Chomsky's endorsement

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

According to Chomsky (1967), theory is properly concerned only with an idealized voter-hearer in a completely homogeneous community (maybe a small town in Alaska lacking Inuits?), so red state/blue state distinctions are irrelevant and completely uninteresting. In this view, everyone who does not vote for Obama commits a boring, politically deviant act, perhaps explicable (if at all) as a performance error.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>

Date:         Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:57:50
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Chomsky's endorsement


At 7:40 PM -0500 10/21/08, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>  >So it depends on where you're voting.
>
>Do you think he could make a transformational rule to take this into
>account? Perhaps some kind of parameter for a general overarching
>voting principle?
>
>Scot

I don't know; the whole situation seems to call for an
optimality-theoretic solution, with the different constraints ranked
differently in different dialect areas.  Maybe I'm writing under the
influence of a talk I just heard Bill Labov give in which the
isogloss for the Northern Cities Vowel Shift is superimposed on
voting patterns from the 19th century to the current blue state/red
state (or actually blue counties/red counties) splits...

LH

>
>
>On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: Chomsky's endorsement
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 2:07 PM -0400 10/20/08, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>>I suspect Ralph Nader will get Chomsky's vote. Nader might well claim to be
>>>post-transformational. He is certainly running a minimalist campaign.
>>
>>  ;-)
>>  Actually, though, to my surprise, there's some data on this (tip o'
>>  the hat to Gregory Ward, who brought this to my attention):
>>
>>>>Chomsky says pick the lesser of two evils
>>>>
>>>>Noam Chomsky: People should vote against McCain and for Obama - but
>>>>without illusions
>>>>
>>>>See interview at -
>>>>
>>>><http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view>http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2593&updaterx=2008-10-20+10%3A50%3A58
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Chomsky says while it's true that the two parties are essentially
>>>>like factions of one party - the party of business - the
>>>>differences do matter to ordinary people. If you are living in a
>>>>swing state, there is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two
>>>>evils.
>>
>>  So it depends on where you're voting.
>>
>>  LH
>>
>>>In a message dated 10/20/08 1:53:22 PM, hwgray at GMAIL.COM writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>>   From the NYT:
>>>>
>>>>   "The description of Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president,
>>>>   as a '_transformational_ figure' by Mr. Powell ..."
>>>>
>>>>   Well, we know who's getting Chomsky's vote!
>>>>
>>>>   -Wilson
>>>>   --
>>>>   All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>>>   come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>>   -----
>>>>   -Mark Twain
>>>>
>>>>   ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>   The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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