The verdict is in regarding Evans' book

Ok, the verdict is in. remember when I wondered (here) if Alun Anderson accurately reported the content of Vyvyan Evans’ book (The Language Myth))? Well he did! It seems that Evans actually made the arguments Anderson attributes to him. How do I know? Norbert must have read the book, you are thinking. Nope. Easier. Evans outlines his views here and it is actually as confused and uninformed as Anderson’s review suggests. In fact, it may even be worse than Anderson’s review suggests.  This paper has no clue. Not even a scintilla of one. The piece is less than unenlightened, it is aphotic. And it is precisely for this reason that I cannot recommend Evans' short paper highly enough. It is a pedagogue's dream. How so?

Well first it is very short. In fact, it’s hard to believe that someone could cram so much misunderstanding into so short a format. Clearly Evans does have talent. It is so replete with the standard confusions that one need send an eager student no further than to this short piece for an example of the kinds of conceptual errors critics of GG seem drawn to (here a nice metaphor of moths and flames seems called for, but I will show strength of literary character and resist). This short piece exhibits every possible mistake. It’s a godsend. Moreover, because it is both short and so replete with misinformation, there is really no need to ever buy the book (so don't!). It is inconceivable that the book could possibly provide more illustrative examples of miscomprehension than is packed into this dense eight pages. So both cheap and serviceable. Perfect.

BTW, those thinking of using this material for teaching purposes (and I am not joking, you really should consider making criticism of these views part of the graduate degree process (even undergrads would benefit)) might also consider using Anderson’s excellent review. It too, as I indicated previously, is thoroughly misguided and misinformed, bit sometimes it’s nice to have two versions of the same song.

As I’ve already (pre)reviewed the Evans' material in the earlier post on Anderson’s reviewed, I will only add a few cursory remarks here:

1.     The confusion between Greenberg and Chomsky Universals is evident throughout. It’s amazing how hard this simple distinction has been for critics to grasp. But this piece is not only conceptually myopic, it is also intellectually lazy. Here’s a piece of critical etiquette: If one wants to sink the GG ship one needs to go after the trophy cases. There are many of these in GG and they are not hard to find. However the observation, yet again, that languages really really look different is not one of these. We know. We’ve always known. We even have GGers who have worked on (gasp!) Salish. So when making a case, discuss the serious work. Failure to do so is a sure fire indicator that nothing of interest has been discussed.

2.     There is a difference between two oft used metaphors for describing innate structure: (i) UG is a blueprint, (ii) UG is an operating system. The difference between the two caused quite a bit of confusion within biology almost as much as it is doing in linguistics (or so I remember Gould telling us in his discussion of the homunculus problem). Blueprints invite the search for Greenberg Universals (every house has 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a foyer: find them!). Operating systems not so much. Windows is not OS, though they can do many of the same things, they are different systems with different formal requirements. In particular, there are few surface indications of what operating system you are using. In contrast, it is actually quite easy to tell whether some set of blueprints are those of the apartment/house/building you are looking at (I speak from some personal experience here). The GG conception of UG is more like operating system than blueprint. But really we don’t need these metaphors anymore (or at least we should not rest content with them): UG is a function that given PLD yields Gs. Your job, Mr Phelps, should you agree to take it, is to describe the fine structure of this function. In so doing GGers have discovered some very subtle features of this function and critics, to be serious, must address them in detail. Though I am a big fan of hand-waving (especially on sultry summer days) it generally fails to advance the topics of interest. Evans piece is an excellent illustration of this truism.

3.     All the same non-Chomskys make their appearance. Everett is cited (yet again) as showing that Gs need not be recursive and so disconfirming UG and Tomasello is trotted out to represent the idea that a penchant for co-operative behavior is all we need to get human language.  Starlings are schlepped out to argue that one finds recursion in non-humans and Neanderthals make an appearance to testify language facility pre-dating homo sapiens. All of this asserted with nary a hint of skepticism (or apparent knowledge that each one of these claims has been contested and all are likely to be false). Wouldn’t it be nice sometime if someone (e.g. Tomasello, Evans, Anderson) explained to anyone how it is that a penchant for co-operation yielded island effects or the ECP or Principle C, or …you get it. I understand that many other species display quite a bit of co-operative behavior without appearing to be grammatically competent. There is a simple reason why accounts purporting to explain the intricacies of language based on co-operation are never forthcoming, and a moments reflection tells us what this is: there is no route from the former to the latter that does not need to engage with the exactly the questions that Evans begs. And this is evident throughout: just like Anderson, faithful describer of his views, Evans prefers to abstract away from facts and arguments enjoying instead the broad oh-my-god-how-nutty-this-all-looks summary conclusions.

4.     Did I say ‘competent’ above? Here’s another great feature of the Evans’ piece. He seems not to understand the competence-performance distinction as he keeps talking about “speech” rather than linguistic competence. Evidence for the former is not in and of itself evidence for the latter. Birds “speak” but are not syntactically competent. Not even starlings.

5.     Oh yes, the Neo-Darwinian synthesis makes its gradualist appearance here to argue against the emergence of an FL about 100 kya (where is Gould now that we really need him) as does the assertion that being non-localized in the brain (there is no “spot specialized just for language” indicates that the idea that there is a language module is over the top.  I assume that similar reasoning could show us that there is no electrical system in a car. After all it is everywhere.

There is a lot more in this slender cornucopia of misapprehension and I could go on, but you should enjoy this yourself.  I recommend this short précis of Evans work to all looking for a paper to hand out to a class that concisely embodies all the mistakes that it is possible to make about the Chomsky program in GG. Though appalling, the piece is very useful.

One last exhortation: linguists should make it their business to loudly criticize this junk at every opportunity. It is getting wide distribution. I got it from Aeon and it was picked up in The Browser. It has just the ingredients to make it big: another one of those Chomsky-has-been-proven-wrong memes that seem so popular. So, criticize this in all venues, especially where non-linguists gather. Consider it part of your linguistic public service.