Started: I've got a long history with this book (see below), but it first popped up on my "Currently Reading List" in February 2017--before I began my "Started" and "Finished" posts.
Finished: December 15, 2020
My History With This Book / Why I Read This Book
This book had been sitting on my shelf for years before I finally got around to reading it.
I originally ordered this book off of Amazon way back in 2009. At that time, I had been accepted to the University of Melbourne to study Applied Linguistics, but I hadn't yet left to start my course. I had never studied linguistics before, and I wanted to do some background reading before I started the course. But, not having the background in linguistics, I was also nervous about starting with anything too technical. So I ordered three books off of Amazon with the idea of gradually easing myself into the subject matter. The idea is that the first book would be a popular book that overlapped with linguistics in some way, the second book would be more focused on linguistics but still written for a popular audience, and the third book would be a proper linguistics textbook, but one that was at the introductory level. So I ordered Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, and, lastly, Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction.
I - had - long - been - a - devotee - of - Chomsky's - political - work, but (like a lot of people) only vaguely knew about Chomsky's linguistic theories. So after having read Chomsky's political works for so long, I thought it would be interesting to find out what his linguistic theories actually were. The book was titled "An Introduction" and so, I naively thought, it would be aimed at the non-technical reader--a nice little way for me to get a general introduction to Chomsky's linguistics so that I could sound intelligent at cocktail parties.
...and then the book arrived in the mail, I took one look at it, and immediately realized it was beyond my current comprehension level. (This is the problem with ordering a book sight unseen off of Amazon. I thought I was getting a friendly little introductory book, and I got a technical graduate level textbook.)
To illustrate this, I'll quote a paragraph at random. Now, granted I am taking this out of context, but this will give you a general idea of the readability of this book. Imagine flipping through the book and coming across paragraphs like this:
The question now arises of how an element can avoid having a governing category. This is the central role of government in unifying Binding Theory and the principle that PRO must be ungoverned. Recall that the governing category is partly defined by the presence of a governor in that it may be defined as the smallest clause which contains both the pronoun and its governor. Therefore, an element will fail to have a governing category whenever it fails to be governed; the fact that PRO must be ungoverned is derived from the assumption that it is a pronominal anaphor which therefore must not have a governing category. (p.255)
...or flip to the "Quick Reference List" at the back of the book for more gibberish.
 |
| From page 346. Granted this is the appendix (not the main text). But still, right? |
This is obviously not a book for the lay person, but for the dedicated student. So stay away from this book unless you are serious about linguistic!
But, if anyone else out there is looking for a nice little non-technical introduction to Chomsky's theories so you can sound intelligent at cocktail parties (as I once was), that book is out there, as I later discovered. It's called The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker and, after shelving Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction, I had the good fortune to stumble upon The Language Instinct shortly before starting my course. And since then, the knowledge that I got from The Language Instinct has been more than sufficient to keep me up to speed in any bar room conversation about Chomsky's universal grammar.
...but, over the past 10 years, Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction has stayed on my bookshelf. I've kept it in my suitcase as I've moved from America to Australia to Cambodia and then to Vietnam. And I've kept meaning to get around to reading it one day.
You see, when I decided to spend the time and money on a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics, I was officially acknowledging that linguistics was now my career path. Previously I had always considered myself a history guy, and TESOL (*1)was just something I was doing until I found a more permanent career. But now, I was making a commitment to educate myself about all things linguistics.
Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction was too far above my current level, it's true, but the solution was then to start reading some basic linguistics books until I worked my way up to a level at which I was ready for Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction.
To further explain my motivations, I suppose I should also talk about how useful knowledge of Chomsky's Universal Grammar is for the TESOL teacher--or at least my perception of how useful it would be. Although these abstract linguistic theories have very little impact on the day-to-day classroom, most books on Second Language Acquisition do talk about Chomsky. Chomsky gets at least a brief mention in almost all the books I've read on TESOL. Some books, for example, How Languages are Learned and Second Language Learning Theories, both contain several pages talking about Chomsky's theories. In fact, according to many of these books, the field of Second Language Acquisition got its start when Chomsky's theories of Universal Grammar was first applied to the interlanguage of language learners in the 1970s. (Before then, Second Language Acquisition did not exist as its own separate academic discipline.)
Scott Thornbury (famous for - multiple - TESOL - methodology - books) will occasionally write about Chomsky's theories on his blog. Stephen Krashen (the most influential author in TESOL during the 1980s) was famously influenced by Chomsky's theories. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics contains several entries related to some of the more technical aspects Chomskyan grammar (things like theta-criterion or government). Et cetera.
In other words, I got the impression that if you wanted to be taken seriously in the world of TESOL, you had to have at least some familiarity with Chomsky's theories. It may not matter much to the humble classroom teacher, but if you had ambitions to advance in the TESOL world, it seemed like something all the smart people knew.
And (and here I admit to my vanity) I wanted to be one of the smart people. I wanted to be in the club of people who have read and understood Chomsky's theories.
I was also influenced by the fact that I had long regarded Chomsky as my hero because of his political work. This is silly, of course, because one need not subject themselves to Chomsky's linguistic writings in order to appreciate his political work. (Chomsky himself has said on numerous occasions that there is no connection between the two.) But after so many years of obsessing over Chomsky's political work, it just seemed appropriate to get more familiar with his linguistic theories. I know, it's a stupid reason to slog my way through a book like this, but there it is. (*2)
All that, plus I thought that because this book was heavy on technical grammar, reading it might help my own declarative knowledge of English grammar rules (*3). (Throughout my career as an English teacher, I've been on a never-ending-quest to be able to answer all the grammar questions my students have.)
But, if anyone else out there is looking for a nice little non-technical introduction to Chomsky's theories so you can sound intelligent at cocktail parties (as I once was), that book is out there, as I later discovered. It's called The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker and, after shelving Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction, I had the good fortune to stumble upon The Language Instinct shortly before starting my course. And since then, the knowledge that I got from The Language Instinct has been more than sufficient to keep me up to speed in any bar room conversation about Chomsky's universal grammar.
