of us who know better, to announce to the world that Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is basically empty and irrelevant. Rather than being a real study of real language, Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention of a made-up subject matter that has little relation to language and little relevance for it. It started out supposedly being an explanation about the discourse relations of sentences. Then it changed to an explanation of the psychological reality of sentences. When this proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated to being an explanation of biology; a biology that was impossible to study -- but great for speculation. For 40 years, it has retreated further and further away from the reality of language. Chomsky's model remains just an ingenious explanation in search of something to explain.</DIV>
<DIV> Once we renounce this irrelevant "method," we can go forward with the hard work of the empirical study of real language in real life.</DIV>
<DIV> Chomsky's biggest mistake from the beginning was to hold on tenaciously to the belief in the basic principle of traditional grammar that the basic organizing force of grammar is meaningless, mechanical "agreement." This mistaken view of grammar as meaningless and mechanical goes back to the theories of ancient grammarians, who were unable to explain the actual distribution of grammatical cases, and consequently invented the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a way to "explain" their ignorance of why forms were distributed as they were. (The late William Diver and his followers have done great work on this subject.)</DIV>
<DIV> Chomsky and his followers have taken this crucial mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined it, making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of all accounts of language.</DIV>
<DIV> All the complicated grammatical stuff that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on "explaining" are about aspects of grammar that are entirely irrelevant to what most adults and all children actually deal with. All the complicated grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans waste so much effort on are about phenomena that do not occur at all in spontaneous spoken language and are really the kind of stuff that only some college trained people sometimes encounter in written form. Real spontaneous spoken language is quite free of much of the "grammar" so dear to Chomskyans hearts. (See Jim Miller and Regina Weinart's work on this.)</DIV>
<DIV> This is another reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that Chomsky's theory is an explanation in search of something to explain.</DIV>
<DIV> We want people from a wide range of areas related to language present papers and join in our discussions. Only by having people from many different areas can we build up an overall picture of where language study should go. At the end of the conference we will try to put together a collective statement of the findings of the conference which we will make public.</DIV>
<DIV> If you are interested in participating, please contact Bruce Richman at </DIV>
<DIV> <A href="mailto:brucerichman@hotmail.com">brucerichman@hotmail.com</A> or Alexander Gross at <A href="mailto:language@sprynet.com">language@sprynet.com</A> </DIV>
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