Re: Cognitive Linguistics, "The Language Instinct", and High-Functioning Autistics
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 19:18 |
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Hallo!
On Tue, 16 May 2006 23:12:24 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> I have heard Chomsky himself in an interview say that he is a monoglot. This
> was in the context of responding to the allegation that Transformational
> Grammar has an anglocentric bias. The remainder of his response correctly
> pointed out that TG has been applied to a very wide range of languages,
> approximately coincident with the range of languages spoken natively by
> syntacticians.
Thanks, I feel somewhat vindicated by this. This is apparently what the
old canard about Chomsky not knowing foreign languages comes from.
Of course, being a monoglot not necessarily means not knowing about foreign
languages, it only means not mastering them. Me, I wouldn't say that I could
actually speak any other language than German or English, but I have had
classes in Latin, French, Spanish and Japanese, and read grammars of Welsh,
Irish, Georgian and several other languages from all over the world.
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