...but, over the past 10 years, Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction has stayed on my bookshelf. I've kept it in my suitcase as I've moved from America to Australia to Cambodia and then to Vietnam. And I've kept meaning to get around to reading it one day.
You see, when I decided to spend the time and money on a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics, I was officially acknowledging that linguistics was now my career path. Previously I had always considered myself a history guy, and TESOL (*1)was just something I was doing until I found a more permanent career. But now, I was making a commitment to educate myself about all things linguistics.
Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction was too far above my current level, it's true, but the solution was then to start reading some basic linguistics books until I worked my way up to a level at which I was ready for Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction.
To further explain my motivations, I suppose I should also talk about how useful knowledge of Chomsky's Universal Grammar is for the TESOL teacher--or at least my perception of how useful it would be. Although these abstract linguistic theories have very little impact on the day-to-day classroom, most books on Second Language Acquisition do talk about Chomsky. Chomsky gets at least a brief mention in almost all the books I've read on TESOL. Some books, for example, How Languages are Learned and Second Language Learning Theories, both contain several pages talking about Chomsky's theories. In fact, according to many of these books, the field of Second Language Acquisition got its start when Chomsky's theories of Universal Grammar was first applied to the interlanguage of language learners in the 1970s. (Before then, Second Language Acquisition did not exist as its own separate academic discipline.)
Scott Thornbury (famous for - multiple - TESOL - methodology - books) will occasionally write about Chomsky's theories on his blog. Stephen Krashen (the most influential author in TESOL during the 1980s) was famously influenced by Chomsky's theories. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics contains several entries related to some of the more technical aspects Chomskyan grammar (things like theta-criterion or government). Et cetera.
In other words, I got the impression that if you wanted to be taken seriously in the world of TESOL, you had to have at least some familiarity with Chomsky's theories. It may not matter much to the humble classroom teacher, but if you had ambitions to advance in the TESOL world, it seemed like something all the smart people knew.
And (and here I admit to my vanity) I wanted to be one of the smart people. I wanted to be in the club of people who have read and understood Chomsky's theories.
I was also influenced by the fact that I had long regarded Chomsky as my hero because of his political work. This is silly, of course, because one need not subject themselves to Chomsky's linguistic writings in order to appreciate his political work. (Chomsky himself has said on numerous occasions that there is no connection between the two.) But after so many years of obsessing over Chomsky's political work, it just seemed appropriate to get more familiar with his linguistic theories. I know, it's a stupid reason to slog my way through a book like this, but there it is. (*2)
All that, plus I thought that because this book was heavy on technical grammar, reading it might help my own declarative knowledge of English grammar rules (*3). (Throughout my career as an English teacher, I've been on a never-ending-quest to be able to answer all the grammar questions my students have.)
And so over the past ten years I've been trying to educate myself to a level where I could understand this book. In addition to all the TESOL books I've been reading, I've also tried to read some introductory linguistic books, like An Introduction to Language by Victoria Fromkin, or A Little Book of Language by David Crystal (*4). But I never felt like I was making any progress towards the kind of technical knowledge I needed to get into formal linguistics. Instead, I felt like I was mostly just spinning my wheels reading the same introductory information over and over again without breaking into the technical stuff. (Where are all the mid-level linguistic books? The ones that are slightly more advanced than an introduction, but not quite at the graduate level yet.)
Eventually I decided that I probably was never going to get to a point where I felt confident reading this book. I should either just take the plunge, and start reading, or get rid of it. So I decided to take the plunge.
My decision to start reading this book was also influenced by a blogpost that Freddie deBoer wrote on reading a few years ago. He mentioned that it's a good idea to be reading several books at once, and at least one book should be something above your current level. How else are you going to improve if you don't start trying stuff above your current level? Well, I thought, this Chomsky book is definitely above my current level--this will fit that criteria nicely (*5)
So, around February 2017, I finally started reading this book.
Eventually I decided that I probably was never going to get to a point where I felt confident reading this book. I should either just take the plunge, and start reading, or get rid of it. So I decided to take the plunge.
My decision to start reading this book was also influenced by a blogpost that Freddie deBoer wrote on reading a few years ago. He mentioned that it's a good idea to be reading several books at once, and at least one book should be something above your current level. How else are you going to improve if you don't start trying stuff above your current level? Well, I thought, this Chomsky book is definitely above my current level--this will fit that criteria nicely (*5)
So, around February 2017, I finally started reading this book.
My Experience Reading This Book
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first couple chapters were actually surprising readable. I had been intimidated by this book for so long, but had I been needlessly intimidated?
But after making a decent start on this book, and getting about 60 pages in or so, I got distracted by other things.
I made a trip back home to America in the spring of 2017 in which I took the opportunity to visit bookstores and load up on a - bunch - of - new - books, which were more interesting and readable and quickly diverted my attention. (Including another book on Chomsky's linguistic theories--The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe--which was much stupider than Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction, but also way more readable and way more entertaining.)
Then, once I got back to Vietnam, I found it hard to make time for this book, since I was juggling two different bookclubs--one for general fiction, and one for professional development. In fact, for the next couple years, my professional development reading time was taken up the professional development bookclub, which was exclusively focused on reading for the DELTA.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first couple chapters were actually surprising readable. I had been intimidated by this book for so long, but had I been needlessly intimidated?
But after making a decent start on this book, and getting about 60 pages in or so, I got distracted by other things.
I made a trip back home to America in the spring of 2017 in which I took the opportunity to visit bookstores and load up on a - bunch - of - new - books, which were more interesting and readable and quickly diverted my attention. (Including another book on Chomsky's linguistic theories--The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe--which was much stupider than Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction, but also way more readable and way more entertaining.)
Then, once I got back to Vietnam, I found it hard to make time for this book, since I was juggling two different bookclubs--one for general fiction, and one for professional development. In fact, for the next couple years, my professional development reading time was taken up the professional development bookclub, which was exclusively focused on reading for the DELTA.
In April of 2018, I made a video talking about all the books I was currently reading, and how I had essentially stalled out on Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction, but was still planning on returning to it one day once I cleared out my reading list. (Watch from 9:25 of the video to see the part about Chomsky's Universal Grammar.)
