
Chomsky's ‘Galilean’ science of language (paywalled) - ehudla
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9381705&fileId=S0022226714000061
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mikebelanger
I'm all for challenging academics, but that abstract was inflammatory and un-
constructive. And this is coming from someone who was a little unconvinced by
some of Chomsky's ideas. For instance, 'it'/'there' insertion in X-bar.

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

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dtornabene
gotta love the chomsky scorn that always crops up here. Jesus. I doubt very
seriously if any of the commentators have even dipped a toe into his work in
any approaching an honest investigatory way.

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pc2g4d
Read "The Linguistics Wars". It would give you a good idea of why there's such
antipathy towards Chomsky.

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dtornabene
I've read it. And "Ideology and Linguistic Theory. And met a handful of the
principals involved. And read an inordinate amount of source material i.e.
monographs, books, essays, etc from the early 20th to now in American
Linguistics. My point is that the hate _here_ seems to me principally to come
from 1) Chomskys criticism of AI and Norvig's program in particular 2) His
politics. Anti-capitalism isn't exactly going to be the most well recieved
ideological view point at a forum dedicated to startups. Also, the meat of my
point still stands, not many of the commenters at the time replied in any
interesting way about his actually theory. Typical drive-by internet
commenting, but whatever.

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leephillips
Worth your time to read the abstract. Most intense academic burn I can
remember encountering. I didn't realize Chomsky's behavior in linguists had
come to resemble his antics in politics and history.

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lmmlzxx
What are his antics in politics? Can you point out specifically where he is
off base?

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leephillips
Good introductions can be found in _The Case for Peace_ by Alan Dershowitz and
_Terror and Liberalism_ by Paul Berman; both excellent books that have
sections devoted to detailing Chomsky's thuggish and cranky behavior.

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ehudla
One of my favorite anti-Chomsky quotes comes from the man himself. It
represents a lot of what I find at fault with his approach:

I emphasized biological facts, and I didn't say anything about historical or
social facts. And I am going to say nothing about these elements in language
acquisition. The reason is that I think they are relatively unimportant. \--
Chomsky, N. (1998), Language and Mind: Current Thoughts and Ancient Problems

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gadders
Here's the intro to the paper, to give you the gist:

The Science of Language, published in the sixth decade of Noam Chomsky’s
linguistic career, defends views that are visibly out of touch with recent
research in formal linguistics, developmental child psychology, computational
modeling of language acquisition, and language evolution. I argue that the
poor quality of this volume is representative of the serious shortcomings of
Chomsky’s recent scholarship, especially of his criticism of and contribution
to debates about language evolution. Chomsky creates the impression that he is
quoting titbits of a massive body of scientific work he has conducted or is
intimately familiar with. Yet his speculations reveal a lack of even basic
understanding of biology, and an unwillingness to engage seriously with the
relevant literature. At the same time, he ridicules the work of virtually all
other theorists, without spelling out the views he disagrees with. A critical
analysis of the ‘Galilean method’ demonstrates that Chomsky uses appeal to
authority to insulate his own proposals against falsification by empirical
counter-evidence. This form of discourse bears no serious relation to the way
science proceeds.

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panglott
Full text:
[https://www.academia.edu/8739624/A_Galilean_science_of_langu...](https://www.academia.edu/8739624/A_Galilean_science_of_language)

What a great burn.

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nabla9
Chomsky's fall follows familiar pattern.

You are bright young nobody. You work diligently and produce great work. Then
you become confident, famous and old. You don't have strength to work 10 hours
per day working on your new magnum opus. People listen you for who you are and
not for what you say and it's easy to become sloppy.

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gizmo
That looks like an interesting paper, but I think it's against etiquette to
submit paywalled links, especially in this case.

You can RENT this paper for 24 hours for $6 USD? Are you kidding me?
Scientific knowledge must be part of the commons. Locking up scientific papers
behind paywalls is gross.

Anyhoo, I googled for the paper so you don't have to:

[http://www.academia.edu/8739624/A_Galilean_science_of_langua...](http://www.academia.edu/8739624/A_Galilean_science_of_language)

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leephillips
"against etiquette to submit paywalled links"

NYT, etc, links are quite common here.

Thanks for the link, but they won't let me see the paper unless I share my
identity with them.

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gizmo
On my browser you get the full paper just by scrolling down.

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leephillips
I tried again and you are right. The first time, it seemed to block my
scrolling with a face-slam.

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brudgers
Chomsky's model is almost certainly wrong [see George Box]. It's been useful.
In part because Chomsky writes well.

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skylan_q
LOL! Journals are now resorting to clickbait tactics!

