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Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals QUOTES

Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals QUOTES

1 " The linguistic system represented in the mind-brain gives some account of everything submitted to it: good sentences, bad sentences, sentences in other languages, ums and ahs, coughs; perhaps -Chomsky suggests- even to non-linguistic events like a squeaking door. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

2 " How is it that you can read this book? An obvious answer is because you know English. An equally obvious answer is because the light is on. These two explanations for an apparently trivial ability can illuminate a fundamental dichotomy: the difference between our knowledge of language and our use of that knowledge; between our competence and our performance. Your knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of English, your competence as a speaker of English, is prerequisite to your understanding this sentence; the exercise of this competence is made possible by the fact, among many others, that the light is on. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

3 " Not all babies learn to play chess or hunt penguins or play the didgeridoo, but except in cases of pathology they all master their first language. Indeed, failure to master one’s first language is taken to reflect a pathological condition; failing to master algebra or the piccolo has no such implication. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

4 " Every linguist (a term which is ambiguous between theorist of language and polyglot) has suffered the question “So how many languages do you speak?” It is often hard to convince people that the answer doesn’t really matter. Having a little knowledge of half a dozen languages is less useful than knowing one language with native proficiency. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

5 " Plato's problem, which is characteristic of many aspects of our cognition, can be stated succinctly as "How can we know so much when the evidence is so slight?" In particular, how is it that we have such intricate knowledge of our native language? How did we acquire such knowledge? Orwell's problem, which is characteristic of our political beliefs, is the converse: "How can we remain so ignorant when the evidence is so overwhelming?" In particular, how is it that we frequently believe the propaganda we are subjected to by the establishment, even when its claims are at variance with common sense and a huge amount of clear evidence? In forming our political beliefs, we seem to ignore a plethora of easily available evidence; in the case of our knowledge of language we have intuitions and abilities of a complexity for which the evidence is minimal. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

6 " set a cat among the philosophical pigeons. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals

7 " For the philosopher, syntax may be of little interest: Richard Montague put it clearly and succinctly when he wrote “I fail to see any great interest in syntax except as a preliminary to semantics.” With the logical syntax of the calculus there is no difference between [AB][C] and [A][BC], and if what matters are the meanings conveyed by language, there is no need to attribute much significance to syntax. For the linguist, who knows how much more complicated syntax is than outsiders think, it is more interesting. Its interest resides in part in that it reflects semantic differences, but equally importantly in that it is characteristic of a specifically human ability of a complexity sufficiently great to underpin a rich theory. "

― , Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals