The New Grammarians' funeral: a critique of Noam Chomsky's linguistics By Ian Robinson (review)

REVIEWS The New Grammarians' funeral: a critique of Noam Chomsky's linguistics. By Ian Robinson. Cambridge: University Press. 1975. Pp. xiv, 189. $13.95. Reviewed by Georgia M. Green, University ofIllinois 'If I say that Chomsky has attained the goal of complete uselessness, I don't at all intend a sneer.' (34) 'In its infatuation with propositions and logic, linguistics has fallen into the vile durance of the information theory from which Chomsky began by offering to deliver it.' (117-18) 'In the end it must be a kind of Philistinism in a linguist to think, as Chomsky does with his doctrine of universals, of all languages as pretty much alike.' (102) Who is Ian Robinson, and why is he saying these terrible things about us? According to the dust- jacket, he is a lecturer in English language and literature in the University College of Swansea, Wales; and there are apparently a number of reasons for his low opinion of Chomskyan linguistics. Despite admittedly having 'no qualifications for tackling the subject recognizable to professional linguists' (ix), R has read most of Chomsky's writings on language. His ill-humor seems to stem from the fact that he has misunderstood a lot (perhaps most) of what he has read, felt threatened by parts, and taken offense at much. Below I will cite passages from his book supporting the first two of these claims; his pique is everywhere evident, in spite of the publisher's claim that the argument is 'without polemic'. Is this book worth reading? That depends. Its existence is proof positive that perfectly grammatical sentences can be constructed which, even in context, make no sense at all. For example : 'But Chomsky's exclamation of wonder is vitiated by trying to see itself as something else, namely language-independent explanation, intended to subject linguistics to psychology.' (73) Reading this book will make you feel good, if you have an irrational fear or hatred of Chomsky, and are not too discriminating about what fuel you use to feed your fire. If you are an outsider interested in what linguistics has to offer other scholars who 'think about language', to use R's phrase, you will be more confused than enlightened. If you are a professional linguist, you will be annoyed, appalled, amazed, and disgusted, but unlikely to stomach reading past p. 25. Indeed, one begins to wonder if the work is worth reviewing. Probably it is, ifonly because it was published by a very distinguished press, which should be informed exactly how poor itsjudgment was. (Perhaps a Gricean sort ofreview—'This book is well bound, but has very narrow margins'—would have been kinder; but if this book gets the sort of circulation its publisher hopes for, linguists deserve to know what is being said about them.) 1. Chapter 1, 'The science of language', attacks the claim that the study of language can be scientific; it comes out here (p. 5) that, according to R, physics isn't really 'scientific' either. Chapter 2, 'Chomsky's grammar to the rescue', is a twenty-page critique of Syntactic structures. It is the source ofmany ofthe passages which I quote in §2 below. In Chapter 3, 'The limits of transformational generative grammar', R belabors (in seventeen pages) the point that there is more to language 406 REVIEWS407 than linguistic forms,1 assuming (I guess) that all linguists who accept Chomsky's basic framework accept the limits which Chomsky draws for the domain of linguistics. Ofcourse, as anyone who reads thejournals or the CLS volumes must be aware, describing language use has become a concern of many linguists who are, in the broad sense, transformational grammarians. These would agree with R's statement: ? do think, though, that any real linguist is interested in what sentences do, in language. Though what TG grammar can say is true [sic], it can say little about what role sentences play.* (44-5) Indeed, such linguists can agree with much of Chapter 3, but not with R's opinion (47) that there can't be rules for using language. Chapter 4, which has the grand title, 'Chomsky's temptations and falls', attempts to show that Chomsky assigns some physical reality...