STARLINGS FEED DOVE SOME CROW (via Tom Morin):

Starlings vs Chomsky: Can common birds make the linguist eat his words? (Jocelyn Selim, May 01, 2006, Discover)

Male European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) constantly add new sounds to their repertoires, picking up nearly any auditory object they can find, including the sounds of car alarms, squeaky doors, human speech and the vocalizations of other species. (photo: Daniel Baleckaitis)

Noam Chomsky, that noted linguist, has theorized that one of the main hallmarks that distinguishes human language from the squeaks and rumblings of birds and beasts is the ability to use something called recursive grammar. Essentially, recursive grammar is what enables us to insert an explanatory clause in the midst of a sentence, such as the 'that noted linguist,' in the preceding sentence.

Now a team of zoologists and psychologists led by University of California at San Diego's Timothy Gentner has shown that the lowly European starling is also quite capable of using this kind of syntax.

Geez, he even biffed his own supposed field of expertise?

MORE:
For Chomsky (Robin Blackburn, November 2005, Prospect)

Some believe—as Paul Robinson, writing in the New York Times Book Review, once put it—that there is a "Chomsky problem." On the one hand, he is the author of profound, though forbiddingly technical, contributions to linguistics. On the other, his political pronouncements are often "maddeningly simple-minded."

In fact, it is not difficult to spot connections between the intellectual strategies Chomsky has adopted in science and in politics. Chomsky's approach to syntax stressed the economy of explanation that could be achieved if similarities in the structure of human languages were seen as stemming from biologically rooted, innate capacities of the human mind, above all the recursive ability to generate an infinite number of statements from a finite set of words and symbols. Many modern critics of the radical academy are apt to bemoan its disregard for scientific method and evidence. This is not a reproach that can be aimed at Chomsky, who has pursued a naturalistic and reductionist standpoint in what he calls, in the title of his 1995 volume, The Minimalist Programme.

Chomsky's political analyses also strive to keep it simple, but not at the expense of the evidence, which he can abundantly cite if challenged. But it is "maddening" none the less, just as the minimalist programme may be to some of his scientific colleagues. The apparent straightforwardness of Chomsky's political judgements—his "predictable" or even "kneejerk" opposition to western, especially US, military intervention—could seem simplistic. Yet they are based on a mountain of evidence and an economical account of how power and information are shared, distributed and denied. Characteristically, Chomsky begins with a claim of stark simplicity which he elaborates into an intricate account of the different roles of government, military, media and business in the running of the world.

Chomsky's apparently simple political stance is rooted in an anarchism and collectivism which generates its own sense of individuality and complexity. He was drawn to the study of language and syntax by a mentor, Zellig Harris, who also combined libertarianism with linguistics. Chomsky's key idea of an innate, shared linguistic capacity for co-operation and innovation is a positive, rather than purely normative, rebuttal of the Straussian argument that natural human inequality vitiates democracy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 13, 2006 12:39 PM