Challenging Chomsky: The Generative Garden Game [Hardcover]

Rudolf P. Botha (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1989 | ISBN-10: 0631166211 | ISBN-13: 978-0631166214

Challenging Chomsky tells two interwoven tales: a sober story about the foundations of Chomskyan linguistics and a satirical saga of the dozens of duels that have been fought over them. The sober story clears up close to one hundred of the conceptual distinctions that go to make up these foundations. And as it shows how the distinctions hang together, it spells out where Chomskyan linguistics fits into the larger domain of the study of language, what are Chomsky's basic beliefs and leading ideas about language and the mind, what are the that the metascientific principles and practices of Chomskyan linguistics, and how Chomskyan linguistics is linked to philosophy and mathematics and to psychology, biology and the natural sciences generally. At the same time, the story tells how Chomsky has changed the conceptual foundations of his linguistics over the years. The satirical saga describes the substance, history, logic and rhetoric of the major controversies that have raged over the foundations of Chomskyan linguistics. Its bconceptual distinctions are here mapped out as the forks of an intricate maze - The Garden - in which scholars from far and wide have chosen to challenge Chomsky - The Master - at a gladiatorial game. The reader is taken on a tour through The Garden and is introduced to a procession of Possessed Players, their militant moves and maneuvers, their poison passions, and the flops and follies for which they have gone down in The Annals of The Game. And as a Fledgling Fighter, the reader is primed in the principles and pragmatics of that perilous pursuit, The Garden Game. Above all, the reader is unable to observe the Marshall might with which The Master minds his magnificent maze.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Pub (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631166211
• ISBN-13: 978-0631166214
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,831,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intricate Jewelled Instructional Toy, May 7, 2000

By 

Bill Perez (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Challenging Chomsky: The Generative Garden Game (Hardcover)

For anyone even mildly interested in linguistics, this book is a unique delight. It is a primer on modern linguistics, disguised as a playful examination of Noam Chomsky's mind, disguised as a collection of whimsical fables. In it, Chomsky (the father of modern linguistics, reigning from his perch at MIT) is presented as the omnipotent 'Master of the Maze,' vanquishing all who challenge his hegemony of the 'Generative Garden.' At its surface, the book poses as an instructional tour of 'the Maze' for you, the hopeful but naive young warrior who dares to match wits with the Master. At each fork in the road, a dire warning is given in the form of a tale of some long-ago warrior that met an untimely end on the spot. The traps and distractions are revealed, the blind alleys and sudden drops are marked. Alternating with these second-person italicized passages of alliterative whimsy is a parallel, more serious, discussion of Chomsky's linguistic edifice of theory and argument. Here, the forks in the road are represented as a series of conceptual distinctions that Chomsky has applied to the topic over the decades since his seminal "Syntactic Structures" was printed. These are beautifully succinct and hone in like scalpels to the essential issues. And then, before your eyes glaze over, its back to the Garden Game and the words of wisdom to those who dare. Most of the major conflicts (as of the time of its writing, i.e., 1989) are humorously portrayed, although I'd bet some of the participants would take issue with Botha's judgement of victory for Chomsky in their case. Amusingly, Botha's own minor run-in with the Master (or his fans) is depicted discreetly as almost a non-event beneath the notice of Chomsky. Basically, this is a work of pure love and devotion to the author's chosen field of study, delivered as a left-handed tribute to the intellectual giant who made it all possible.

P.S. -- For those of you who are mostly familiar with Chomsky's political writings, I commend this book as a small grain of salt to be prudently kept handy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Help You out of Puzzle, August 24, 2000

By 

Gu Gang - See all my reviews

This review is from: Challenging Chomsky: The Generative Garden Game (Hardcover)

Chomsky's theory is difficult to most people because there are so many concepts which look alike but in fact are different by nature. Botha's book offers a very good help to the reader who is interested in getting to know Chomsky's linguistics. The book consists of a series of pairs of concepts which make people puzzling, for example, initial state vs. steady state, stable vs. steady, mind vs. body, external autonomy vs. internal autonomy, linguistic universals vs. cross-linguistic generalizations, problems vs. mysteries, and so on and so forth. It should be recommended as a desk-top handbook to the reader of Chomskyan literature.