And then I actually went and did the DELTA module 2, which took up all my free time in the fall of 2018. And then after DELTA Module 2, all my professional development reading was focused on DELTA Module 3 for the next year after that. (*6)
But then, finally, I was all finished with the DELTA. And it was time to return to Chomsky's Universal Grammar and see if I couldn't knock that one out next.
So I started reading this book again in the spring of 2020. (Enough time had passed that I just decided to go back to the beginning.)
So I started reading this book again in the spring of 2020. (Enough time had passed that I just decided to go back to the beginning.)
As I mentioned above, the first chapter is actually surprisingly readable. I was sitting in a coffee shop, reading this book, sipping my espresso, and feeling very intellectual and very proud of myself for how well I was understanding everything.
But then, at the beginning of chapter 2, there was some warning that I may be headed into trouble:
This chapter gives an overview of principles and parameters theory and an informal presentation of some key areas; chapter 3 looks at general ideas of language acquisition within the framework suggested in this chapter. Chapters 4-8 give a fuller, more technical account of the extended GB/Barriers framework. Non-technical readers can then get some concept of what the theory is about by reading chapters 1-3; specialists can persevere through to chapter 8; the more dedicated can attempt the latest theory, Minimalism in chapter 9. (from pages 42-43. The added emphasis on certain words is my own.)
specialists...dedicated...okay, so this is pretty much just saying that if you're not already a linguistics graduate student, you're not going to understand chapters 4 to 8, and especially chapter 9, right? Well, at least the authors are giving you fair warning. (*7)
I wrote in the margins on page 43, "Am I in trouble?" As it turned out: yes, yes I was.
I found chapters 2 and 3 dense, but readable. I had to read slowly, and I made lots of notes in the margins about all the questions I had, but I was able to make sense of it.
Chapters 4 (The X-bar Theory of Phrase Structure) and 5 (θ-Theory and Functional Categories) were more of a challenge. For the most part, I was able to understand the "what" but not the "why". I was frequently writing in the margins things like "How do we know this?" or "...but why is this?" Nevertheless, I was still able to understand (for the most part) the basic rules the text was laying out, even if I couldn't understand where those rules came from.
Chapter 6 (Movement and Case Theory) had whole paragraphs where I didn't understand anything. On page 202, I wrote in the margins next to the second paragraph "I may be reaching my limits in this book. I'm not understanding any of this." (*8) But those few paragraphs aside, I felt like I was largely able to understand the bulk of the chapter.
But by Chapter 7 (Government and Other Developments), the number of paragraphs I didn't understand were growing in number. At the bottom of page 255, I wrote in the margins "At this point, I've largely given up trying to understand". On page 262, I wrote next to the first paragraph, "I don't understand." Next to the second paragraph on the same page I wrote, "I don't understand. I've read this multiple times. I have a headache." (*9)
Perhaps I was just too stupid to comprehend a book like this.
Chapter 6 (Movement and Case Theory) had whole paragraphs where I didn't understand anything. On page 202, I wrote in the margins next to the second paragraph "I may be reaching my limits in this book. I'm not understanding any of this." (*8) But those few paragraphs aside, I felt like I was largely able to understand the bulk of the chapter.
But by Chapter 7 (Government and Other Developments), the number of paragraphs I didn't understand were growing in number. At the bottom of page 255, I wrote in the margins "At this point, I've largely given up trying to understand". On page 262, I wrote next to the first paragraph, "I don't understand." Next to the second paragraph on the same page I wrote, "I don't understand. I've read this multiple times. I have a headache." (*9)
Perhaps I was just too stupid to comprehend a book like this.
Or...maybe I just didn't have the background.
Chapter 7 opens by talking about the concept of "government" from traditional, pre-Chomskyan grammars. And it occurred to me, rather belatedly, that the reason I wasn't ready for a book like this is because I hadn't studied enough grammar. Over the past 10 years, I had been reading introductory books on linguistics in the hope that it would eventually get me ready to read Chomsky. But, this had been all wrong. What I needed to have done was to read grammar books.
Now, to be fair, I have in the past 10 years read a few different grammar books, and reviewed them on this blog: here, here, here, here and here. But these were all pedagogical grammars aimed at ESL teachers. These weren't formal linguistic structural grammars. That's what I should have been reading.
I don't know... the truth is even at the time it seemed like a bit of a long shot. The text of the last few chapters had been so difficult to parse that I suspected that it might be more than a lack of background knowledge--it might just be that this book was impossible to understand.
And yet, the idea of a new study project excited me. I'd always had it in the back of my mind to really bone up on my grammar.
I went to the school library to look for the thickest, most thorough grammar I could find. And I found The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman.
I went to the school library to look for the thickest, most thorough grammar I could find. And I found The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman.
It was still primarily a pedagogical grammar aimed at ESL teachers--there was no getting away from that. I live in Vietnam and only have access to these books via my school library. I wasn't going to be able to track down a formal structural linguistic book out here in Vietnam. But this book did at least appear to be thorough, and it made use of the same types of phrase structure sentence trees that Chomskyan linguistics use. Perhaps, just perhaps, absorbing the knowledge of The Grammar Book could help me make better sense of Chomsky's Universal Grammar.
Now, as you can perhaps tell from the started video, there was a part of me that knew this was a bad idea all along. I'm very good at starting new books and starting new study projects, but I'm very bad at finishing them. In fact, one of the reasons I'm so bad at finishing books is because I always start new books before I finish old ones. Is this what I was doing now?
As it turned out... yes, that's exactly what I was doing. In the weeks after that, I read more and more of The Grammar Book, and less and less of Chomsky's Universal Grammar.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that The Grammar Book was interesting. (It is, after all, a grammar book.) But it was understandable. I could get through a chapter and actually understand everything I read, so it reading it gave me a feeling of satisfaction. And it contained information that was actually useful to me in my day-to-day teaching.
