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

Eldin Raigmore, On 16/05/2006 20:57:
> On Mon, 15 May 2006 21:25:41 +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
> wrote:
> [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.
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.

--And.