
Chomsky, Wolfe and me - Thevet
https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-is-not-everything-that-noam-chomsky-said-it-is
======
abalone
_> Most recently, the disagreements in the field have pulled the American
author Tom Wolfe into the fray, with a new book... This has changed the debate
a bit, engaging many more people than ever before, but now it’s centred around
Wolfe, Noam Chomsky – and me._

What a self-aggrandizing distortion. A non-specialist author writes a
research-free book thumbing his nose at Chomsky (also, Darwin), gets some
press coverage "engaging many more people than even before" \-- except for,
you know, linguists -- and now the "debate" is "centred" around this guy who
was mentioned in the book.

Give me a break. Here's one of many takedowns of Wolfe, this one by
_Scientific American_.[1] And here's a takedown of Everett, who basically is
the only expert on the sole, inaccessible language he claims pokes holes in
Universal Grammar, so may be fabricating results.[2]

[1] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/tom-
wolfe-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/tom-wolfe-
challenges-chomsky-s-theory-scientific-american-does-it-better/)

[2] [http://www.chronicle.com/article/angry-
words/131260](http://www.chronicle.com/article/angry-words/131260)

~~~
e2e8
Your [2] summarizes the whole situation evenhandedly. Far from being a take
down of Everett, it ultimately comes down slightly on his side of the
controversy.

~~~
abalone
It literally ends with Everett's MIT collaborator surprising him by saying the
data "falsified" his theory and another researcher noting that there was some
embedding, contrary to Everett's theory.

~~~
e2e8
This is a silly thing to argue about, but the article ends with a 5 paragraphs
on how "Everett is far from the only current Chomsky challenger." And Everett
has his own explanation of why his ideas still stand. It is a good article and
people who are casually interested in the topic should read it.

~~~
abalone
I agree it's worth reading. But you're conflating Everett, whose theory does
not hold up well to peer scrutiny, with everyone else who thinks there are
problems with Generative Grammar, which is teased but not actually examined by
the article.

------
amasad
Worth mentioning this refutation to Daniel Everett's argument by linguist at
the University of Toronto published on Medium:
[https://medium.com/@dan.milway/dont-believe-the-rumours-
univ...](https://medium.com/@dan.milway/dont-believe-the-rumours-universal-
grammar-is-alive-and-well-58c1fbc5608b#.9c1iiaudx)

>Which brings us to the mistaken view of the actual theory of UG that article
such as the SA piece present. Daniel Everett, a field linguist and former
evangelical missionary, gained prominence in 2005 when he claimed that Pirahã,
a language spoken by a remote Amazonian tribe showed properties that
categorically refuted the UG hypothesis. Central to UG theory, in Everett’s
estimation, is embedding, the ability of a language to place, for example, a
clause inside another clause (as in “I heard that Maura laughed”). Pirahã, it
seemed, was unable to embed.

>On the surface, this does seem like a knockout punch to UG, but there’s just
one problem with it: Everett is mistaken about what UG is.

~~~
mannykannot
The author of that article follows with "The source of [Everett's] confusion
seems to be the term recursion, which is the central concept of modern
Generative linguistics... Any expression larger than two words, then, requires
recursion, regardless of whether there is embedding in that expression." This
seems to make UG look like trivial feature of language - something like "we
find it to be universally true that human languages _use statements of more
than one word_ "?

I'm not knocking generative linguistics, but I get the impression that this
author has done it a disservice in his eagerness to put down Everett.

------
ronsonRonco
2005 was dark times. Iraq had become the first war of the 21st century, and
had already descended into medieval decapitations.

There were intellectuals that stood as symbols against the abomination of it
all. Chomsky was one such personality.

So polarizing were these times, that one had to question whether an academic
criticism was based in legitimate intellect, or simply represented a contrived
effort to discredit and ruin a politically relevant individual.

With Fox News on the prowl, Chomsky's co-authorship of the book, Manufacturing
Consent, made him a valid target for character assassination, and
simultaneously a defensible individual to those Fox News would so polarize.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

Maybe this other scholar's criticisms are academically valid within the
context of linguistics, but without considering the cultural relevance and
stature Chomsky held during that period to those that despised the premise of
Iraq, he had doomed himself to the cold shoulder of many. His writings, after
all, would not be published in a vacuum.

This is the context under which the author of this article should come to
understand his situation. It was bad timing. Tone deaf to debacles unfolding
elsewhere.