But the other thing was, back in July 2020, I actually had a lot of free time to read. In Vietnam, we were slowly coming out of Covid lockdown in July 2020, but language schools weren't quite up to full schedules again. I had long breaks in between classes in the afternoon in which I headed down to the coffee shop and read as much as I could. I didn't fully appreciate at the time that this luxury reading time wasn't going to stick around forever. (*10)
In August I started a new job while still staying part time at my old one, and suddenly became super busy. I barely had time to read one book, let alone two. For a couple of months, I drifted into only reading The Grammar Book and ignoring Chomsky's Universal Grammar. After having gotten so close to the end, I was now in danger of losing focus on this book again just like I did 3 years ago. But I really wanted to finish. Just because of stubbornness if nothing else, I really wanted to get to the end. And so I eventually decided to temporarily shelve The Grammar Book (*11), and just focus on finishing Chomsky's Universal Grammar.
Between getting distracted by The Grammar Book and being really busy at work, I had taken a couple months break on Chomsky's Universal Grammar. And when I came back to it in November, I found that the break had done me absolutely no favors. I couldn't remember some of the terminology. I couldn't remember some of the old rules from earlier in the book, and now later in the book new rules were being introduced that were based on the old rules I couldn't remember. In short, I was feeling more lost than ever before.
I shouldn't have allowed myself to take that break, obviously. But what to do about it now? Should I try to go back to the beginning to refresh everything in my memory? Probably, but I was worried that if I did that I would never finish this book.
Plus, what was the point? If I could forget so much in just a couple months, then what would my memory be like in 5 years? Over the passage of time, I retain in my long term memory so little of what I read. It's frustrating, but it's also a part of being human. In 5 years time, I was not going to be able to talk intelligently about case theory and government and theta theory. I could barely remember it after 2 months.
Plus, what was the point? If I could forget so much in just a couple months, then what would my memory be like in 5 years? Over the passage of time, I retain in my long term memory so little of what I read. It's frustrating, but it's also a part of being human. In 5 years time, I was not going to be able to talk intelligently about case theory and government and theta theory. I could barely remember it after 2 months.
And so, at this point, I decided to just plow on through and finish the book. Who even cared if I was understanding at this point. I just wanted to be done with it. (*12)
"Oof! Finally." I wrote on the finished post, "I wasn't sure I would ever finish this book.
Actually I'm still not sure I really have. Can I really claim to have finished a book when I didn't understand the last third of it?"
Actually, upon reflection, I think that's an exaggeration. It would be inaccurate to say I didn't understand anything of the last 3rd. I understood about 40% to 50%. I understood in general terms what the idea of each section was. But I was definitely not understanding the details.
Also on December 15, I wrote: "I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to get a review up, but it could well be several weeks. And I think I'm going to go back and re-read some of this book first before I write up my review."
Well, I re-read the first 65 pages, but then ended up finishing Don Quixote (another book that it had taken me years to read), and ended up spending the next month after that re-reading parts of Don Quixote in preparation for my review.
But after Don Quixote was finally finished off, I returned again to Chomsky's Universal Grammar. I decided to once again start back at page 1, and have been re-reading it, and talking about it in my Weekly Reading Vlogs for the past several weeks. (*13)
And now, here we are, finally, with the review.
The Review
So, ordinarily when I write these blog posts, I try to keep The Review part separate from my reminiscences of the reading experience. But in this case, my account of my struggles to read this book is actually pretty much my review. It started off good, but then each chapter got more and more difficult and hard to read until I wasn't understanding most of it. That's my review.
And I'm still not sure whose fault it is. Is it the author's fault for writing in a really incomprehensible way? Or is it simply that I've reached the limits of my intelligence, and that this book is written for a more intelligent technical audience?
I obviously can't answer that question. I can't be an unbiased judge of my own ability.
For example, while I read this book, I took notes in the margins, and there were numerous times when I was convinced that there must be a mistake in the book. The example sentence didn't match the authors' analysis. The authors said D-Structure when they should have said S-Structure. The wrong word got written in by mistake (*14). Et cetera
Were there really a lot of mistakes in this book? Well, who knows? On the one hand, my experience with textbooks in general is that they routinely go to press with a lot of minor slips in them (for whatever reason). So it's not inconceivable that there are mistakes in this book. On the other hand, I've already admitted that this book was above my comprehension level. So who am I to say that there were mistakes? Maybe I just wasn't understanding the explanation.
Were there really a lot of mistakes in this book? Well, who knows? On the one hand, my experience with textbooks in general is that they routinely go to press with a lot of minor slips in them (for whatever reason). So it's not inconceivable that there are mistakes in this book. On the other hand, I've already admitted that this book was above my comprehension level. So who am I to say that there were mistakes? Maybe I just wasn't understanding the explanation.
I am, however, feeling fairly confident when I say that this book could have been easier to read. There were a lot of paragraphs that were really difficult to understand, and I know we're dealing with some pretty technical linguistic concepts here, but I don't think it had to be as difficult to read as it was. With a bit more explanation, a few more examples, and some clearer prose, I think this book could have been a lot easier to read.
But I know it's written for a specialist audience, so maybe it works fine for its target audience.
So I checked Amazon and Goodreads to see what other people were saying about this book. I expected to find solace in hearing other people complain about how difficult this book was to understand. But quite the contrary. I couldn't find any negative reviews (*15).
...Oh come on! No one else wants to complain about how this book had a lot of dense paragraphs that were really difficult to understand? No one? Is it just me then?
Okay, so its just me. I'm the dumbass.
Now, to be fair to myself, I understood the first 3 chapters (p.1-133), and I understood most of chapters 4-6 (p.133-233). And I understood little of chapters 7-9 (p.234-344). But that's still about two-thirds of the book I understood. So I'm not completely dumb.
But clearly I'm not one of the smart kids either. (*16)
But, I also maintain, that the book definitely could have been clearer.
There were also several times where the transitions between ideas weren't clear. Sometimes the authors just started a new idea without any transition. At times, they switched ideas without transition even within a single paragraph. This kind of thing could definitely have been cleaned up.
On the other hand, I shouldn't make it sound like this book was all bad. There were sections where I thought the author's explanations were quite clear, especially in comparison to other books on linguistics that I had read.
For example, in my review of Introducing Chomsky by John Maher and Judy Groves, I complained that their explanation of the difference between E-Language and I-Language was incomprehensible.
