The story of the strange language of the Pirahã is just as much a story about the state of the field of linguistics. Professor Dan Everett of Illinois State University, who lived for decades with the Pirahã, first as a missionary, then as a linguist, believes Pirahã casts serious doubt upon Chomsky's theory of universal grammar. Chomskyites have started to fight back with a reassessment of Everett's famous paper on the Pirahã, where he claimed that the Pirahã "have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition." He also claims that it doesn't have recursion, a feature of language Chomsky recently claimed was the defining feature of human speech. Dan Everett has rebutted the Chomskyite reassessment of his work. Video interview with Professor Everett. [Pirahã previously covered on MetaFilter in 2004 and 2006]
posted on Jun 18, 2007 - View this thread

Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World.
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

Chomsky v. Buckley, 1969 (videofilter). The primary subject is Vietnam, but other topics abound.
posted on Jan 23, 2007 - View this thread

This Emma Brockes article/interview with Chomsky in the UK Guardian provokes this angry response and raises some awkward questions about right, wrong and the media. The Guardian itself has so far chosen not to lock horns, other than indirectly on its letters page.
posted on Nov 4, 2005 - View this thread

Dominance and Its Dilemmas Noam Chomsky.What more be said? Those on the Left: Appaud. On the Right: sneer. If you are brither than a 15 watt bulb : read and then decide.
posted on Oct 11, 2003 - View this thread

MIT Liguist Naom Chomsky The New Yorker has a good collection of links to his articles and speeches online
posted on Mar 30, 2003 - View this thread

Kick his ass and get the gas. Three anti-war activists[Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and Gilbert Achcar] discuss the current focus on war with Iraq on Turkish TV. Here is an alternative URL, just in case there are problems with OutlookIndia. P.S.: "Kick his ass and get the gas" was apparently a bumper sticker issued by the Republican party in California.
posted on Jan 2, 2003 - View this thread

Online Audio Recordings: UC Berkeley Lectures and Events Including speeches by James Baldwin, Walter Blum, Malcolm X, and Noam Chomsky, to name a few.
posted on Apr 13, 2002 - View this thread

Chomsky says arrest me too. A Turkish publisher accused of disseminating separatist propaganda was acquitted yesterday after one of his authors -the celebrated American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky - appeared in an Istanbul court and asked to be tried alongside him.
posted on Feb 19, 2002 - View this thread

Noam Chomsky's Jihad against America
posted on Dec 19, 2001 - View this thread

Tell me about this Chomsky character again. Operation Mindcrime: The Selling of Noam Chomsky.

As much play as Noam Chomsky's been getting around here, I happened upon this older now republished article over at disinfo. Love him or hate him. Agree or disagree. Chomsky makes an impact.
posted on Nov 17, 2001 - View this thread

In U.S. Success, Anti-War Faction's Worst Fears Realized writes our own James Lileks. Noam Chomsky, our own little Quisling, popped up in India to denounce the United States and describe the attacks on Afghanistan as "a bigger terrorist act than what happened on Sept. 11." It takes tremendous energy to maintain these hideous delusions. Chomsky must be exhausted. He must also be surprised every time he lands back in America and is not arrested; the nation he describes would surely clap him in chains and leave him in a basement to devolve to rat food and bones.
posted on Nov 16, 2001 - View this thread

The New War on Terror Noam Chomsky has written a book called 9-11. He analyses the situation in a long essay published in Counterpunch. Quote: We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, certainly not escalate it. There is one easy way to do that and therefore it is never discussed. Namely stop participating in it.
posted on Oct 26, 2001 - View this thread

Chomsky on MSNBC talks about recent events! That would be news all by itself. I know that a lot of people on the right disagree with him, but who can argue with what he says here? Also from left field an incisive Q&A about Afghanistan history and the current situation by Tariq Ali.
posted on Oct 8, 2001 - View this thread

On October 15thThe Guardian had for its editorial "If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-dministered 'bantustans', with 'whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as scandalous too.

Expanding on this description, Noam Chomsky gives an account of Israel's shift from coercive diplomacy to using direct force in implementing its "final status map". That is, the cantonization, containment and control of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
posted on Oct 29, 2000 - View this thread