~~~
_yosefk
Would it be OK to publish criticism of Chomsky's work in linguistics 3 years
later when Chomsky shook hands with the leader of Hezbollah, which targets
civilians and children in its offensive operations? Or would Chomsky's
standing as an intellectual have gone up at that moment because Hezbollah
targets the right kind of civilians and children? Which political views should
shield a scientist from criticism in their own field? If you can tell, I'm
sure many will rush to adopt those views, and great benefits to science will
follow.

~~~
youdontknowtho
Evidence that Hezbollah targets civilians and children?

~~~
_yosefk
Here you go (there's tons more but it's not my job to answer questions like
"Evidence that Hitler was a Nazi?" in detail):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Kuntar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Kuntar)

My favorite section is "Treatment in prison":

During his imprisonment, Kuntar married Kifah Kayyal (born in 1963), an
Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of militant prisoners. They
later divorced. While they were married, she received a monthly stipend from
the Israeli government, an entitlement due to her status as a wife of a
prisoner.[25] Kayyal is an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin from Acre,
now residing in Ramallah, who was then serving a life sentence for her
activities in the Palestine Liberation Front.[30] Kuntar was allowed conjugal
visits with his wife while in prison.[31] They had no children. In addition,
while in prison Kuntar participated in a program under which Palestinian
security prisoners took online courses from University in Israel, and
graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Social and Political Science.[32]

~~~
youdontknowtho
That was a really interesting read. Thank you.

That being said. Hitler is to the Nazi's as attacking children is to Hezbollah
isn't really equivalent. I get it. You are pro-Israeli. There's no need for
that BS.

~~~
_yosefk
I meant that it's equivalent in that it's common knowledge; I could and maybe
should have used "evidence that ducks quack" as my analogy. If it's not common
knowledge where you live, I apologize for assuming that you were demanding
evidence of an obvious fact, though the ones who should really apologize is
the media in your part of the world that cared to tell you about Hezbollah but
did not bother to tell you what they do.

------
kutkloon7
The author seems to make a very valid point. In social sciences, validation by
peers and reputation seems to be at least as important as factual correctness.

Chomsky's 'theories' do sound vague and pompous. It is never nice to see
counterexamples to your conjectures, but he should deal with like a grown-up.
I do understand that this is very hard when you are praised the way he was and
is.

~~~
foldr
>Chomsky's 'theories' do sound vague and pompous.

Have you read any of Chomsky's work on syntax?

~~~
DashRattlesnake
From the OP:

> But Chomsky is no Einstein. And linguistics is not physics. Unlike Einstein,
> for example, Chomsky has been forced to retract at one time or another just
> about every major proposal he has made up to his current research, which he
> calls ‘Minimalism’. Concepts that helped make him famous, such as ‘deep
> structure’ and ‘surface structure’, were thrown out years ago. And unlike
> physics, there is no significant mathematics or clear way to disprove
> Chomsky’s broader claims – part of the reason for the current controversy.

> Over time, universal grammar has been reduced from a rich set of supposedly
> innate principles to whatever it is about human biology that makes human
> language possible (by which definition, as I have said numerous times, the
> physical brain itself is all there is to ‘universal grammar’). And once he
> got down to the narrow faculty of language, supposedly the one thing that
> makes human language possible and unavailable to other creatures, Chomsky
> claimed it was nothing more nor less than recursion – the ability to put one
> thing inside another of the same type. Then Pirahã came along.

Ignoring Everett's own work and the Pirahã, is this in fact true?

~~~
foldr
No, not really. It's true that Chomsky has modified his ideas in response to
new evidence/arguments. Exactly the same thing happens in physics and any
other scientific discipline.

The claim that FLN is nothing more than recursion is from one rather
speculative paper Chomsky co-authored in 2002. If you look at his actual
theoretical proposals, or more importantly, those of everyone else working in
generative syntax, there's lots more to it than just "recursion".

