Noam Chomsky: America’s Village Idiot

In this article I discuss the nature of scientific inquiry. I want to show that the standards of achievement for serious scientists such as the physicist Albert Einstein are far higher than those for MIT’s professor of linguistics, Noam Chomsky. In fact, I hope to take it a step further and show that Chomsky’s most important claims cannot reasonably be considered scientific achievements at all.

In fact, what some of Chomsky’s admirers claim to be legitimate achievements are in fact instances of intellectual "con artistry"; what is claimed as profound insight is nothing more than academic fraud.

I would like to start with an article called The Trouble with Chomsky by George Jochnowitz, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, College of Staten Island, CUNY, which appeared recently on the pages of the website Open Republic. In this article, Jochnowicz attacks Chomsky’s politics as hard to come to grips with, but he assumes – as do many – that Chomsky’s contribution to theoretical linguistics is above reproach:

"Chomsky changed the nature of linguistics. A very familiar example of his thinking is illustrated by a pair of sentences that differ by a single word: John is easy to please, and John is eager to please. The words easy and eager are both adjectives. Yet the grammatical structures of these sentences are quite different. We can rewrite the first as It is easy to please John, but any English-speaking child knows that it is ungrammatical to say It is eager to please John. In other words, children know more grammar than grammarians do.

Chomsky came to the conclusion "that there is a universal grammar which is part of the genetic birthright of human beings, that we are born with a basic template that any specific language fits into" (Cogswell:3).

So let’s see what going on here. Chomsky is saying, in effect, that he cannot explain why

(1) It is easy to please John

is grammatical and readily spoken by speakers of English; nor can he explain why

(2) *It is eager to please John

is ungrammatical and excluded from usage. Since Chomsky cannot explain this discrepancy in the grammatical underpinnings of these two sentences, the automatic assumption he makes is that nobody else can explain it either, since nobody else – and this is a given – could possibly have as much insight into language as he does. And since he thinks that it can’t be explained logically, the only alternative explanation is that there is an innate grammar – wired into the brain – which requires Sentence (1) to be OK and Sentence (2) to be bad. Since this wired–in grammar is innate – in other words, genetically endowed in humans – it must therefore be universal. This conclusion is the reason that Chomsky is considered – by Jochnowicz, at least – to be "the father of modern linguistics".

A lot of people over the years have been taken in by this line of "reasoning" and so in a situation like this I prefer to ask the question: WWED?

What would Einstein do?

It is impossible for me to believe that Einstein would have engaged in this sort of sophistry, this sort of muddled and sloppy thinking which doesn’t even make a stab at any kind of serious logical analysis of the problem.

Einstein worked much differently than this. He made a number of observations about the movement of light and from these he constructed a set of theories which explained the phenomena which he had observed.

Had he engaged in Chomsky’s methods, he would have said something along the lines of:

There are many interesting phenomena about the universe which make no sense to me, and therefore I must conclude that the nature of the universe is somewhat different from the Newtonian concept of the universe, although I’m not sure precisely how it differs.

Not exactly Nobel-prize material there.

To the contrary, Einstein took the observations he found and he shaped them into the General and Special Theories of Relativity – which did, in fact, lead to his winning the Nobel.

What I aim to show in the rest of this article is that there is a clear, logical and perfectly understandable reason that Sentence (1) is grammatical and Sentence (2) is not. The proof is below, if you are interested.

You should be able to follow the argument if you made it through high school English without too much trouble, or if you have ever taken a foreign language class. A specialized knowledge of linguistics is completely unnecessary. If you want to skip the proof I will just go ahead and tell you what conclusions you might be able to draw from it:

Conclusion A. Since Sentence (1) is logically constructed there is no reason to think that it is innate, any more than a logically-constructed mathematical theorem is innate. Sentence (1) is a structure which is used because it makes logical sense. Therefore Sentence (1) supports neither of Chomsky’s ideas, the innateness of grammar or its universality;

Conclusion B. Since Sentence (2) is logically prohibited there is no reason to think that it is innate either. It is a structure which is not used because it does not make logical sense. Therefore Sentence (2) supports neither of Chomsky’s ideas, the innateness of grammar or its universality;

Conclusion C. Chomsky simply never thought through the problem in a logical and systematic manner. If he had, he could not have come to the logical conclusion that the contrast in Sentences (1) and (2) points to either the innateness of grammar or its universality;

Conclusion D. Therefore Chomsky’s claims of innateness and universality are based not upon his ability to solve a problem, but his inability. To make a claim of truth based upon intellectual failure is intellectual fraud;

Conclusion E. A scientific theorem which is based on a failure to understand the underlying facts cannot be considered a bona fide scientific achievement;

Conclusion F. As far as this claim: "any English-speaking child knows that it is ungrammatical to say It is eager to please John," that isn’t even entirely true. The sentence is perfectly grammatical in one context (see below), and ungrammatical in another. But Chomsky's argument misses the point: since adults already know that the sentence is ungrammatical in a certain context, they don’t use it in that context and therefore children don’t hear it in that context. Obviously children have to build their language skills through the processes of both imitation and analogy, and so the notion that they learn It is easy to please Bill by imitation has nothing to do with the fact that they might at some other point exclude as illogical It is eager to please John, were they ever to hear it in the ungrammatical context;

Conclusion G. The intellectual con-artistry here consists of Chomsky’s taking a sentence which adults never use (in the ungrammatical context) and making the assumption that children don’t use it because they somehow automatically know that it’s wrong. A child would only use this Sentence (2) through imitation, as opposed to invention – since the possibility is extremely remote that a child would invent such a complex structure which is so profoundly illogical – and since adults don’t use Sentence (2) in the ungrammatical context, there is nothing for the child to imitate. Finally, a child would only "know that it’s wrong" if he or she had had enough experience with language to know that the sentence doesn’t make sense logically, and the child would have to be much older than a mere infant in order to have that level of experience.

And now, the proof. Let’s start with this sentence:

(3) John is eager to please.

Sentence (3) has an active implication: John is eager to please (someone else).

And now this: (4) Bill is easy to please.

Sentence (4) has an passive implication: Bill is the one who will be pleased (by someone else).

In fact, (4) means exactly what (5) means, and (5) is a standard passive structure:

(5) Bill is easily pleased.

Therefore it stands to reason that Sentence (6) would be OK, since Bill is the (passive) object of someone’s (active) attempt to please him:

(6) It is easy to please Bill.

In Sentence (6), just as in (5) and (4), Bill is the one being pleased. Now, let’s develop these ideas a little further:

Point 1: In the structure {Someone} is J to please

where J is an adjective,

the meaning of the sentence could be either active or passive, depending on the adjective:

(3) John is eager to please. (active)

(4) Bill is easy to please. (passive)

Point 2: In the structure {Someone} is V pleased

where V is an adverb,

the meaning of the sentence can be passive only, regardless of the adverb chosen:

(5) Bill is easily pleased. (passive)

(7) John is eagerly pleased. (passive)

Point 3: We can see that the determination of voice (activeness or passiveness) in a given sentence can be rendered in two ways:

a) by the meaning of a word within a structure which allows both:

{Someone} is J to please (active or passive)

or

b) restricted to one choice by the nature of the structure

{Someone} is V pleased (passive only)

What is driving these two possibilities, you may ask?

