Criticizing Chomsky

[Alexandre Enkerli]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 17:04, Leila Monaghan <leila.monaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Scanning the web for Chomsky's views on science (I'm being a good girl and
> trying to work on our panel at the AAAs now rather than later), I came
> across his Wikipedia page.  There was a section for criticism but no one had
> actually filled it in.  The paragraph below is the start of my critique
> (ripped off from my intro) but y'all are invited to play.  Unleash that
> articulate pent up rage against the Chomsky machine!  I haven't put in any
> refs yet.  Will try to when I get to them in my intro.
>
> All best, Leila
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Criticism
> Since the 1960s, linguistic anthropologists have been critical of Chomsky's
> emphasis on competence rather than performance. In 1972, Dell Hymes pointed
> out that Noam Chomsky's (1965) idea that linguistic theory should the "ideal
> speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech community" ignored the
> reality of the actual language learning situations. "From the standpoint of
> the children we seek to understand and help, such a statement may seem
> almost a complete declaration of irrelevance" (Hymes 1972 [2001]: 53). Hymes
> and other linguistic anthropologists argue instead for language models that
> emphasize the interaction between sociocultural environment and the use of
> language rather than language as an attribute of the brain.
Nice!
This might even be a good occasion to get other language scientists to
understand that we don't dismiss Chomsky's work outright (most of us
probably agree that language acquisition happens in patterned ways,
regardless of parents' attempts to correct their children's speech).
Rather, that we have serious issues with several dimensions of
Chomsky's work, including the fact that it has been almost hegemonic
in linguistics department in the last few decades of the 20th Century.
Now, this last one may be a personal reaction. The general point
remains that we're not simply disrespectfull to a major figure in
linguistics but trying to put that linguist's work in perspective.
Apart from the performace/competence issues, we could add something
about epistemology. There we could bring in the critiques and
criticisms from formal theory. In his "eskimo hoax" collection, Pullum
had some rather useful quotes. And there are philosophers who have
been quite effective at taking Noam to task for some of his "deeper"
claims. I don't have a good reference handy but somebody else probably
has one.
A Chomsky-trained generativist linguist who had been quite vocal about
numerous flaws in NC's work is Denis Bouchard, at UQÀM. Maybe he might
contribute something to the Wikipedia entry...