Chomsky: A Guide for the Perplexed

242 Pages·2008·0.99 MB·English

by  John Collins

CHOMSKY: A GUIDE
FOR THE PERPLEXED
GUIDES FOR THE PERPLEXED AVAILABLE FROM CONTINUUM
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Halliday: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jonathan J. Webster
Chomsky: A Guide for the Perplexed, John Collins
CHOMSKY: A GUIDE
FOR THE PERPLEXED
JOHN COLLINS
Continuum International Publishing Group
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11 York Road New York
London SE1 7NX NY 10038
© John Collins 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
John Collins has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Collins, John, 1969-
Chomsky: a guide for the perplexed/John Collins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-8662-2 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-8264-8663-9 (Paperback)
1. Chomsky, Noam. I. Title.
P85.C47C65 2008
410.92—dc22
2008018912
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Cornwall
To
the Memory of
Jim Collins
1927–1997
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Preface viii
Cited Works of Noam Chomsky x
1 Problems with the Chomskys 1
2 Methodological Foundations 22
3 Transformations 59
4 The ‘Cognitive Turn’: Nativism and Universal Grammar 82
5 The Review of Skinner 112
6 Language: Inside or Outside the Mind? 131
7 Developments in Syntax 156
8 The Minimalist Program 191
Notes 218
References 222
Index 227
vii
PREFACE
Noam Chomsky polarizes opinion. I make no excuses for the follow-
ing chapters being in favour of Chomsky. I trust, however, that I have
been guilty of no distortion or undue charity towards my subject.
I have also endeavoured to give some major criticisms an airing, even
if only to refute them. Some might find my approach doctrinaire.
I offer three points of exculpation. First and trivially, in a book of
this size, it is impossible to cover all of the topics Chomsky has dis-
cussed over the past fifty years or so; still less, then, can I be expected
to offer an adjudication of the many debates Chomsky has entered
with philosophers, linguists, psychologists and others. I do broach
some key points of contention but only to cast light on Chomsky’s
own reasoning. Second, I find much of the criticism of Chomsky to
be premised upon misunderstanding. It would be a worthy pursuit to
correct all of the various errors of reasoning and misattributions,
but, again, space precludes such a task. Third, my aim is not simply to
defend Chomsky but to present his reasoning in what I regard as its
best and most consistent light. Those in the know about the various
debates will hopefully see what positions I am staking out on conten-
tious issues and be able to excuse my not being as thorough as I would
be were I writing a specialized volume or a journal article. Those not
in the know will hopefully be immunized from the all too common
misinterpretations that have fuelled so much of the debates.
What can be said of Chomsky’s work with sober confidence is that
it has changed the landscape of our understanding of mind and lan-
guage. By that I mean, not only did he replace falsehoods with truths,
but also in so doing reconfigured the ways in which we might fruit-
fully approach the phenomena. In a phrase, he invented a new science:
linguistics as we now know it.
viii
PREFACE
I have tried to make the book as accessible as I can without com-
promising the inherent complexity of the ideas. This was an especially
difficult task with the linguistics chapters. Rather than attempt to
cover the data or survey the many varied theories to account for
them, I have attempted to spell out the main theoretical threads and
appealed to various data only for their motivation.
Chomsky’s writings have an impersonal air, and he assiduously
shuns any oration. The book will have served its purpose if you go
away wanting to read Chomsky or any other generative linguist, or if
you feel that you should reread much, or if certain scales have fallen
from your eyes. It is Chomsky’s ideas that are important, not the fact
that they happen to be his.
* * *
I thank Oxford University Press for permission to publish part of
Chapter 5. For discussions on Chomsky and related issues, I thank
Guy Longworth, Michael Devitt, Paul Pietroski, Barry Smith, Steven
Gross, Robert Chametzky, Wolfram Hinzen, Peter Ludlow, Gareth
Fitzgerald, Robert Matthews and Frankie Egan. I must also mention
Dunja Jutronic and Nenad Misevic for organizing the wonderful
Dubrovnik conferences. My special thanks go to Georges Rey. We
disagree about much, and have been arguing for about three years
now with no end in sight, but I have learnt a great deal from him and
he is, to my mind, a model, both as a philosopher and human being.
I also thank Noam Chomsky for much email correspondence
over the years. My intellectual debt to him should be obvious. I hate
to bother him, so he has not read the following chapters except for
passages here and there.
My thanks go to my colleagues at University of East Anglia (UEA),
especially Peter and Nadine, for making the place so easy going, and
all the students who have followed my Logic and Language in Mind
units, especially Fi, Gareth and Jon, who have stayed on at UEA to
do graduate work. I also thank UEA itself for a period of research
leave in which I completed this work.
Lastly, I should like to thank a number of other friends, who have
provided pleasant distraction during my writing of this book: Tim,
Nicky (and Edie and Jim), Nina, Alberto, Sarah, Tom, Jen, Laura
and Miles Davies.
ix