Changes

The rest, excluding the more-or-less comments about his linguistic theory (of which I am mostly ignorant), is just slander.  There is also no mention of his past involvement with Hashomer Hatzair, but apparently that doesn't fit the agenda here.  I'm no fan of the idolatrous, unthinking adoration a lot of people have for him.  All that is required is a fair representation, which is not provided; I made the edits, in a small way, to steer the article toward that standard.{{unsigned|Keep the faith}}

The rest, excluding the more-or-less comments about his linguistic theory (of which I am mostly ignorant), is just slander.  There is also no mention of his past involvement with Hashomer Hatzair, but apparently that doesn't fit the agenda here.  I'm no fan of the idolatrous, unthinking adoration a lot of people have for him.  All that is required is a fair representation, which is not provided; I made the edits, in a small way, to steer the article toward that standard.{{unsigned|Keep the faith}}

Don't you understand? That is the point of conservapedia. Anyone to the left of Augusto Pinochet or who criticizes anything the US Christian Right stands for, especially Israeli policy, they are fair game to slander and attack. The founder of Conservapedia openly stated that the point wasn't to provide a "balanced" (as abused as that word is) source of information, it was to combat the perceived threat of liberalism from academia, science- the establishment. It is also a source of information for homeschooled children who are made to suffer the indoctrination from their parents. They must be kept inside a walled-garden where nothing the Religious Right authority says is questioned, so wikipedia is off-limits, and the founder had to create a bizarro-pedia, conservapedia. This isn't too unlike totalitarian governments who must provide their own bizarro alternatives to everything to keep the people from questioning anything.

If you're going to criticize Chomsky's work, you may want to start calling it by its right name. "Genitive grammar" doesn't exist. There's a genitive case, but not a genitive grammar. You're thinking about the generative grammar.

 

According to you guys, Chomsky's work has been criticized because it's been done primarily in English. This is like saying an American sociologist's work is not worth looking at because he only studies sociology from an American perspective. Also, Chomsky's work has been applied to thousands of languages (all of the SOV/SVO/OVS/OSV/VOS/VSO types), so you were pretty much just wrong about that. I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you.

 

Additionally, a lot of the UG boils down to things like implicational universals which have been statistically tested more rigorously than most scientific theories. If you don't know what these are, you probably shouldn't be arguing about linguistics.

 

Finally, Chomsky DOES make predictions about what is possible in a language. Have you even read any of his work or did you just cite one of his critics without even understanding who the guy was? Sampson is a joke to linguists.<br>

:Who you talking to?  If you want your hypertext to get read, you can try being civil.  If you think your qualified to speak on this subkect, you can establish yourself as something other than a troll.  Meantime, so long sucka. [[User:RobSmith|Rob Smith]] 15:55, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

 

== 'The academic world's biggest hypocrite' ==

 

What is the meaning of calling Chomsky 'the academic world's biggest hypocrite'? I know his marxist views and double-standards when talking about foreign policy are disgraceful, but he's still quite a good linguist, from what I hear. I don't really know anything about his genitive grammer, but it seems to be quite important in the field, him being the most cited academic author of all time.

 

 

 

 

Actually, if the ACLU (an organization that I generally sympathize with) can be listed under the category "lunatics;" why not Chomsky?[[User:JakeRMurrin|JakeRMurrin]] 21:45, 6 November 2010 (EDT)

 

 

I think his views on the Cambodian genocide are a bit misrepresented and out of context. He makes his claims that (a) it wasn't genocide because it wasn't an attempt by the Khmer Rouge at eradicating a race of people (which is the definition of genocide), (b) he doesn't claim that people weren't killed in huge numbers in that era, but he dismisses that 2 million deaths should be attributed to Khmer Rouge. He thinks that for the 2 million number to be near accurate, we would have to take into account the killings by the American bombing campaign and would have to contribute the brutality from a broader and more general peasant uprising. He also doesn't necessarily agree that those who died of starvation could be attributed to the Khmer Rouge specifically, as there were many larger factors contributing to famine outside of the Khmer Rouge's involvement (including American military involvement). (c) He bothers to make these claims for secondary purposes which are important to factor in (1) it shows we inflate death tolls when an event involves American enemies and deflate the death tolls or negative effects of our own involvement, (2) it shows we are hyper-focused on what American enemies are doing, but remain unfocused on events where there is American involvement or the involvement of American "interests" such as East Timor, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, etc. His own sentiment is that it would be better if American's were more observant and critical of the conflicts where they are involved. (d) His claims about the Khmer Rouge's killings being "1000" times less than reported are specifically about the Khmer Rouge's KNOWN (not estimated) killings '''after they became an enemy of the state''', so this estimate is not taking into account the executions and brutalities by the Khmer's People National Liberation Front that occured during the period where they were supported by the U.S. to fight against Vietnam.

 

 

<blockquote>"in short, a factor of 1000 matters in estimating deaths, and we should try to keep to the truth, whether considering our own crimes or those of official enemies."</blockquote>

 

The importance of the words "official enemies" gives credit to my interpretation in argument (d). But this also becomes clear if you read the entire paragraph or chapter.

 

'''Also, in general, this section takes up way too much of the entire article. My personal opinion is that "genocide denier" should be reworded at very least and a few of the facts given should be checked and perhaps removed if found to be out of context. New sources might also want to be looked at, since many of the sources used are self-described "opinion" articles from blogs.