For example, in my review of Introducing Chomsky by John Maher and Judy Groves, I complained that their explanation of the difference between E-Language and I-Language was incomprehensible.
In contrast, I thought the explanation of E-Language and I-Language in Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction was actually very clear and easy to understand. (Also, the authors of Chomsky's Universal Grammar also did a very good job of explaining what the difference is between the E-Language/I-Language distinction, and the Competence/Performance distinction, something that I had long been confused about from my other readings.)
In my review of Understanding Second Language Acquisition by Lourdes Ortega, I complained that Ortega's definition of "markedness" was confusing. But in contrast, the explanation of "markedness" in Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction was extremely clear.
So there were definitely sections of this book that were very well written. It's just that the author's couldn't carry me all the way through.
Nor should I make it sound like this book wasn't interesting. It could be very interesting at points. Granted I really struggled with this book, but if you're willing to struggle with it, there are some fascinating little tidbits you can gain along the way.
The fascinating thing about linguistics is the idea that somewhere in your brain there is a very complex language system that is operating entirely below the level of conscious thought. As a native speaker, you seldom think about the grammar of what you're saying. But somewhere in your brain, there is a grammar system that is sorting out everything you say into syntax without you having to think about it. And the study of exactly what this system is, and how it works, and trying to figure out its rules are, can be fascinating.
Chomskyan linguistics has proposed a whole system of sentence trees broken into phrase structures, and tried to discover what the rules are for what phrases can move to what places in the sentence, and it's all fascinating to contemplate. Even though I struggled with this book, I found the idea that this system was somehow embedded somewhere in my brain fascinating.
There are a lot of examples of this all throughout the book, but I'm going to try to just give one example for the purposes of illustrating the type of thing that I'm talking about. This is the idea of traces. It's slightly confusing, but also at the same time really fascinating. It's the idea that when a word moves around in a sentence, it leaves a trace. And our subconscious language system is keeping track of where that trace is, even if our conscious brain is totally unaware of it.
The example that the authors give on page 156 are the sentences: "I want to visit Mr Jones" (meaning a visitor in a hospital telling the nurse who he wants to visit) and "I want Mr Jones to visit" (meaning a patient in a hospital telling the nurse who he wants to come visit him). Now, for both of these sentences, to make a who question we change "Mr Jones" into "who" and move it to the front of the sentence. But in both cases, it leaves a trace behind. You can't hear the trace, but it's still there.
"Who do you want to visit (trace)?"
"Who do you want (trace) to visit?"
Now, how do we know that trace is still there? Because in the first sentence we can contract it to "wanna" and keep the same meaning, but in the second sentence, the trace prevents the contraction.
That is to say "Who do you want to visit?" could have either meaning (i.e. who do you want to go see, or who do you want to come see you). But "Who do you wanna visit?" can only mean a question in which you are being asked who you want to go see.
Isn't that fascinating? So on a conscious level, of course, you're not thinking about grammar or traces, you're just trying to ask a simple question. But on a subconscious level, your language system is busy moving things around and keeping track of the traces without you even realizing it.
Isn't that fascinating? So on a conscious level, of course, you're not thinking about grammar or traces, you're just trying to ask a simple question. But on a subconscious level, your language system is busy moving things around and keeping track of the traces without you even realizing it.
Did I do a good job of explaining all that? If not, the guys at The Ling Space made a whole video about this exact phenomenon:
In fact, a lot of the content of this book pops up on The Ling Space. (I'm guessing the guys over at The Ling Space must have a copy of this book. There's just so much overlap in content that I don't think it's a coincidence.)
I had previously watched and reviewed The Ling Space on this blog back in 2016, and I'm really glad that I did, because my memories of The Ling Space videos helped me through a lot of the section in this book. At a couple different points in this book, I wrote in the margins "The only reason I'm able to follow what's going on here is because of the Ling Space episode on the same topic."
General Comments
Sorry, let me start over and try to give some useful general information about this book. (The type of information you would find in any normal book review.)
The edition I have is the second edition, published in 1996. (The first edition was published in 1988). The edition I read is not the most current edition, because there was a third edition published in 2007.
(I don't believe I was aware there were multiple editions of this book when I ordered it off of Amazon years ago. Either way, I'm not particularly bothered that I don't have the most current edition, because I'm not reading this book for the test. I just wanted to dip my toes into the theory and see what Chomskyan Linguistics was all about.)
The edition I have is the second edition, published in 1996. (The first edition was published in 1988). The edition I read is not the most current edition, because there was a third edition published in 2007.
(I don't believe I was aware there were multiple editions of this book when I ordered it off of Amazon years ago. Either way, I'm not particularly bothered that I don't have the most current edition, because I'm not reading this book for the test. I just wanted to dip my toes into the theory and see what Chomskyan Linguistics was all about.)
Although the book is titled Chomsky's Universal Grammar, the book is not actually by Chomsky himself. It's by V.J. Cook and Mark Newson, who are explaining Chomsky's theories to the reader.
A claim that is often made--both from Chomsky's supporters and his detractors--is that Chomsky's linguistic writing is difficult to understand for people who are not already experts in the field, so presumably that's one reason that Cook and Newson take it upon themselves to explain Chomsky. But the other thing that quickly becomes apparent from this book is that "Chomsky's Universal Grammar" is not all about Chomsky alone. Rather, this is the work of a whole school of linguists working within Chomsky's Universal Grammar framework, and Cook and Newson are citing other linguists just as frequently as they're citing Chomsky
A claim that is often made--both from Chomsky's supporters and his detractors--is that Chomsky's linguistic writing is difficult to understand for people who are not already experts in the field, so presumably that's one reason that Cook and Newson take it upon themselves to explain Chomsky. But the other thing that quickly becomes apparent from this book is that "Chomsky's Universal Grammar" is not all about Chomsky alone. Rather, this is the work of a whole school of linguists working within Chomsky's Universal Grammar framework, and Cook and Newson are citing other linguists just as frequently as they're citing Chomsky
The basic theory is part philosophical and part technical. The philosophical part is the idea that humans don't learn grammar--instead we are born with grammar already pre-programmed into our DNA. Even though every language is different, there are nonetheless universal principles which underline the grammar of every human language, and human beings are born with these principles.
