Quotational dyslexia: Thank you Masked Man

One of the dilemmas in dealing with really bad stuff is trying to figure out whether the gross misunderstanding is a product of ignorance or malice.  This is a particularly difficult decision to make in   the case of Vyvyan Evans' oeuvre as the work is both deeply misinformed (as I and others have argued in detail see here, here, here, here, here) and, apparently, very dishonest.

How is it dishonest? Well, it seem that Evans has a very difficult time quoting accurately. In fact, his quoting habits seem to regularly transmute the claims being made into their exact opposite. This is demonstrated in detail in an anonymous comment on Evans' blog (here). I quote in full:

It's very peculiar this war of quotations, as if science worked by quotes. But be that as it may, your quotes are not real.

Evans purporting to quote Chomsky wrote:

"A plausible assumption is that the principles of language are fixed and innate" [Chomsky 2000: 122]. Chomsky then says: "For example, evidence from Japanese can be used (and commonly is used) for the study of English; quite rationally, on the well-supported empirical assumption that the languages are modifications of the same initial state" [Chomsky 2000: 102, New Horizons in the Study of Language].

I commend you for giving page numbers, but have noticed that the quote that you introduce with "Chomsky then says" has a page number earlier than the quote that precedes it? This is a frankenquote that you concocted to suit your polemical purpose. And if you actually go back and read what Chomsky wrote, once again, as in the famous Facebook thread, it turns out he said the exact opposite of what you attribute to him. This is clear, for example, by simply reading the sentences that precede your second quote "For example, evidence from Japanese can be used (and commonly is used) for the study of English; quite rationally, on the well-supported empirical assumption that the languages are modifications of the same initial state":

Chomsky actually wrote:

"Only if we keep to the radical translation paradigm or some other arbitrary constraint is evidence restricted to the use of sentences by the speaker (or some selected community). Approaching the topic as in the sciences, we will look for all sorts of evidence. For example, evidence from Japanese can be used (and commonly is used) for the study of English; quite rationally, on the well-supported empirical assumption that the languages are modifications of the same initial state.

Does this sound like a claim "that Universal Grammar can be investigated, in principle, by study of just a single language" (your words)? I don't think so, and I don't think anyone who bothers to read the text could think so. It is in fact part of an argument against the philosopher Quine, and an argument specifically in favor of using all sorts of evidence from multiple sources.

The quote that you place first comes from a totally different chapter on a different topic. You included the little bit that reads "a plausible assumption is that the principles of language are fixed and innate", as supposed support for your claim that Chomsky thinks we can study just one language. But let's look at the actual context, which is all about the lessons we could only have learned by studying multiple languages in detail. Yes, he begins with your snippet "a plausible assumption is that the principles of language are fixed and innate", but here's the rest of the same sentenceand the rest of the paragraph:

Chomsky actually wrote:

, and that variation is restricted in the manner indicated. Each language, then, is (virtually) determined by a choice of values for lexical parameters: with one array of choices, we should be able to deduce Hungarian; with another, Yoruba. This principles-and- parameters approach offers a way to resolve a fundamental tension that arose at the very outset of generative grammar. As soon as the first attempts were made to provide actual descriptions of languages 40 years ago, it was discovered that the intricacy of structure is far beyond anything that had been imagined, that traditional descriptions of form and meaning merely skimmed the surface while structuralist ones were almost irrelevant. Furthermore, the apparent variability of languages explodes as soon as one attends to facts that had been tacitly assigned to the unanalyzed “intelligence of the reader.” To attain “descriptive adequacy,” it seemed necessary to give very intricate accounts, specific to particular languages, indeed to particular constructions in particular languages: complex rules for relative clauses in English, for example. It was, however, obvious that nothing of the sort could be true. The conditions of language acquisition make it plain that the process must be largely inner-directed, as in other aspects of growth, which means that all languages must be close to identical, largely fixed by the initial state. The major research effort since has been guided by this tension, pursuing the natural approach: to abstract from the welter of descriptive complexity certain general principles governing computation that would allow the rules of a particular language to be given in very simple forms, with restricted variety.

In other words, what Chomsky is actually saying is that the program of figuring out what if anything is the content of UG could not even get off the ground if we had not studied a variety of languages in detail, which created the "tension that "the major research effort" initiated by Chomsky's work has been guided by! Once again, the exact opposite of the sentiment that you claim he is expressing in this passage.

Now lets turn to supposed Chomsky quote 2 -- the one in which he supposedly disavows "innateness". Brilliant work! You cut his last sentence off in the middle, to make him yet again sound like he's saying the opposite from what you claim. You quote Chomsky as follows:

Evans quoting Chomsky wrote:

“I am alleged to be one of the exponents of this [innateness] hypothesis, perhaps even the arch criminal. I have never defended it and have no idea what it is supposed to mean…people who are defenders of ‘the innateness hypothesis’ do not…even use the phrase.”

Except there's no period at the end of this in the original. Instead, the sentence (the very same sentence!) continues as follows:

"because there is no such general hypothesis; rather, only specific hypotheses about the innate resources of the mind, in particular, its language faculty. General arguments against some unformulated “innateness hypothesis” have no bearing on actual hypotheses about innateness, in the case of growth of language and conceptual systems or other forms of physical growth."

What Chomsky actually wrote thus makes your snide continuation ("This revelation might, in fact, come as a shock to many of Chomsky’s adherents, who may have been forgiven for thinking that Universal Grammar was, indeed, about innateness") utterly wrong and irrelevant. What Chomsky was actually writing is exactly what Adger tried to explain to you in comments on your previous post.

Finally for amusement, it's also interesting to check up on your supposed quote from Boeckx about Chomsky's "Galilean style":

Evans supposedly quoting Boeckx wrote:

"In his 2006 book, Linguistic Minimalism, Cedric Boeckx has praised this approach, dubbing it “the majestic Galilean perspective”

At this point it will come as no surprise that Boeckx didn't write this colourful phrase. He is actually quoting two well-known anti-Chomskyans, Jackendoff and Culicover, waxing sarcastic. They are the ones who coined and used this phrase, which therefore appears in quotation marks in Boeckx's text.

Maybe one such snipped and mangled quote could be put down to human error. But so many? Again and again and again?

Plentiful "errors" in quotation ("again and again and again") bespeak very bad faith.

Fortunately the Sophie's Choice I noted at the outset that one is often required to make need not be exclusive. Evans' work can be both misinformed and dishonest and it is quite evident now that it has successfully ticked off both boxes.

Two more things: I have gone after Evans' work repeatedly in FOL, The scandal of his published work goes beyond the work itself. The bigger scandal is that Cambridge University Press (Yes, CUP, the CUP!!) published this junk.  How did this get through?  I thought that CUP was a quality press and that it vetted and reviewed its projects. That's certainly what we tell our APT committees during promotion and tenure. But the Evans case suggests that what may once have been true is no longer true. It appears that "review" now means "would it make money?" rather than "can the contents pass the smell test?"CUP has embarrassed itself with this book and it owes Generative Grammar an apology. I would recommend one of the Japanese kind where the head of the linguistics section asks for our forgiveness and also immediately disowns the work. But don't hold your breath. There is money in this sort of junk, (there is always sales in debunking Chomskyan linguistics) and don't expect a university press, even a "venerable" one, to throw away a money making opportunity just because it's doing so via junk. As Upton Sinclair once (apparently) said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Ditto for University Presses and Sales. Sad.

Last, I want to end with a BIG thank you to Anonymous. Whoever you are, you did important work. Cleaning out the Augean Stables is never anyone's idea of fun. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting so that the rest of us don't have to.