Re: Cognitive Linguistics, "The Language Instinct", and High-Functioning Autistics

On Mon, 15 May 2006 21:25:41 +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

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[JR]
>... it has indeed been claimed that many contemporary theories of language
>are in fact just theories of English,
[er]
Yes, it has.

While it appears true that some published "Universal Grammar" works have
been published without adequate attention to "exotic" languages, it is
nevertheless true that some, for instance the founding works of Role-and-
Reference Grammar, were _inspired_ by these "exotic" languages in the first
place.

It isn't fair to throw out an entire theory because some papers in that
theory were published prematurely.

It is particularly unfair to throw out an entire _class_ of theories
because you have decided to (in some cases unfairly) throw out some of them.

[JR]
>and I seem to remmeber reading somewhere that Chomsky doesn't speak any
>foreign language, though I don't know whether that's true.
[er]
No, this is a canard.
Chomsky's "Aspects of Syntax" were developed in his private notes studying
material from Hebrew and French; although he didn't publish until he could
apply his ideas to English.

I get tired of seeing this repeated.  Chomsky's ideas have enough real
weaknesses to not make this a necessary part of the arsenal of his
detractors.

If you see this notion repeated by anyone who has already been told it is
untrue, that person is doing the off-net equivalent of "trolling" -- that
is, they are saying what they say merely to provoke an argument, not
because they really believe it themselves.

Such remarks should be ignored.

[JR]
>It is probably true with many of his successors, though.
[er]
Well, I doubt that.

What has been true of many of his successors -- at least, of many of the
papers they have published -- has been, that they went to publication
without testing their ideas on more than one or two languages (of which
one, frequently, was English); that often the "testing" was rather cursory
on some of the languages (frequently all of them except English); and that
they relied too much on introspection as a scientific tool.

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