linguistic questions

[Ronald Kephart]

At 6:02 PM -0400 4/17/03, hmfaller at umich.edu wrote:

>And thank goodness my invocation of snot caused such a flurry of
>activity. I actually was thinking about Jakobson in comparison to
>Chomsky (for all his good politics)...

But didn't Chomsky grow up speaking both English and Hebrew? As I
understand it, his parents were both involved in the movement to
revitalize Hebrew, his father was a respected scholar of Hebrew, and
Chomsky himself taught Hebrew as a young fellow and wrote his masters
thesis on Hebrew. So I think it's a bit unfair to claim Chomsky as
"monolingual," whatever else you might think of him.

And, while I'm here, I also disagree with whoever stated that all
people who have language are linguists. I do agree that people have
what I would call folk theories of language, and also culture, and
probably even digestion. But I don't think that makes them linguists,
or cultural anthropologists, or gastroenterologists.

Hiding under my desk now...

Ron

--
Ronald Kephart
Associate Professor
English & Foreign Languages
University of North Florida
http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart