Deleuze & Guattari's Critique of Noam Chomsky

*The part at the end where I say bye got cut off. Don't worry, I still love you all!!
*When editing, I realized I said "noun" instead of "object" when describing a standard English sentence wooooops lol.
In this episode, I present Deleuze and Guattari's criticisms of Chomsky's linguistic theories.
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[@ailblentyn]

Thank you. Nice talk. It’s interesting to remember that Chomsky is not a Saussurean. He isn’t interested in social phenomena like standard languages. He doesn’t even believe in “languages”. He views the category “language” the same way a biologist views “species”. He really holds that only idiolects actually exist, and idiolects that are similar enough can be put in the same group and called “the same language”.

[@ailblentyn]

@@ady9830 Yes, he does. Saussure is understood to present a view that the language code is owned by a language community. Chomsky on the other hand has always looked to the competence of an *individual* speaker. I haven’t read everything by him, but that’s the thrust of “Syntactic Structures”, “Aspects” and “Cartesian Linguistics” (especially), if I remember correctly.

[@shrayanahaldar8003]

Thanks a lot for making this video! I’m a grad student of linguistics where Chomsky did his thing, so there’s a lot of historical sedimentation of Chomskian generative grammar in my professional sphere. So let me clarify something: modern generative linguists - the intellectual descendants of Chomsky and his coevals - do NOT give in to thinking of languages as only represented by its standard dialect (made standard by power, of course). And the reason you made this video, I think, is because of a significant equivocation that goes on when people talk about “language”. When non-Chomskians - or people not educated within or familiar with the Chomskian tradition - talk about “language”, they think of it as this “vague cloud of spatio-temporal variation”. That’s not helpful or scientifically productive. When linguists talk about “language”, what they mean is the set of sentences/expressions that can be generated by a speaker who has acquired a grammar (understood as a set of rules) based on their universal grammar (UG; basically the language organ in our heads) beginning from their birth until around puberty. That means that every single IDIOLECT is a language, every single DIALECT is a language (with idiolectal variations within it, but because of a near-perfect mutual intelligibility, we can abstract away from those variations and talk about dialects). So, when linguists talk about languages, they mean the product of an acquired grammar. When a grammar is significantly common to all speakers of a group, that grammar is referred to as a dialect. A dialect becomes a standard dialect because of power etc. But that’s also a dialect and linguists always treat it as such. In fact, non-standard dialects are often sources of data. And when we look at all these data from all these dialects, we find striking structural/semantic/phonological/… resemblances. To REMARKABLE extents. That’s the persistent signature of there being a UG, which restricts the set of considerations the child has to make in order to parse the enormous amount of linguistic data they receive and then care about parsing the data in specific structural ways that are seen in all children and thus in all human linguistic propensities. That’s what Chomsky means by UG and there being a common matrix to our languages. I have severe disagreements with Chomsky in many areas, but in this case, it does look like he’s right.

[@addammadd]

This was beautifully written. Thank you. I have some significant disputes to offer but frankly I don’t want to sully the comment thread under this profoundly cogent statement. Thank you for your contribution here.

[@shrayanahaldar8003]

@@addammadd My pleasure! Glad to put the esoteric stuff I do to some use.

[@Israel2.3.2]

Do you have any recommended readings for those who are interested in linguistics but don't know where to start?

[@shrayanahaldar8003]

@@Israel2.3.2 I’m not sure whether this will be very helpful, but maybe try: “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax”. Update: forgot there’s a better thing to start with. Check out his “On Language”.

[@cedricrust9953]

Thanks for the comments. It goes to show how long ago my linguistics classes were that I wouldn't be able to put this into words nearly as well as you did.

[@MAAEEULAZ]

As much as Deleuze has the greatest metaphysical statement of all time with Difference and Repetition, I don’t think him and Guattari understood exactly what Noam and then were saying. Not to say Noam was “right” cuz there’s a lot of contention, but this conceptual takedown doesn’t work for me Noam wasn’t creating a platonic idea (at least not intentionally) and his stuff is sourced empirically.

[@alvaromd3203]

I bet they didn’t bother to read it. There’s something universal? It must be a capitalist plot.

[@theviking2316]

As someone who has only listened to videos/classes recorded on youtube, could you explain a bit about what makes difference and repetition so great and how it relates to hegel, spinoza (plato?). Thanks a lot if you've got the time:)

[@nulakiustha]

It's not clear to me whether you just present D&G's critique or whether you endorse it or even if part of this video is your own critique on Chomsky's linguistics. Whatever the case might be, D&G are entirely mistaken as they don't seem to understand what generative grammar is about. It's not at all about the dominant variety being superior to its dialects. It's about the discovery of the mechanism(s) that generate the grammatical phrases of a language/dialect/variety and not the ungrammatical ones (this study is also called syntax). In other words it concerns the language faculty, which is part of the architecture of the human mind. This critique is exactly like Chomsky's critique of postmodernism. Just as Chomsky fails to understand what postmodernism is about, D&G fail to understand what generative grammar is about. It's a pity really. No one wants to understand something more. They just want to criticize what/who they have a bias against

[@kropotkinbeard1]

While I appreciate anyone challenging anyone about anything, I'd much rather have Chomsky invited on to speak for himself. Almost every time I hear someone challenging Chomsky, and then I hear Chomsky responding to the criticisms, makes one wonder if they've ever even read Chomsky. So, I suggest inviting Chomsky on and discussing both linguistics and post-modernism.

[@ogreer]

Your content is so great, and your delivery so pleasant. Thanks very much!

[@PPakzad]

I am sure you are faithfully reproducing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's criticism of Chomsky's linguistic theories. If that is the case, then Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have fundamentally misunderstood Chomsky's language theory, whatever its merit. Chomsky does not claim, there is a universal major language. Chomsky makes the biological postulate, arguing from the 'poverty of stimulus' perspective, that human beings are cognitively endowed with some sort of language acquisition device in our brains. The by now arcane term "universal grammar" in Chomsky's language theory is not about finding universals in the formal languages spoken by different people. Rather, the term refers to the principles by which this device works, which is universal to all humans across sign and verbal languages.

[@andrewtaylor3152]

I agree with a number of other comments here to the extent that the "refutation" appears largely inapposite. The ultimate question is how do young, developing brains learn very quickly to form unique sentences (i.e., sentences they have not heard spoken before) in a short time, based on a limited experience, using what appear to be universal rules of grammar and syntax. Whether we call something a language or a dialect is beside the point. A crucial part of Chomsky's view of language, not really discussed here, is that the primary use of language is internal -- i.e., thinking -- and that its use in verbal or written communication is merely a byproduct. Gestures, phonemes, facial expressions, etc., are a separate matter. Language explains how the different modules of the "mind" are united in organized thought.

[@dionysianapollomarx]

I've been reading Hegel scholars recently. And I found Gregory Scott Moss (who does not read Hegel as "idealist" in the standard, popular sense) has a better appraisal of Chomskyan linguistics. Moss has a paper critiquing the problem of psychologism (among four or five other problems), which somewhat echoes Jerrold Katz's critique of Chomsky's "unfinished revolution" in linguistics (Katz wants Chomsky to become a Platonic realist like Peirce), and Moss has a chapter entitled Hegelian psycholinguistics in one of his books, "Ernst Cassirer and the Autonomy of Language." The point by D&G about arborescence is moot, since Chomsky regularly has critiqued representationalism in linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology. Labov is a sociolinguist, not a linguist who views his field as a subfield of psychology like Chomsky. They have different playstyles and some linguists (Jackendoff, etc.) see alternatives (mostly social learning theories) to Chomskyan theories as somewhat complementary. To Chomsky, when it comes to the social world, one would be grasping at straws observing human phenomena and speech patterns, copious accumulation of corpora, descriptions of variations as they happen over time, and all that as humans are aware that they're being observed because human-science research is a reflexive affair, without getting at what's minimally true about what is common to humans. So, Chomsky does things a priori, for that reason, only to test things later a posteriori, then repeat (which is why he has a lot of dead theories and theories used by other field, e.g. Chomsky hierarchy in computer science, that he no longer pays attention to). His style is remarkably similar to the style of Einstein in that way.

[@AnimatedHooman]

Love the types of videos you put

[@zacheryhershberger7508]

Hey David! Videos look and sound great! 👍

[@numbersix8919]

Chomsky's project starts from the astonishing mystery of language acquisition by infants through critical stages of development, and ends with the claim that language is an evolved ability connected with abstract thought, that is to say that humans being couldn't think abstractly without meaningful words operated on by grammar. This claim that Chomsky has an insane belief that there is one universal language is false and, if deliberate, obtuse. He posits that underlying all human languages ("natural languages"), whether spoken or signed, there is a universal set of operations (called universal grammar). Since language acquisition happens spontaneously and organically as a part of human development, Chomsky imagines that "linguistic structures" in the human brain exist to support these operations. About this comment at 12:14 -- "Chomsky just understands all languages as being measured in accordance with what is the dominant form of that language. ...as though French-speaking people in France are more legitimate than French-speaking people in Haiti." For any linguist of any persuasion since the time of Ferdinand de Saussure to espouse such a thing is unthinkable. Such a belief corresponds to the Biblical story of an original human language of Eden. But natural languages do change over time. Many superficial features of any given language drift from one generation to the next, and all current modes of speech are descended from prior modes. This doesn't make any of them either more or less legitimate. In the same way, creole languages, dialects, and slang develop based on prior forms of "parent" tongues. But that also doesn't confer any special status to any of them. Far from it. By the way, understanding how languages change over time has enabled linguists to (approximately) reproduce the speech of ancient tongues that have never been heard. SVO stands for subject-verb-object. English is primarily an SVO language. Japanese is primarily an SOV language. These two languages, although pretty much unrelated to each other, use the same grammatical elements of subject, object and verb, and many more. In English and Chinese, word order cues the grammatical position of words. In Japanese, articles following words indicate grammatical position, and adjectives can be inflected like verbs. These differences are however are superficial. It seems reasonable to assume that the language faculty is operating on a deeper level. People of Europe especially, who often can speak fluently in two or more languages, are aware that when switching from one language to another, their thought processes don't change fundamentally. The smile example (baring the teeth as a form of aggression), similar to other forms of non-verbal communication, such as head shakes, head nods, head wags, types and manners of gestures and postures, eye contact, and purposeful facial expressions, vary widely across cultures. They are used to communicate, but are they operated on and receive their meaning from grammatical operations? No, they don't. Other, more instinctive expressions and postures that are liable to be produced and received unconsciously also communicate inner states between all mammals very effectively, but are they language? No. Wittgenstein said that, "If a lion could speak, you couldn't understand it." I don't know if that's necessarily true, but it would be the case if lion language were different from human language, in Chomsky's sense. To the extent that it is difficult sometimes to accurately translate some things adequately from one language to another, there perhaps the rhizomatic principle is operating. On its face, that gap is probably more phenomenological than linguistic. Either way, it raises some interesting philosophical questions. But let's be clear that the similarity between languages is far greater than the differences. This is the universality that all linguists see behind language.

[@vyvlad]

The comment at 12:14 is wrong to the point of being insulting. Chomsky has been consistent on not equating the socially dominant dialect with language, and has straight up said multiple times that every code people speak is a full language in itself. This entire section has been reproduced by Chomsky multiple times in interviews when people ask him what language is. This is consistent with his broader anti-imperialist stance. The only thing I could think of that would produce such a mistake is misunderstanding the linguistic distinction between your grammar and the full set of things you can externalize. Everyone speaks multiple languages (the codes used in different contexts), but can also say things that even they would recognize as being not 'grammatical'. This is why linguists don't usually study poetry. Chomsky was only interested in the core language faculty, because it had a structure that could be studied.

[@numbersix8919]

@@vyvlad I have a comment here which explains that core languages, or parent or antecedent languages of any kind are important in the study of the natural evolution of languages. My favorite example is true pidgin tongues, formed between two unrelated languages, often (but not always) by colonized people, extemporaneously. While the pidgin vocabulary shares words from both parent languages, there is no mixture of grammar. Pidgin grammar arises spontaneously, and most amazingly it is similar to the same grammar that all children adopt as they first learn their cradle tongue (no matter what language that is). This before they are "corrected" by parents and teachers, and gain the extra capacity needed to produce superficial grammatical structures themselves. You can imagine the poor impression laypeople might form when they hear that colonized people speak with "primitive" or "simplified" grammar, in a way "similar to that of a four or five-year old." The colonial masters never learn the real language(s) of the people they colonize, but the colonizers do quickly learn to use the pidgin tongue as a matter of necessity. If the language and cultural practices of the colonized people are repressed, the pidgin tongue may come to replace their native language. A part of cultural genocide. The universal grammar that appears where two languages with different surface grammars combine, reveals an innate grammar common to all human beings. There are pidgin languages all over the world, not just among colonized peoples, but anywhere there is informal and ongoing engagement between people with widely different surface grammars. The pidgin grammars are fairly intelligible, while the elaborated surface grammars of the parent tongues seem to employ additional features and rules. I should add that speaking a pidgin tongue correctly is every bit as difficult to master as any other language. And that pidgin tongues can evolve into more independent languages which can then replace, or work to alter, their parent languages. It's a very important field of study, and it is critically important to preserve or restore as many spoken languages as possible. It is our humanity, our common heritage, that we are obliged to protect and nurture.

[@guytennenbau3950]

What evidence do you have that Chomsky considers the dominant form of a language "more legitimate" than its regional dialects? Do Deleuze and Guattari say this, or is this your own reading? Again, what's the evidence? You are misrepresenting Chomsky's position. He knows very well how languages diversify -- how what we call French, for example, began as a regional dialect of Latin. He does not privilege one over the other. Rather, he thinks that *all* languages -- standard French, Haitian French, Québécois, Mandarin, Cantonese etc. -- share a common form that is part of our genetic inheritance as Homo sapiens. You are interpolating some kind of discourse on oppression here, but without sources. Also, "subject, verb, noun" is nonsensical because a subject is always itself a noun. I believe you meant to say "subject, verb, object." This presentation is rather superficial. Respectfully, unless you spend more time researching and writing these, you are doing a disservice.

[@lukeskirenko]

I'm absolutely a layperson here, but none of this strikes me as cogent. Whether there are underlying structures is a hypothesis that can be empirically tested, it has nothing to do with socially contested ideas about 'correct' english or french etc.. The latter is about competing needs across constantly changing demographics, the balancing self-expression, spontaneity, local social ties, with needs for broader-scale social co-ordination, and centralised power structures, state institutions etc.. Furthermore, there are things that could loosely be called 'universals' in body language, gestural communication. Empirically test whether there's a human out there who relates to a kick drum and a snare in the opposite way from the norm, or tempo. Find someone who finds a slow rhythmical tempo to be a gallop. The natural language rooted deep in our nervous system is the prerequisite for communication, but it's fair to say this is problematised by the notion of what is neurologically 'normal', and of course no two biological entities are identical. Thus language is made possible by the similarities in biological constitution. The anecdote about the baring of teeth being interpreted as a threat display, this doesn't make sense either, as threat displays and anger are tied to a collection of facial elements, the combination of the baring teeth with the tightening of the brows and tensing of the lower eyelids. These are wired into the nervous system as it prepares for conflict. A smile is something altogether different, relaxation of certain facial muscles, this again is tied to deep-rooted structures in the nervous system. This is why we get on well with cats, dogs etc., and not spiders.

[@plaidchuck]

It has been shown that facial expressions are inborn and passed genetically, i.e. even people blind from birth will smile and frown even without ever seeing a human face in their life.

[@lukeskirenko]

@@plaidchuck Yeah. It's fair I think to say that in a sense there is a 'foundation', or a grounding to these things biologically, but that there are many layers interacting and changing over time as a result of memory. So attempts at simple foundationalism will tend to produce errors, but at the same time applying analogies such as rhizomes in broad brushstrokes will miss the regularities that indicate underlying structures.

[@chaseanderson215]

you’re wrong. i’m not smart enough to articulate clearly why. but i know

[@MegaCatkitty]

I think Deleuze & Guattari are specifically attacking the systems Chomsky uses to prove things like Generative grammar or recursion in speech. These systems, like Generative Grammar, are chartered and made into language “trees.” As we know, Deleuze & Guattari propose a more rhizomatic model- basically saying these language trees are so simple as a tool that they leave out key details of language. If you want to find the underlying principles that determine human language, so say Deleuze & Guattari, you’re going to have to do more than chart out a linguistic feature like say, “Wh-movement” in an interrogative.

[@MegaCatkitty]

Also sorry to reply to my own comment but Chomsky does not find dialects of language derivative. He has stated in many interviews that the work of socio-linguists like Labov could provide fascinating insights- it’s just not his field. Chomsky is interested in structural linguistics & psycho linguistics (the latter of which he has been proven wrong about pretty thoroughly). In the French example, D&G are pointing out that even Labov’s categories are too rigid (for instance he attempted to identify the “wahter” vs “wuhter” pronunciation of water across the United States by identifying the pitch by which people pronounced the A in these two words, in order to determine which regions of American had descendants who spoke with lower vocal tones- they tended to say “wuhter”- and which region had higher vocal tones who pronounced the (so called) standard American “wahter.”) Here D&G suggest that even these categories are caught up in a political regime of standardization and deviation from a false norm. They might argue that the prosody of someone’s speech is both natural and socially constructed & to chart it further into standard vs non standard is to impose a kind of power structure based in linguistic domination on a group, or something… I don’t know I could be wrong.

[@enlightenedanalysis1071]

Thanks for this video. It was vey interesting.

[@fastsavannah7684]

You should check out Juan Carlos Rodríguez’s critique of ideology and theoretical linguistics. There’s an English translation of his book, “La norma literaria” by Malcolm K. Read.

[@demit189]

very good video buddy

[@hasanunver2600]

Love the ending :D

[@leninscat6104]

okay this is interesting and all but man what's your skin care routine?

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Decent but cheap drug store face wash morning and night; retinol serum once or twice a week at night; niacinamide 2 or three times a week at night; and if you're feeling up to it a salicylic acid mask once a week :D

[@DelandaBaudLacanian]

11:25 - "How Emotions Are Made" - Lisa Feldman Barrett is indispensable

[@aarnilapsi9336]

Someone needs to critique Deleuze and Guattari next.

[@nikhilweerakoon1793]

Baidou and Zizek do, there not very good imo though.

[@scriabinismydog2439]

Laruelle.

[@jeffpicklo525]

I would not assume Chomsky believes that languages within a language are less legitimate ,he’s noting difference ,and if two languages happen to intermix then I see nothing wrong with acknowledging that , presuming inferiority is often a self report. ( I’m not referring to you in any way with this , excellent video )

[@iwtdkmp5081]

Thank you yogscast lewis

[@teresadiazgoncalves3288]

Don’t totally agree that power defines by imposition a certain language variation as the pure form of that language, at least not always. Where I am, Portugal, the purest form of the language is considered to be that of Coimbra not the capital Lisbon

[@psikeyhackr6914]

Does language have a TRUENESS? Reality is trueness and human beings must live in reality so there should be some commonalities. But humans can misinterpret reality and build those mistakes into the language confusing later generations. Reality is more important than language. How do we fix language? Like sunrise. The Sun does not rise. But is there any point in changing it as long as we understand what really happens?

[@siosis3083]

Another layperson here. All dialects are languages, and a great variety exists among them. "Languages" as we understand them are defined by those in power. I believe these points you brought up in the video are quite separate from the theory he posited and he would not dispute any of them. My understanding is that his theory applies to the innate ability that all humans have to learn to communicate verbally with one another.

[@siosis3083]

Deleuze and Guatarri's points*

[@nativesun7661]

No offense, but channels like this do Chomsky a great disservice. When someone (a grad student, postdoc, etc) just takes it upon themselves to ‘introduce & interpret’ Chomsky to the masses via their youtube channel or other social media presence because…well because they believe they have an adequate enough understanding to do the job…then they try to ‘take down’, disagree or critique the very philosophy that *they* just reinterpreted, synthesisized and (mis)characterized, we as an audience receive no true elucidation. Let Chomsky speak for himself. He’s one of the most brilliant minds and thinkers of our era and there are plenty of articles, direct videos (right here on yt), essays and books where Noam Chomsky can and does give crystal clear understandings of his work, thought and perspective.

[@blackenedblue5401]

Amen, this video is disrespectful and confuses things

[@Emmanuel-gl1de]

do you realize that this video isn’t his own critique but an interpretation of the critique of d&g towards some chomskian views ? lol

[@7amaniq897]

cool video

[@JeffRebornNow]

@Theory &Philosophy What does the word 'arborescent' mean? What does 'rhizomatic' mean? I think these two authors are firmly entrenched in the post-structural world, for I can't make heads or tails of their gobbledygook. LOL

[@tomikuz1654]

I have not read the piece but aren’t D&G misrepresenting what Chomsky is saying. He makes the claim that even the dialects are bounded by the foundational universal grammar.

[@reallynow6276]

D & G misunderstands Chomsky. Chomsky made the exact same statement that there is no main or true language with dialects. He went as far as to say that if children gets language instruction in school that instruction will likely have unnatural features and that true language grow naturally in the brains of children. He makes the same point about dominating groups seeing their way of speaking as the superior way of speaking. The misunderstanding comes from assuming that the grammatical structures of a particular language represent part of a possible universal grammer. Even though the grammatical structures of languages are considered and compared it was not meant to construct a kind of general grammer. That project was an effort to get an idea what might be going on on a deeper level in the brain. In a sense it was like trying to figure out the algorith behind al the variety. It is pretty obvious and on the surface that languages including body languages differ drastically. At the same time it is also obvious that any normal baby can rapidly pick up any language they get exposed to. That would only be possible if it had the built in ability to identify units of meaning and the structures that carry it. That is the universal grammer. Uncovering how a child's brain does that is the task universal grammer attempted. Of course we do not have a way to directly inspect the language faculty at work inside the brain. We can only do it through comparing different grammers and of course that proved to be extremely difficult to use to understand universal grammer, which is a covert activity or structure.

[@alibashari8430]

Well, this was embarasing. How about putting some effort into understanding what Chomsky is actually suggesting? It'll take about 13 minutes, here you go: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZOWZ5qkqpJjqKM Also, how is Deleuze & Guattari chapter is called a critique of UG without actually refuting the arguments put forth in support of UG? Saying 'this guy is wrong, and this guy is right' is more like talking sh**, that's not a critique.

[@gregpappas]

I don’t think Chomsky is wrong. The fact that their are social hierarchies can not be ignored. We may fight against cultural domination, but that fight does not mean that one group dominates another. I don’t see this as a problem for Chomsky.

[@evanngelospa217]

This is embarrassing: "so in English, you have subject-verb noun so David walks to the beach would be a standard English sentence that is David being the subject walks is the verb that the subject is doing to the beach the beach being the area and or the noun" The noun is part of speech and not a syntactic element. In English is Subject Verb Object. Also, your syntactic analysis is wrong there is no such thing as an area or noun in syntaxis. Moreover, here "walk to" is intransitive which means it does not need an object. (I am not sure about it). In the place of the object, you said area or noun which is wrong such a thing is not part of Syntax. You make elementary mistakes. Why bother criticizing Chomsky?

[@sense_maker1816]

I’m too high for this debate

[@richidpraah]

This presentation of Chomsky is entirely mistaken. He does not hold the view that there is a central, dominant version of a language against which can be measured variations, dialects or slangs that are somehow less true expressions of said language. Rather he sees all languages as organic and evolving, and views slang and dialects as just as true expressions of language as any kind of oxford English or what have you. He of course views the necessary variants of language against which to measure and affirm what works and what doesn't, within the given language itself, meaning more or less non-sensical or confusing utterances. Certainly, your goal can be to generate surreal, dadaesque non-meanings or post-meanings with a little cut-up technique or go into a Finnegans Wake kind of automatic-writing reverie but again, the fact that you still get some kind of meaning when presented with such things isn't really something that troubles Chomsky's theory, since you then assimilate to yourself or within a social context the impressions of these non-meanings into something more cognizable. People have this remarkable tendency to view Chomsky as this old garde conservative linear thinker against which they must come with all these "new" pluralisms and embodied, processual, emergentist views that in no way contradicts or contravenes Chomsky. It's kind of analogous to the persistent insistence that people have of misunderstanding this idea of "human nature" as expressed in the Chomsky-Foucault debate for instance. The many people I've discussed this with almost all get the impression that Chomsky wants everybody to have more or less the same behaviour and thought-processes against which they are eager to show that human nature can be all sorts of other things because the very idea of human nature seems limiting and stifling and deterministic etc, whereas Chomsky believes no such thing. His preferred way of talking about it is in biological terms: if we are biological, organic creatures, then there are scopes and limits to our faculties. So just as we can't grow wings or tails, there are equally cognitive limits to our natures. Now, within this limited framework of organically founded human nature the variations are almost infinite, as Chomsky and people who do understand him have noted over and over, but people, especially in Europe almost always reacts to the notion of human nature with extremely mistaken and overly reductive impressions. This is not the same as saying, like Foucault, that whatever emerging tableaus of new sciences or whatever expression of human languages and cultures have no ultimate framework and can just be *anything*. This indeed is the weird empiricist tabula-rasa like notion that offers some kind of refreshing unlimited freedom when first encountered, but simply can't escape Chomsky's organic constraints, nor would anyone seriously wish them to. Within our organic frames there are the possibilities of tableaus of sciences to emerge that on the surface doesn't resemble the previous ones, or cultures and languages to have an insane amount of variation, but theses are, obviously, all occurring within the realm of what is biologically possible. It's also important to know that Chomsky holds that there may very well be vast domains of human abilities and potentials waiting to be realized and expressed in more socially and culturally nourishing conditions. Chomsky's linguistics therefore fits perfectly well with emergentist and processual thinking about true novelty of human thought and action, he's not a reductionist in any sense about these issues. He simply tries to work with the existing framework of science while being very open to the possibility that the methods and findings might eventually be radically overturned, but this is still his preference, as opposed to making a new speculative philosophy borrowed from bits and pieces all over and with this Deleuzian countercultural programme of going against a certain conception of the history of philosophy. And I think Chomsky would be in agreement with Deleuze on many things that Deleuze is in reaction to and wants to correct, but they just work within very different spheres and probably have these standard misconceptions about each others methods and work.