If you will recall from high school, an adverb can modify a verb, not a noun, and since pleased is a past participle associated with the passive structure, the noun must become the object of please, and so any sentence of this sentence-type

{Someone} is V pleased

must be passive:

(5) Bill is easily pleased. (passive)

(7) John is eagerly pleased. (passive)

As for this structure type

{Someone} is J to please

we recall from high school that an adjective can modify a noun, and therefore in both

(3) John is eager to please. (active)

(4) Bill is easy to please. (passive)

the adjective modifies the noun without regard for whether John is acting to please or Bill is the object of someone else’s attempt to please him. In fact, we can show the differences between the sentences a little more clearly this way:

(3) John is eager to please (someone). (active)

(4) Bill is easy (for someone) to please. (passive)

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about explaining why it is that

(8) *It is eager to please John.

is ungrammatical. But first, I want to talk about these two sentences:

(9) The sandwich is ready to eat. (passive!)

(10) The troops are ready to eat. (active!)

Note that this is a case which differs from

{Someone} is J to please (active or passive)

in which the difference in adjectives determines the active or passive voice of the sentence:

(3) John is eager to please. (active)

(4) Bill is easy to please. (passive)

In (9) and (10) the adjective is the same (ready)! Thus, in (9) and (10), the active or passive voice is determined not by the adjective, but by the subject noun: sandwich versus the troops. In (9), the sandwich is what will be eaten, which means that (9) really means:

(11) The sandwich is ready to be eaten. (passive)

In (10), the troops will be doing the eating

(12) The troops are ready to eat (whatever is put in front of them). (active)

You may well ask, is it ungrammatical to make (10) into a passive?

(13) The troops are ready to be eaten.

Not at all. A cannibal would consider (13) to be a very fine sentence. It is context which tells us, however, that the correct interpretation of (10) is (12) and not (13). Now let’s take a closer look at these sentences:

(11) The sandwich is ready to be eaten. (passive)

(12) The troops are ready to eat (whatever is put in front of them). (active)

Note that we can easily substitute a pronoun for the subject nouns:

(14) It is ready to be eaten. (passive)

(15) They are ready to eat (whatever is put in front of them). (active)

We cannot say that these pronouns are "empty", since they stand for something:

In (14) "It" stands for "the sandwich"

In (15) "They" stands for "the troops"

Now let’s go back and look at this sentence:

(6) It is easy to please Bill.

Does "it" stand for something concrete? No, it does not. Remember that (6) really means:

(6) It is easy (for someone) to please Bill.

Therefore the person who is trying to please Bill is not represented by "It", but by the implied "someone". Therefore in (6), subject-"It" is empty in the sense that it does not stand for one of the actors on the stage. We employ "It" so that the verb "is" will have a subject. Now we return to this sentence:

(8) *It is eager to please John.

Sentence (8) can be considered grammatical if "It" is not empty; that is, if subject-"it" stands for some subject:

(16) The dog is eager to please John.

(17) It is eager to please John (It = the dog)

In (16), John is the object of the dog’s attempt to please. John is not the subject. And so (16) does not mean the same thing as (8) *It is eager to please John.

because (8) was an attempt to rearrange

(3) John is eager to please. (active)

in the same way we were able to rearrange

(4) Bill is easy to please. (passive)

to get

(6) It is easy to please Bill.

Why didn’t the rearrangement with (8) work? In other words, why is (6) OK but (8) is not? Is it just because the brain doesn’t work that way, as Chomsky claims? Well, let’s see. Notice that we said that

(6) It is easy to please Bill.

really means

(6) It is easy (for someone) to please Bill.

and this allows subject-"it" to remain empty. Now let’s look very closely at (8)

(8) *It is eager to please John.

Caution A: We want subject-"It" to remain empty; in other words, we don’t want subject-"it" to stand for "the dog".

Caution B: Subject-"it" cannot stand for "John", because that would give us:

(8) *John is eager to please John.

Caution C: We don’t want this implied structure to obtain:

(8) *It is eager to (for someone) to please John.

because John, not "someone else", is the one who is eager to please.

Thus we cannot construe the sentence in any way that would allow John to be represented as the noun modified by the adjective eager, nor can we construe it to represent John as the actor who is eager to please. Therefore the sentence cannot logically be shown to be the grammatical equivalent of

(3) John is eager to please. (active)

QED.