How I met Noam Chomsky
Actually I ‘met’ him through a video-conference lecture.
Noam Chomsky (placeholder)
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the most important influences on contemporary linguistics and cognitive science. Chomsky is also widely known and respected for his well constructed criticism of US foreign policy, politics and media.
Chomsky is one of the most cited scholars in the world.
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Recent stories by and about Noam Chomsky
The real reason I want to meet Noam Chomsky
Want to really meet you bacause i admire and want you to visit my country Ghana
A story about Noam Chomsky
When I lived in France, all those years ago, my syntactically minded flatmate and I stole a garden gnome from someone’s front yard as we ran for the last metro. We named him Chomsky. The joke didn’t really translate into French.
We took him everywhere with us: restaurants, nightclubs, concerts. It was a great conversation starter. Though, as I said, no-one really understood his name.
I miss Chomsky. He had a fishing rod and when we were really drunk, friends used to attach bits of sangria soaked fruit to it and try and cast them into each other’s mouths. That’s what a university education will get you these days.
I wonder where he is now. Poor old Chommers.
Why I admire Noam Chomsky
Because if you look at the progress of (UG) syntactic theory over the past 50 years, at every threshhold of every major new development, there’s Chomsky.
Because, unlike most academics, he hasn’t been content to spend his entire career trying to prove himself right regardless of the evidence. Deep structure not such a viable concept after all? Get rid of it. X’ theory not really all it’s cracked up to be? Out it goes. That’s pretty brave when these are concepts which made your name and on which you staked a good part of your reputation.
Because the idea that children learn to speak a language through imitation now seems, to any one who sits and gives it a second thought, utterly ludicrous. Reading about Chomsky’s black box, the overwhelming emotion is a strong desire to rehash Huxley’s famous response to Darwin : how foolish never to have thought of that before. It’s that eye-opening, that much of a paradigm shift that I honestly would not hesitate to compare the two men’s work.
Because he is intelligent enough to realise that in the 50 years that modern syntactic theory has been going, he cannot possibly hope to have seen or written anything that later centuries will deem as anything other than quaintly antiquated. Modern linguistics is at a stage comparable to physics before Gallileo, though the exact wording escapes me.
Because I feel honoured beyond belief to have studied under people who studied under him, and his impact is such that if I do go back into academia, I’m fairly sure that in 10 years’ time my students will be telling people that they studied under someone who studied under someone who studied under Chomsky.
Because when I look at a sentence like that above, and realise the productivity of language and the fact that I understand it nonetheless and am thrilled to the very core of my being because of this, I am aware that it is through a Chomskian filter that I perceive my language; and although all filters necessarily provide incomplete information, his is wider and more far reaching than most and he came to it through filters so small and restrictive he was practically blind.
Why I admire Noam Chomsky
As an impressionable college student, I took 2 completely different classes in the same semester, and Chomsky was the subject of a unit in both.
In a Computer Science Compilers course, we talked about Chomsky and linguistics, as it relates to computer languages. And in Political Science, we watched the video version of Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. His knowledge has incredible breadth and depth. Further, he doesn’t only write politically dissenting commentary, but he also practices what he preaches: through civil disobedience.
Chomsky’s most impressive characteristic is that he is more thoughtfully critical in his arguments than any speaker or writer I’ve ever come in contact with.
People don’t yet fully appreciate him now, but I get the feeling that 50 to 100 years down the road, he’ll be remembered as one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
A story about Noam Chomsky
When I was a wide eyed linguistics geek way back in the eighties, he gave a lecture to a small group of linguists at the University of Louisiana in Baton Rouge and a friend and colleague of mine at the time made the trip up from New Orleans in her daddy’s caddy. I think it was 1986 or 7. I was young enough to be both humbled by the experience and dismissive of his certainty. I guess I’ve always wondered how folks can be so convicted to things which they cannot prove and also admiring of their convictions and dedication. What made seeing Noam Chomsky different from other scholars was his political involvement, which lent an air of intrigue to the event and made it feel like we were all on the fringe. Mr. Chomsky kept all discussion to linguistics and I admired the professionalism of that decision. Black box, black box…I’m thinking I should review his work from where I am today, a reformed linguist, as I’ve heard it described.
Why I want to meet Noam Chomsky
I admire his way of speaking what he believes to be the truth about the US foreign policy. Just having the guts to say what you truly believe is worth a lot in these times!
I am also interested in his real work, the linguist part so to speak..
(Is that the correct English for it..?)