[@alexanderfuchs8742]

does this boy not understand Chomsky or what? how do you take the idea of universal grammar with all empirical languages as derived from and instantiating it and make your argument about one empirical language with dialects derived from it, arguing that they are simultaneously constitutive, equally to be privileged and therefore that Chomsky is wrong? the idea is (to put it in simple terms for baby brains) that all languages consist of states and their relations ... of course every language that develops will find different and varying ways of description, there will be very complex expressions of processes, new and easier ways of expressing the state you are in and relating it to others ... but just because there's empirical variation generated doesn't mean there isn't an underlying structuration?! now if you want to, you can make the very post-structuralist, schopenhauerian argument, that states only "exist" for us through the limited faculties of knowledge, their individuation is merely an appearance due to our own existence as such, as a fractal of the whole, appearing fragmented to us -- so there is a creative desire to find forms of expression that can convey more complex relations, more intricate variations, that make clear that no state is static but due to its internal and external relations and contradictions always in flux and such ... but thats what the term "GENERATIVE" is for, fool! or, if you want, you can make the case that claims to universality undermine the common humanity of us all, making some more privileged than others if they attain such access to said universality. but Chomsky's point is that language is expressing the universal and the shared capacity for language means equal access to it and that no one language is "better", gaining more potential truth-points than all the other languages. therefore universality is exactly making this point. thanks for the effort

[@abdolh2664]

What about Capitalism and Schizophrenia ?

[@cyrilmrazek6649]

not gonna lie, this one is really butchered. Chomsky basically never held any of the views attributed to him in this video. The proposition that for example there is one correct syntax structure to English would (and did) seems ridiculous to him. The D’n’G’s point about dialects was also misrepresented because in the same paragraph they clearly say that the language only is viewed as more musical because the standardised French rejected this as its variation.

[@oioi9372]

Deleuze and Guattari critiqued their own false view of Chomsky's linguistics, not Chomsky's linguistics

[@uristrauss6106]

The description of chomskian linguistics here is not in the same ballpark as chomskian linguistics. Or the same city, country, or universe. It's completely unrecognizable. It makes Jordan Peterson's description of Marxism look apt by comparison.

[@alvaromd3203]

In contrast to all these post-modern theories that come and go, there’s 40 years of solid evidence in favor of generative linguistics. How the brain processes language is not a political or ideological matter, it’s a scientific one. Chomsky is the most engaged leftist intellectual and also wise enough to avoid mixing up stuff.

[@giorgigabelia4641]

so Deleuze and Guattari’s critique is that Chomsky’s linguistic theories remind them of trees, and they don’t like trees?

[@nicholasduron9827]

no

[@enginozcicek517]

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

[@erendiro]

I’m afraid this is is a silly representation of Chomsky’s ideas. D&G were not serious thinkers. See Sokal & Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense.

