Chomsky: Obsolete?

[Robin Campbell]

When some new approach to a subject comes along, it deserves a bit of
slack. Let's see where it goes. Chomsky didn't get much to begin with. In
ill-natured debates James Sledd avoided outright libel by remarking only
that 'The academic garden was full of real toads with imaginary jewels in
their heads', while Charles Hockett gently pointed out that MIT Ph.D
theses would be 'as worthless as horoscopes'. But Chomsky's ideas
soon got plenty slack: linguistics departments filled up with followers
who swept out the infidels, and psychology departments drank thirstily
from the new well, and forced their students to do likewise. But after
some time has passed it's important to take stock, and the right question
to ask is 'Where are the good outcomes?'. Have the sick been healed? Are
children better educated? Are there benefits to art or literature? Has the
brass head spoken?

Well, it's 50 years now since the publication of Syntactic Structures.
Where are the good outcomes? For the study of language acquisition, for
example? Is it time for the S.S. Generative Enterprise to boldly go into
the nearest convenient black hole? I suspect it may be.

Robin


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