# Is Noam Chomsky all he's cracked up to be? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 11, 2010, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430 "2010-09-11T20:48:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/21 "2010-09-14T01:53:24Z")
People keep mentioning Universal Grammar as if it were the heart of Chomsky’s linguistic theories, as if he were the one who invented the idea, and as if it were the first thing that brought Chomsky prominence. None of those assertions is true. Read the Wikipedia entry on Universal Grammar that’s linked to in Superhal’s post above. Universal Grammar is only one aspect of Chomsky’s linguistic theories. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/22 "2010-09-14T02:33:04Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Incidentally, the idea of universal grammar is only one of the concepts he introduced to linguistics (and, in my opinion, only a minor one of them). **His reputation in linguistics stands or falls on a number of ideas he came up with and the arguments (good or, as I think, bad) which he came up with to defend them.** Furthermore, for each of those ideas, it’s necessary to examine both whether there is ultimately a good use for them and whether his arguments for them make sense before one can decide whether he should be considered a good influence on linguistics. Now **that** I could agree with. In all fields, we must have a rigor and logic that stands up to any scrutiny. Imho, the problem with UG is that defense is replacing evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/23 "2010-09-14T03:43:02Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > > > Incidentally, the idea of universal grammar is only one of the concepts he introduced to linguistics (and, in my opinion, only a minor one of them). **His reputation in linguistics stands or falls on a number of ideas he came up with and the arguments (good or, as I think, bad) which he came up with to defend them.** Furthermore, for each of those ideas, it’s necessary to examine both whether there is ultimately a good use for them and whether his arguments for them make sense before one can decide whether he should be considered a good influence on linguistics. > > Now **that** I could agree with. In all fields, we must have a rigor and logic that stands up to any scrutiny. > > Imho, the problem with UG is that defense is replacing evidence. Exactly. If all that Chomsky’s theories have in their favor are good arguments then I figure they’re useless. Let’s see the results of some scientific testing. That’s what seperates philosophy from science. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Defenestrator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/13edae/32.png) [@The\_Defenestrator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Defenestrator)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/24 "2010-09-14T03:57:17Z")
As a former student of linguistics I can’t stand Chomsky. I think Universal Grammar is bullshit, plain and simple. Don’t like transformational grammar either. I don’t see how that has any basis in reality. However, I don’t think that other theories (that I know of) in that area are much better. He’s an idea guy, and that’s cool, but every time he finds out he’s wrong or changes his mind, he just says, no no I really meant _this_ not _that_. But a lot of the time no one else has really come up with anything better. Of course, once again I didn’t get that deep into linguistics, so I could be wrong about that. I don’t know much about his political stuff, but I imagine I wouldn’t agree with him there either if he acts anything like how he does with linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/25 "2010-09-14T08:22:14Z")
Little Nemo, I think that you and I mean entirely different things by “good arguments.” You apparently mean something like “interesting supporting statements completely out of the context of actually proving a theory.” I mean the entire body of proof of a scientific theory. That is, I mean all the experimental evidence and all the theoretical calculations necessary to show that a theory is correct. I was making a distinction in my post between coming up with an interesting idea that perhaps someone in the future may prove and actually coming up with the proof oneself with experimental evidence and theoretical calculations. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/26 "2010-09-16T00:32:17Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > > [@Ludovic](#): > > > > But if UG is true, then we should be able to reason about the real world without having to use any particular language, as the real-world language we choose simply maps to our in-born semantic factory. > > But, it’s been 50 years now, and humans have been documented using language for 10k years now (6k if you’re Christian.) If they had any evidence, we wouldn’t need to say “if” anymore. If you look at UG as just another way of saying that all languages have the same objective characteristics, like person, number, and temporal aspects, whether as root inflections or as syntagmatic constructions, then it’s hard to argue against that. It also becomes so self-evident as to be trivial, but the enquiry as to how it originated is certainly not trivial. I’m curious – what evidence do we have prior to the earliest written records? ---
**Author:** ![InterestedObserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@InterestedObserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InterestedObserver)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/27 "2010-09-16T01:59:36Z")
Ahhh…it all comes down to linguistics. 😃 He who controls the language controls the world. Of COURSE a linguist is going to nit-pick and say, “No, I meant THIS, not THAT” 😛 Sort of like the Republicans chartacterizing the expiration of tax cuts for the top 3% (which would merely raise their rates by a few percentage points and to a still lower level than at just about any other time in U.S. history) as “raising taxes”. :dubious: Just to work in both the political and the linguistic elements. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/28 "2010-09-16T02:03:14Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > If you look at UG as just another way of saying that all languages have the same objective characteristics, like person, number, and temporal aspects, whether as root inflections or as syntagmatic constructions, then it’s hard to argue against that. It also becomes so self-evident as to be trivial, but the enquiry as to how it originated is certainly not trivial. > > I’m curious – what evidence do we have prior to the earliest written records? Some cave drawings seem to be telling stories, using the concept of numbers, relative size, and perhaps signature of the artist. I don’t know if that counts. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/29 "2010-09-16T03:30:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Little Nemo, I think that you and I mean entirely different things by “good arguments.” You apparently mean something like “interesting supporting statements completely out of the context of actually proving a theory.” I mean the entire body of proof of a scientific theory. That is, I mean all the experimental evidence and all the theoretical calculations necessary to show that a theory is correct. I was making a distinction in my post between coming up with an interesting idea that perhaps someone in the future may prove and actually coming up with the proof oneself with experimental evidence and theoretical calculations. What predictions have been based on Chomsky’s work and have they been tested and had results that match the predictions? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/30 "2010-09-16T08:22:50Z")
Little Nemo, that’s my point. The experimental work on proving Chomsky’s theories has been sparse, and Chomsky himself did none of it. The point that I was making was that Chomsky came up with a number of useful concepts for how language works. He then decided that proving these ideas was for lesser beings to worry about, since great thinkers like him were far above such trivialities. What I was saying was that in evaluating the work of any prominent theorist, one has to ask two questions: First, did their new ideas inspire later workers in the field to come up with interesting, useful work? Second, did they do any of the hard work on coming up with the experimantal evidence to support their theories? My personal opinion is that Chomsky may have had some interesting ideas, but he contributed nothing to the experimental work on them. Spectre of Pithecanthropus, the idea of Chomsky about universal grammar is that there are a small, fixed number of grammatical rules. His claim is that by using the grammatical systems that he came up with (transformational grammar and the numerous later fixes he proposed), one can characterize all possible grammars of human languages. He claims that there are lots of grammars that one can theoretically create but which no human language would ever use. My personal opinion is that Chomsky’s proposals were always too vague and too often changing to be usefully tested. Furthermore, in the cases where they were tested, they often were shown to be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430/31 "2010-09-16T08:37:31Z")
The (now widely expanded) Chomsky-Schutzenberger hierarchy is still widely used in theoretical CS for describing formal languages. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-noam-chomsky-all-hes-cracked-up-to-be/553430.md?page=1)