[@andreanugrahibnujasmanumar7275]

Hi Dave, I'm Andre, a doctoral student in linguistics. I couldnt agree more with what youd pointed out. Since ancient times humans have found language perplexing and have made continuous effort to understand its nature. Chomsky's UG is one important attempt in uncovering the mystery of language. The motivation of UG is highly understandable, yet the method used in finding it is seriously flawed. UG theorists try to discover UG principles, parameters and so on, by examining certain grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in some languages. It is impossible to find the intended innate language universals using this method. Talking about issues such as the evolution of language by Chomsky might have the effect of diverting the critics’ attention away from UG's problems, but it cannot remove them. Many things have prevented people (including the proponents of UG) from seeing that UG is deeply flawed. The analogies between language and scientific theories, such as the thermonuclear theory, Evo-Devo and Marr's theory of vision, have fostered the belief that UG is a scientific theory. Various considerations, e.g. the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, the best-theory argument and the Martian-scientist argument, have contributed to the strengthening of this belief. A bewildering array of research results that have kept appearing in the forms laws (such as Subjacency and Binding Principles) and entities (such as parameters, functional and lexical categories, and lexical features) have given the impression that UG is making steady progress toward the hidden nature of language. But on careful analysis, the analogies turn out to be misleading, the belief unjustified, and the impression of progress false. There might be innate constraints on the child's acquisition of language, and there might be other innate mechanisms responsible for language; but these cannot be found with the method employed in the theory of UG. If we want to find any innate language universals (e.g. principles, categories, etc.) at all, we must investigate the processing requirements of language on the brain, and get to know more about the brain structure.

[@profe3330]

What is it with you and all these anti-Chomsky videos? Was he mean to you once, or what? 😂

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

I love drinking the tears of Chomsky fans.

[@guytennenbau3950]

Don't you think this is rather childish? If people are being rude, fine; ignore them. But the fact remains that if one wants to level a valid critique of some figure (and there certainly are valid philosophical critiques of Chomsky) one must first state their position accurately. You claim here that Chomsky somehow "privileges" the Spanish spoken in Spain over that spoken in Mexico. I would be utterly astonished if Chomsky ever so much as implied anything like this (for not only is this *not* entailed by his linguistic theories, he is also famously anti-elitist). Ultimately, Chomsky is not at all concerned with the historical process whereby Mexican Spanish split off from Spanish Spanish, etc. He is concerned with what distinguishes language (*any* language) from hominid grunts. What is more, it is difficult to know whether the misrepresentation is your or F&G's

[@FrankNFurter1000]

They're out of the woodwork this evening.

[@amrass08]

pathetic.

[@anupamdebnath1884]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 Good one! I'm a Zizekian and I'm loving it. 😝

[@heartache5742]

@@guytennenbau3950 after what chomsky contributed to the unnecessary international debate on ukraine it is entirely understandable

[@jipangoo]

There are other contexts that you are missing. Chomsky doesnt just pluck these concepts out of nowhere. You need to look at X Bar theory in some depth.

[@jipangoo]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@jipangoo]

Dude. Seriously. You need to understand the basics of syntax.

[@jipangoo]

You have just butchered Chomsky. Syntax is syntax. You cant argue your way out of it anymore than you can argue against gravity. Syntax is the structure that allows me to write this sentence. Your understanding of what im writing comes from? Yes, what Chomsky calls Generative Grammar. It matters none that im Australian and you are Canadian and that im old enough to be your dad. Those features are purely irrelevant to your comprehension of me.... As for variation, nobody, least of all Chomsky denies that. The question is how do humans, per se, all operate within certain linguistic parameters. We have a finite system of phonetics (not Chomsky's thing.. but ill use it,). Our mouths are only capable of producing a finite amount of sounds. And produce them we surely do. It doesn't matter one bit if you are Canadian or Swahili. You will use one of a set number of options available according to the construction of things like the glottis and so on. Physiology dictates this (not Deleuze and Guattari nor Chomsky). Its just an uncontroversial fact... Similar to breathing. Now. Apply what i just said to the framework of language and that in a nutshell is Chomsky

[@jipangoo]

Ah... You do ok with soft science but you know nothing about linguistics and its obvious 😊