Chomskyan (R)evolutions

Abstract

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Modernism as a "movement characterised by a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods". This is borne out by examination of how 'modern' linguists have routinely established an ironic distance between their own work and what went before. The exception is Chomsky, whose 'atavistic' revolution, harking back to putative early modern roots, broke all the rules in terms of the stance one could take toward intellectual predecessors in the wake of modernism. It showed how "a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods" could be brought about by, not ignoring traditional methods, or taking an ironic distance from them, but reinterpreting them with a greater time depth. The ultimate irony lies in how Chomsky's opponents forced an ironic distance on him, turning him into a mere garden-variety modernist -and by so doing, helped to guarantee the success of his generativist programme.. This is a fitting opportunity to answer Koerner's (2002: 138) question about the basis for statements I have made concerning Chomsky's "earliest" published references to Saussure; it is that I spent untold hours in the Georgetown University Library in 1989-90 digging out and reading through all of Chomsky's early publications, with much appreciated guidance from . . To be clear, I am passing no judgement here about the validity of the claimed continuity; on that question, see Koerner (2002: 131-150).