This may or may not be true (see Chomsky's detractors: here and here ), but it's a simple enough concept to understand, even for the lay person. This philosophical part covers roughly page 1-132 of the book.
Where the book gets complicated is in the effort to map out exactly what this universal grammar is--complete with sentence trees, and efforts to define what the rules for movement. This is roughly pages 133-344 of the book.
This may or may not be true (see Chomsky's detractors: here and here ), but it's a simple enough concept to understand, even for the lay person. This philosophical part covers roughly page 1-132 of the book.
Where the book gets complicated is in the effort to map out exactly what this universal grammar is--complete with sentence trees, and efforts to define what the rules for movement. This is roughly pages 133-344 of the book.
Another thing that makes universal grammar confusing is that Chomsky's theories have undergone a lot of evolution over the years, so that there's not just one theory of universal grammar--there are several. Authors Cook and Newson do their best to avoid burdening the reader with too much history, and try to only present the most current version of the theory, but they can't help getting into it a little, sometimes if only to explain to their readers why the terminology in Chomskyan linguistics has changed from decade to decade.
And speaking of changes to the theory, the most recent development (at least at the time of the second edition) was the Minimalist Program. According to the authors' introduction, co-author Mark Newson was brought onboard specifically because of his expertise on the Minimalist Program. (The first edition was written by V.J. Cook alone, but V.J. Cook didn't feel confident describing the Minimalist Program, so Mark Newson was brought in for the second edition.)
The Minimalist Program was Chomsky's effort to reduce all the principles of Universal Grammar to the fewest number of explanatory principles--it was chapter 9 of this book, and to be perfectly honest I understood very little of it, so I won't make any more comments about it here.
Because this is a textbook, the authors have included a little summary at the end of each section to summarize what the main point of the previous section had been. These were useful. In my own reading, I would usually flip forward and try to read these before starting each section. My hope was to preview and mentally organize my reading ahead of time, but it never worked because I could never understand any of the summaries until after I read the section. Take, for example, the summary at the end of The Case Filter (p.230)
Case Theory: the Case FilterCase Filter: 'Every phonetically realised NP must be assigned (abstract) Case' (Chomsky, 1986a, p.74)Gloss: This therefore eliminates as possible surface structures any sentence with an NP that has not received abstract Case, thus motivating NP-movements such as the passive to avoid NPs occurring in Caseless positions.Visibility: assigning Case to an NP makes it 'visible' so it can be θ-marked, making the Case Filter fall within the Principle of Full Interpretation.
(In the original book formatting, these summaries are all put in a little grey box, but you get the idea hopefully).
So, that's complete gibberish, right? But, I would then go back and read the section, and then after I had actually read the section, then I could actually make sense of the summary at the end. (At least, until the middle of chapter 7, when my comprehension started breaking down completely. But for the first 6 and a half chapters I could usually make sense of it.)
So, that's complete gibberish, right? But, I would then go back and read the section, and then after I had actually read the section, then I could actually make sense of the summary at the end. (At least, until the middle of chapter 7, when my comprehension started breaking down completely. But for the first 6 and a half chapters I could usually make sense of it.)
Occasionally, in my marginal notes, I would note that the section summary had been put in the wrong place. (It was relatively rare, but it happened a few times where the section summary was put in the beginning of the subsequent section instead of at the end of the section it was summarizing. I suspect this was for formatting issues--they didn't want the section summary box to get broken up by the page break.)
The end of the book has an appendix, which is a quick reference list of all the Principles, Parameters and Operations used within the book. It is, however, not a glossary of all the technical terms that pop up in the book, but rather just the index of the Principles of Universal Grammar. Many was the time I wished there had been a glossary at the end of the book, because there were a lot of technical terms that I had trouble keeping track of as I read.
Epilogue
So, when I reviewed Introducing Chomsky by John Maher and Judy Groves, I complained that it was too difficult for me to understand. And when I reviewed The Ling Space, I complained that it was difficult for me to understand. And now, here I am again complaining that this is difficult for me to understand.
Perhaps it's time to just admit that the unifying factor in all of this is me. I just don't have the brain capacity to deal with the more technical side of linguistics.
I mentioned earlier in this review that part of the reason I tried so hard to make my way through this book was just vanity. I wanted to be seen as one of the smart people.
That vanity may have been forgivable 12 years ago (when I first ordered this book). But now that I'm older, that vanity is just looking silly. Now that I'm on the wrong side of 40, it's looking less and less likely that I'm going to become a brilliant scholar in linguistics. Better to just stay in my lane. I'm an ESL teacher--I should read books that are actually useful in the ESL classroom. (Like The Grammar Book--which, by the way, I fully intend to come back to.)
So, I'm going to hang up my hat, and give up trying to understand Chomsky or Universal Grammar or anything on the more technical side of linguistics, and focus my professional development reading on stuff that's about the ESL classroom.
...after one more book.
You see, I've already bought (on my sister's recommendation) The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris, which is about Chomsky and his rivals, and it's currently sitting on my bookshelf. And I've heard from a couple people (my sister included) that it's quite interesting, and integrates some of the gossipy history of the field with the linguistic theory. And so I've already decided that I'm going to read that one next.
Flipping through it, it does look like the book gets a little bit technical, but I've already decided I want to give it a go.
So The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris is next. And then after that, no more books on Chomsky's grammar.
(*1) TESOL: Same disclaimer I've made previously on this blog--there are so many competing acronyms to describe the job of teaching English: TESOL, ELT, ESL, TEFL, TESL, etc. I'm just going to pick one for the sake of this review.
(*2) On The Folly of Wanting to Know More About Chomsky's Linguistic Theories Because of My Admiration for His Political Work: It's a stupid reason, but I suspect I'm in good company on this. I think a lot of people are curious about Chomsky's linguistic theories because of their interest in his political writings. In fact it's often been speculated (particularly by Chomsky's critics) that admiration for his political work has been one of the reasons he has maintained somewhat of a cult status in linguistics--Tom Wolfe was of this opinion in The Kingdom of Speech.
