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Chomsky and most of his students call Everett a charlatan. For example, David Pesetsky, whose doctoral advisor was Chomsky, criticized Everett's work in the Jun
by gshubert17 6y ago
Chomsky and most of his students call Everett a charlatan. For example, David Pesetsky, whose doctoral advisor was Chomsky, criticized Everett's work in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Language. Chomsky and Pesetsky may not be the most objective critics, though.
I read Everett's popular book on the Pirahã, "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes", and found his descriptions believable, but I'm definitely not a professional linguist.
There's a nice interview with Everett in https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion-and-human-thought https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_l_everett-recursion... which includes details on the controversies with Chomsky's ideas.
Given Chomsky's refusal to admit he was wrong in his political judgments about Cambodia and Sudan, which some observers go so far as to label hypocrisy, I'm tending to cheer for Everett and hope he is correct.
- coolgeek 6y agoDepending on how you define student, everybody who ever took a linguistics class is a student of Chomsky. But you raise a good point about objectivity. So who/where are the disinterested supporters of Everett's work? What do they believe that the Chomskians are getting wrong about Everett's work? The key word in my query here is disinterested, because almost all criticism of Chomsky is (implicitly or explicitly) based on his political views, rather than his linguistic scholarship.