Not that I have it.
But I'm playing with
"An implicatural account of ..."
It seems it works wonders. You can apply it to everything (and beyond):
"An implicatural account of Martin Sheen"
---- "An implicatural account of Obama's foreign policy and the deterrement of the nuclu-lear war" or something.
J writes, in "Re: Noam's my man"
(Oddly, I wrote that post to read, "Nim's my man", where "Nim" was a typo! -- Nim is not a man, but a chimp).
J:
"That may be the case but they couldn't show how the "traces" function. Or something. That said, the Noamster was not the most evil egghead who ever lived, and Im not convinced Cartesian linguistics has been overthrown (but modified). Searle also supposedly in the anti-behaviorist camp, but he seems to be a reductionist of sorts. Perhaps not Quine-stein , but ...literal and pedantic (and powerful Berkeley landlord to boot). So. The Nothing nothings ( for Conty. phil Hegel remains more valuable than Heid. IMHE)
----
Yes, the last chapter in my 8-chapter thesis, on conversational rationality, under a student of Strawson! -- is entitled, "The cunning of conversational reason", apres Hegel. If Grice says his favourite figure in the history of philosophy ever is Ariskant, I like to say mine, on week-days, is Plathegel.
---
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ReplyDeleteOK.
ReplyDeleteIt's rather difficult to sum up Chomsky's views on syntax---he has changed those views frequently. It was once "deep structure", but he doesn't hold to that anymore, AFAIK. Barriers, last I heard.
I don't think many Americans (or Brits) care for linguistics of any sort, actually--it's considered about like anthropology--suspect. Not really humanities but not hard science either--yet achieving mastery in a L-2 is not too common. L-3 rarely happens at all in NASCAR land (that ain't f-ing mez-can yr speakin izz it, Bubba?). Even in Academia, there is I believe an anti-language bias (specifically, anti-latinate). Were the analytical mavens in charge, everything would be written in...the tongue of Capn Kidd.
Early Americans (Franklin, Jeff., Paine, Mad., etc) were quite competent latinists, and most spoke french as well. Say grazi to anglo-reductionists such as TH Huxley & Co for removing latin out of the public ed--positivists also helped. (scuzi rant)
Interesting points about Chomsky. Yes, he changed his views on syntax one time too many.
ReplyDeleteIf things were so easy, shouldn't he have discovered how grammar goes?
Some languages have pretty simple syntax. I think Chomsky did wrong in focusing on English. (His PhD was on Hebrew) -- because English is a devil to speak.
Consider, "a devil to speak". What would the deep structure for THAT be. Strictly, you are saying that English is a devil.
As if there are many devils. "To speak". This is like Chomsky's favourite, "John is eager to please". "To please", "to speak" -- perchance to dream.
But, a philosopher is a different animal. As Jones notes, at one point one has to make a decision and FORGET about 'silly things silly people say' (Russell's view on what Grice was doing -- cited by Chapman) -- and start doing the work.
"English is a devil to speak" would just mean:
"It is difficult to speak English".
In "A puzzle for meaning", Schiffer notes how pleonastic people can get. "It is difficult to speak English" is a bother, featuring the vacuous 'it'.
Schiffer would prefer:
"Some people find it [that vacuous it again] difficult to account for the syntax of English -- speakers and MIT professors include."
If the Institute is for "Technology", what is CHOMSKY doing there?
When I went to MIT I was just overwhelmed by those statues and columns, as you see from the Charles: Aristotle, Plato, Newton -- all the names inscribed on that august facade. How "technology" relates to "eager to please" is a bit of a roundabout move. Mechanical translation, perhaps? Technology is ALL about 'application' versus where Grice was talking 'implicature' -- Emerson hall at Harvard. So there!
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ReplyDeleteChomsky's a philosopher as well as linguist, is he not, JLS? In Language and problems of Knowledge IIRC he made some fairly convincing arguments in support of innateness--the UG implies mental parameters, which cannot be acquired empirically, etc. Hay mucho español tambien. Which you probably are aware of. The syntax research supports his broader "Cartesian" project (and he called it that for some time). His critique of empiricism--and behaviorists--still seems fairly solid. IM too tired to take on syntactical theory right now --but he and his followers did provide quite a bit of evidence in favor of UG.
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