(*3) On Thinking that this Book Would Improve my Knowledge of English Grammar Rules: Although, spoiler alert, it didn't help me with my grammar knowledge at all. At least nothing I can ever use in the ESL classroom. The level of abstraction that this book deals with is not at all useful for the kinds of questions my students have about English grammar.
(*4) On All the Linguistics and TESOL Books I've Read over the Last 10 Years: Looking over the list of all the linguistic books I've read in the past 10 years, it's a decent sized list, but I still can't help feeling it's not as big a list as it should be. Especially since, as I've mentioned, I've been trying to become an expert in this field since doing my Masters. Why haven't I read more?
The reasons for this are 2-fold. One reason is that I'm not very good at disciplining myself and reading more (as I lament every year). The second reason is that since the books I read for professional development are not inherently interesting for me to read, I'm relying purely on a sense of duty or external motivation to get through these books, and this motivation comes and goes. I'll have periods when I'll feel motivated to read linguistic books, and periods when I just read for pleasure.
No doubt, if I had been a more disciplined person over the past 10 years, I'd be a lot more knowledgeable about my field now, and perhaps this would have lead to more professional advancement.
Or... perhaps not. Who knows? For one thing it's always questionable how much these books help you in the industry. For another thing, I don't retain all of what I read anyway. A lot of the books I've read on linguistics or language learning over the past 10 years I now remember very little of.
(*5) On Freddie deBoer's Blogpost Encouraging People to Try to Read Above Their Current Level: I can't give you the link because Freddie deBoer has since deleted his old blog.
By the way, there's a contrary opinion by Steve Donoghue (in one of his many booktube videos) in which he says that you should choose books to read that are at your level, and you don't get any points for trying to read something more advanced than you're ready for. (I can't find the link for that video either. Steve Donoghue cranks out so many videos every week, I can't possibly search through his archive to remember which video he said it on. But it was one of them.) After my experience grinding my way through this Chomsky book, in which I understood very little of the second half of the book and didn't enjoy it at all, I think I've gone over to the side of Steve Donoghue on this question--it's better to try to read at your level.
(*6) On all the Reasons It Took Me So Long to Finish This Book: In my recent review of Don Quixote, I apologized for having taken 3 years to finish the book, and gave a long list of excuses as to why it's been difficult to find time to read the past 3 years. All of those excuses apply equally to Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction as well.
(*5) On Freddie deBoer's Blogpost Encouraging People to Try to Read Above Their Current Level: I can't give you the link because Freddie deBoer has since deleted his old blog.
By the way, there's a contrary opinion by Steve Donoghue (in one of his many booktube videos) in which he says that you should choose books to read that are at your level, and you don't get any points for trying to read something more advanced than you're ready for. (I can't find the link for that video either. Steve Donoghue cranks out so many videos every week, I can't possibly search through his archive to remember which video he said it on. But it was one of them.) After my experience grinding my way through this Chomsky book, in which I understood very little of the second half of the book and didn't enjoy it at all, I think I've gone over to the side of Steve Donoghue on this question--it's better to try to read at your level.
(*6) On all the Reasons It Took Me So Long to Finish This Book: In my recent review of Don Quixote, I apologized for having taken 3 years to finish the book, and gave a long list of excuses as to why it's been difficult to find time to read the past 3 years. All of those excuses apply equally to Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction as well.
(*7) On the idea that at least the authors give you fair warning about the technical nature of the book: Actually if I could complain about this for a second, the truth is that for a new reader, the messages are mixed.
The back cover contains a blurb by Steven Franks of Indiana University:
The back cover contains a blurb by Steven Franks of Indiana University:
"Cook and Newsom have written an extremely clear and highly comprehensible introduction to current syntactic theory. This text makes accessible many subtleties of linguistic argumentation, and explains in plain English the reasoning involved..."
Excuse me? extremely clear? high comprehensible? accessible? plain English? Oh, I would beg to differ professor. (To be fair, I suspect "highly comprehensible" has a different meaning in graduate schools than it does to the general public, and this book is clearly designed as a text for graduate students.)
But okay, that's just the blurb on the back cover chosen by the publishers. The authors aren't responsible for that. They explicitly warn the reader on pages 41-42 that non-technical readers are going to struggle through chapters 4-9.
Except...on the very first page of the opening chapter, they state:
This book is intended chiefly as an introduction for those who want to have a broad overview of the theory with sufficient detail to see how its main concepts work, rather than for those who are specialist students of syntax, for whom technical introductions such as Haegeman (1994) and Ouhalla (1994) are more appropriate. (from page 1)...and yet, on page 42, they warn that non-technical readers should only read chapters 1-3, and only specialists can continue to chapters 4-8. So which is it?
(*8) The Paragraph I couldn't understand on page 202: I suppose I should probably give the paragraph so that you know what I'm talking about, huh?
But how does this make wh-items move to the specifier of CP? To explain this, we need to introduce two mechanisms. The first may be called the Wh-Criterion, after Rizzi (1991), which states:all [+Wh] complementizers must contain a [+Wh] element(This is not in fact Rizzi's own formulation of the Wh-Criterion, but is more similar to a principle proposed by Aoun et al. (1981).) While this is obviously satisfied when there is a [+Wh] complementizer such as whether in head position, it does raise the problem of how the Wh-Crition can be satisfied by wh-movment, which moves a wh-word into the specifier of CP, not the head position. This is where the second mechanism comes in, namely specifier-head agreement, abbreviated to spec/head agreement. This accounts for a set of phenomena where there is agreement between the head of a phrase X and the element which occupies the specifier of that phrase, specifier of XP. For example, the subject of a finite clause sits in the specifier position of AGRP and it 'agrees' with the head of AGR in that they must have the same nominal features of person, number and gender. If this relationship between specifier and head is universal and so applicable to all phrases, the specifier of CP will also agree with the head C in that both will share the [+-Wh] feature. Now, if a wh-item moves into a [+Wh] specifier of CP, this will be enough to satisfy the Wh-Criterion as, although the complementizer position itself may not contain a [+Wh] element, the specifier with which it agrees does contain such an element. So the Wh-Criterion is satisfied either by the head complementizer of the CP having [+Wh] or by the [+Wh] of the specifier of CP migrating to the head via spec/head agreement. (p.202--italics and bold in the original)
(*9) The two paragraphs on page 262 that I complained about not understanding even after reading multiple times and giving me a headache: I'd better quote these as well, huh? You can make up your own mind.
