Before you ask…

December 11, 2012 By 8 Comments

No, there is not some subtle point or political agenda behind this.  It just appeals to my inner 12 year old’s sense of humor and enjoyment of painfully stupid puns.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 8 Comments
  • Sean

    I’m giving a linguistics exam this morning. I’ll be sure to put this up on the projector as the students write their exams.

  • http://gladius-spiritus.blogspot.ca/ bear

    Wow. It must have been hard to get a picture of Chomsjy with an open mouth.

    • http://gladius-spiritus.blogspot.ca/ bear

      Chomsky. Can’t type in the mornings.

  • ivan_the_mad

    That’s pretty brilliant.

  • victor

    Hahaha.. Noam Noam Noam, indeed!

  • Hans-Georg Lundahl

    Since we are talking Chomsky: he got “universal grammar” somewhat wrong, identifying it with the Atlantic Creoles grammar, basically. These are – thank you McWhorter – not Portuguese, English and French vocabulary tacked on to the innate grammar of very disparate originating black men, it is the future slaves to be bought by people our colour were first taught faulty Portuguese, etc. by palace slaves (who also did the selling) and who were using not the European vocabulary with some innate grammar but European vocabulary with a strictly local West African grammar.

    In studying what he thought was “universal grammar in its purest form” Chomsky believed he had evidence for language as an evolutionary product. He had not.

    But his tree diagrams are an amusing way of parsing a sentence.

    • Mercury

      Ha! Pleeeeaaaase turn this into a linguistic debate as acrimonious as any other Mark Shea combox debate.

      Honestly, I have a master’s in linguistics, but I was always more of a historical linguistics type. I did have to read Chomsky when studying phonology, but that’s all kind of a blur now.

  • tz

    The final words in an audio book which he authored which included class warfare (things like estate taxes) said it all for me:
    “Copyright XXXX, the Chomsky Grandchildren Trust”.

    Ah, although limousine liberals are often correct, they are equally hypocritical.