[mattkrause]

I really doubt it's his politics. George Layoff and Chomsky had (have?) a protracted, acrimonious battle over the relationship between syntax and semantics, but they're not miles apart, politically.

I find Chomsky frustrating because he comes up with these incredibly elegant theoretical machinery--and then is totally disinterested in empirically testing then.

For example, the "Language Acquisition Device" absolutely HAS to be the brain, but a lot of the discussion of it--and Universal Grammar--are totally untethered by psychology and neuroscience.

For a while, it seemed like he regarded recursion as a key aspect of human language, versus animal "communications." Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky had a 2002 article in Science that seemed to argue as much, and they were excited to show that humans, but not monkeys, can learn center-embedded recursion patterns[1]. However, Chomsky seems to have subtly backed away from that and now says that recursion important but might not manifest itself in all human languages (or something along those lines).

[parenthephobia]

That somebody genuinely disagrees with Chomsky's linguistic theories on their own merit doesn't mean that other people don't want to prove his linguistic theories wrong because they disagree with his politics. Both sorts of people can exist.

[mattkrause]

Well sure. Unicorns could exist too.

George Lakoff is one of his fiercest critics and I have a really hard time believing that he is motivated by Chomsky's political views; Lakoff is involved with various progressive and socialist think tanks himself. I'm not sure about (e.g.) Postal, Ross, or McCawley but I've never heard anything about their political animosity to Chomsky either.

If one wanted to go after Chomsky's political views, falsifying Universal Grammar (whatever that means) seems like an oddly difficult and indirect way to do so. Do you really think that someone decided that a deep dive into recursive structures in Pirahã is the way to push for TPPA? I'm totally willing to believe that more conservative linguists might get a tiny bit more of a thrill out of needling him, but again, this seems really unlikely to be a driving force.

If there's any political force that drives people to go after Chomsky, it's the one driving the academic job market. He is A Big Name, and conclusively debunking his theories would set the debunker's career on the fast track. In fact, even a high profile debate with him, assuming it wasn't a complete rout, would probably benefit most careers.

[mannykannot]

I get the impression that it goes beyond a disinterest in empirical testing; he (and his acolytes) seem to be unreasonably hostile towards anyone who dares to question his elegant theories - or point out that his position has changed.

[ScottBurson]

It's "Lakoff", but I suspect you typed it correctly and the spelling corrector "fixed" it for you.

[mattkrause]

Yup--autocorrecto. Perhaps Chomsky was right about the probability of a sentence being meaningless after all. /s