Returning to the cases of movement from subject position, as this position is not governed by a lexical head, the question is what properly governs traces here? Chomsky (1981a) assumed that the notion of governor is extended in this case to include elements which are co-indexed with the governee and that this extension of governor is also relevant for proper government. Thus a trace will be properly governed, in this instance, if it is governed by an element that it is co-indexed with, i.e. the moved element or one of the other traces left behind by the moved element. This relationship is often called antecedent government and is contrasted with head government.
This clearly helps us to account for the that-trace phenomenon. In the absence of a that complementizer, the trace in the specifier of CP properly governs a trace in subject position. However, when there is a complementizer present, this must interfere with the process of antecedent government, thus making the original trace non-properly governed and in violation of the ECP. Intuitively we can view the situation from the notion that government should be a unique relationship such that if one element governs another, then the governed element should not also be governed by anything else. The appearance of the complementizer blocks antecedent government because it adds a nearer potential governor (the complementizer) but, as this is not a proper governor, the original trace will violate the ECP. (The first 2 paragraphs from age 262. Bold and italics in the original)
(*10) On not Appreciating How Much Free Time I had Back in July 2020: The other thing I started back in July 2020 was trying to learn multiple languages on Duolingo. I had been studying Vietnamese, but I decided that I couldn't really hope to truly understand Chomsky's Universal Grammar unless I had a working knowledge of several different languages. So I started reviewing Japanese on Duolingo, trying to go back to my high school Latin, and adding in French, Spanish and even German. At the time, I thought this would be my new normal. (That is, I thought I would keep it going for many years, and then in 10 years time I could be a multi-lingual guy.) But once I got busy again, I had to drop trying to do everything on Duolingo.
(*11) On Temporarily Shelving The Grammar Book: I haven't abandoned it. It's still listed in my Currently Reading column. But I've temporarily shelved it until I can finish some other books, and then I'll come back to it.
(*12) On Just Trying to Plow through the Book and Finish in in November 2020: The other disadvantage that I was operating under was that I was constantly sleep deprived during this period. I was teaching a lot of hours spread out over 3 jobs. I was working the morning shift, so I was up early every morning. And I had a fussy toddler who didn't want to go to bed on time at home. So I seldom got a full night's sleep. And this affected how I engaged with the book. I'm not sure it affected how much I was understanding it. (I wasn't understanding it even before I became sleep deprived.) But it definitely affected how willing I was to try to concentrate on and wrestle with paragraphs I wasn't understanding. I just didn't have the energy for it.
Again, I thought about delaying this book until I had more free time, but... when was I ever going to have more free time? This is my life. I'm middle-aged, I have a child to take care of, and I have to earn money at work. There was nothing for it but to just keep struggling and trying to finish the book off, even if I wasn't understanding much of the last chapters.
(*13) On Re-reading this Book: So between reading it, and now trying to re-read it, I've been carrying this book around with me for over a year at this point. And I should mention it's beginning to cause me some embarrassment at work. At first, everyone was very impressed that I was trying to tackle Chomsky's grammar. And I had to constantly tell people, "Well, yes, it is true that I'm reading this book. But I'm actually understanding very little of it." And then I had to go on to explain that I am actually a person of very limited intelligence, and that this book is much too intellectual for me, etc.
["Well if it's any consolation," one of my colleagues told me over lunch, "That kind of book will be of absolutely no help to you in the ESL classroom anyway." And of course he's absolutely right.]
Now that's it's been over a year and I'm still carrying this book around with me, I'm starting to get questions about what I'm still doing with this book. I've started trying to hide the book when I take it down to the coffee shop at lunch break.
(*14) Examples of When I Thought the Wrong Word had been Written by Mistake: There were actually several of these, but here's one example from page 245:
In the case of ECM structures, where there is no CP to prevent government of the subject from outside the clause, the Verb will indeed be able to assign the Accusative Case to the subject.
In the margins, I wrote: "prevent? It should be allow, no?
Now, I realize I took this all completely out of context, and so no one has a chance of judging whether or not I'm write without reading the whole page. But I mention this to illustrate the type of thing I mean. I could have sworn that the above sentence should have read "allow government" instead of "prevent government". But is this a typo? Or am I just too stupid to understand this book?
(*15) I couldn't find any negative reviews: That is to say, I couldn't find any negative reviews on stylistic grounds. There were some anti-Chomskyans who objected to its content. Such as this guy here:
A load of bunk, Chomsky made shit up as he went along. Nobody is hardwired with universal grammar. In fact, all humans have the intrinsic need to communicate, which in turn is shaped by their linguistic environment. Simply put, people want to communicate and they will always find a way to do so regardless. Doubt my point? Go to Thailand and watch a Thai person with the knowledge of only 10 English words get their point across to a Western tourist.
Oh man... Could it be any more obvious that this guy did not even bother reading the book? Well, welcome to Internet commentary!
(*16) I'm not that smart: You know, I've been out of school for so long, I think I've forgotten that I was never a super-star student. I was a good student--a solid B+ student. But I was never one of the superstars.
I did very well in history. (I got As in history). And I did well in literature classes--at least I did well in literature back in high school when literature was about books with straightforward simple narratives. (I did less well in college when I had to struggle with analyzing difficult texts.) But science was always my worst subject--my grades in science were usually B/B-.
In the years since I finished school, when I've been able to pursue my own interests at my own pace, I've cultivated an image of myself as an intellectual. But the truth is, I was always a B student.
Weekly Reading Vlogs:
April 11, 2021 Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction 0-78 pages
April 18, 2021 Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction p.78-90
April 25, 2021 Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction p.90-116
May 2, 2021 Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction p.116-118
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Video Review HERE and embedded below:
Link of the Day
Language Design - Noam Chomsky / Serious Science
No comments:
Post a Comment