~~~
mannykannot
The perception that UG is just about recursion does not come only from
Chomsky's critics. This article, which is a criticism of Everett by a
linguist, makes a big deal of recursion and seems to be implying that UG takes
a form that is practically un-falsifiable (it may just be a poor defense of
the concept.) [https://medium.com/@dan.milway/dont-believe-the-rumours-
univ...](https://medium.com/@dan.milway/dont-believe-the-rumours-universal-
grammar-is-alive-and-well-58c1fbc5608b#.9c1iiaudx)

~~~
foldr
That's a blog post by a PhD student. I'm talking about ~50 years of literature
with concrete theoretical proposals that involve much more than just the
general concept of recursion. Check one of Chomsky's recent syntax papers and
see if you find that recursion is the only component of the theory.

Also, the blog post does not say that UG is just about recursion. It just says
that it's a central concept within generative linguistics, which is true.

------
tunesmith
So much vitriol - this is the sort of argument that could probably be
represented in a relatively simple argument graph that highlights which
contentions are in dispute, and which rebuttals are unaddressed. Instead it
sounds like a lot of energy is being invested in irrelevant strawmen, probably
on both sides.

------
hyperpallium
> _John spoke. Mary thinks. John is wrong. John believes. The moon is green
> cheese._

Seems forth-like, requiring a stack to be understood.

If a language requires recursion to process it, is that language "recursive"
despite not possessing explicit recursive syntax?

~~~
dvdkhlng
No this in not forth-like (i.e. referring to the programming language Forth,
see also reverse polish notation [1-2]), as in Forth operands precede
operations:

"the moon green cheese is john believes john wrong is mary thinks."

Note that this almost exactly corresponds to japanese grammar (which really
feels very forth-like)

tsukisama ha midori no chi-zu da to john ga shinjite, machigatte to mary ga
omotte to john ga itta.

An interesting resulting property of japanese grammar is that attributive
phrases are grammatically equivalent to recursive sentences. I.e. "aoi sora"
meaning "blue sky" is gramatically the same as "the sky, which is blue". (as
"aoi" = "blue" is a fully valid single-word sentence in japanese grammar)

What you refer to is Lisp-like grammar. But in Lisp you have parentheses that
help with making the grouping explicit. Maybe Lisp without parentheses is more
difficult to understand than reverse polish notation because the "stack"
needed to parse the sentence needs to be build by reading the sentence in
reverse.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_\(programming_language\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation)

------
youdontknowtho
The story of the failure of elites in all circles and their intransigence or
out right opposition to the TRUTH has been the overarching story of my
lifetime.

It makes me cautious, though. The monetization of acrimony actively seeks ways
to tell that story over and over again. If the author's paper is good science,
its idea's will persist.

Not every scrappy upstart will overturn the empire and not every Goliath is
evil.

~~~
KON_Air
[Nose rubbing intensifies]

------
foobarqux
Chomsky's claim is that humans, unlike other animals, have the capacity to use
recursion not that all humans use that structure. So the Piraha objection is
irrelevant unless you can demonstrate the Pirahas cannot understand recursive
language.

~~~
mannykannot
My understanding is that Everett claims that Chomsky claims that not only do
humans have the capacity to use recursion but that it is an essential feature
of all our languages and for us to have languages (whether this is an accurate
representation of Chomsky's views, I do not know; Pinker has stated that
Chomsky is hard to pin down.) Everett further states that only Piraha children
who have learned a recursive language as their first language are able to
speak it recursively; adults, it seems, may learn another vocabulary, but will
not use it recursively. Therefore, according to Everett, we have a human
population (those who have not learned another language in childhood) with a
functioning language, who display no capacity for recursion, even when exposed
to it.

This seems to me to leave a sliver of hope for what is alleged to be Chomsky's
theory, but I would prefer to see more data than more argument over the
current data.

~~~
foldr
It is not an accurate representation of Chomsky's views. GP is correct.

------
danbmil99
Chomsky was simply ahead of the curve wrt achieving truth through repetition,
slipperiness, and ad-hominem attacks on the credentials of your critics.

