Talk:Noam Chomsky/Comments from Chomsky

I bugged Chomsky into making some comments on this article Noam Chomsky
N.B. He knows nothing of Wikipedia and doesn't seem to care. Chamaeleon 04:35, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

E-mail from Chomsky

Date: 10/01/2005 02:44 +0000

Delivered: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 02:47:03 +0000

From: chomsky@...

To: david@...

Thanks for sending. I checked the links. The ones on Daum and Al-Shifa seems to me fair, though frankly, I think the tone is remarkable. Would it even be conceivable to write in that manner about an al-Qaeda attack that killed probably tens of thousands of Americans (Israelis, etc.), maybe more, maybe less, but no one cares to count?

I really don't feel it is my business to comment on the article on me. However, if you check you'll find that some of it is factually incorrect. To take a few examples:

(1) The Chomskyan approach is too in-depth and reliant on native speaker knowledge to follow this method, though it has over time been applied to a broad range of languages.

The first application of the approach was to Modern Hebrew, a fairly detailed effort in 1949–50. The second was to the native American language Hidatsa (the first full-scale generative grammar), mid-50s. The third was to Turkish, our first Phd dissertation, early 60s. After that research on a wide variety of languages took off. MIT in fact became the international center of work on Australian aboriginal languages within a generative framework ("Chomskyan," though the term makes no sense in any science), thanks to the work of Ken Hale, who also initiated some of the most far-reaching work on Native American languages, also within our program; in fact the first program that brought native speakers to the university to become trained professional linguists, so that they could do work on their own languages, in far greater depth than had ever been done before. That has continued. Since that time, particularly since the 1980s, it constitutes the vast bulk of work on the widest typological variety of languages. A look at the professional journals and publications suffices to show that.

(2) Language acquisition. Again, a check of the literature (journals, books) will show that the bulk of the work that goes beyond the most superficial investigation is within the generative grammar framework, quite explicitly.

(3) Horowitz. It's odd that he is mentioned at all. Do you pay attention to extremist Maoist fanatics? You can easily check his one factual claim: about my reading of his work. In fact, two or three times I cited essays in books that he edited, and I think once may have quoted a comment of his. I knew nothing of his work, which I didn't like because of its Marxist-Leninist character, and as you can easily determine, ignored him. But the facts are unimportant. Why even bring it up?

(4) Summers: the "Noam Chomsky-led campaign" to have universities divest from companies with Israeli holdings is "anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intention".

As Summers knows perfectly well, I was the most vocal opponent of these campaigns, and in fact refused even to sign the petition until it was radically changed, reducing the reference to divestment from Israel to a few meaningless words — meaningless, as Summers knows, because the university do not invest in Israel. At my insistence, the petition was changed to a call on the US government to stop participating in violations of international humanitarian law. Simply check. As to companies with Israeli holdings, the petition says nothing. Summers is simply lying again, as you can readily determine by looking at the petition. The closest it comes to the fabrication you cite is the call for MIT-Harvard to divest from "US companies that sell arms to Israel, until these conditions are met," then spelled out: minimal conformity to US law, as HRW has been pointing out for years.

Again the same point. Why cite someone who can be proved to be lying with 5 minutes of research?

And a general point. No doubt you cite criticisms of Bush. But when you have an entry on some mainstream figure, as I presume you do, do you allow the framework to be set by raving Maoist fanatics?

However, I do not mean to suggest that you should handle these matters otherwise. Just giving you my impressions.

Noam

At 02:40 AM 1/10/2005 +0100, David wrote:
[...] >
> I have edited a few relevant articles now. Here are the URLs:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky (particularly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Sudan)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factory
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Daum
>
> I would greatly appreciate it if you could browse through the article on yourself and tell me of any factual inaccuracies.
>
> Thanks,
>
[...]