There’s a summary here. I know nothing about the field, and I know his theories were controversial, but just glancing over them right now quickly, they look pretty sensible to me. Also, even if they weren’t totally right from a modern perspective and needed some refinement, it looks like what they replaced at the time was pure nonsense (e.g. Skinner’s total batshit early-days-of-psychology theories about how language worked).
I suspect that a certain amount of criticism of his linguistic theories is from people who had sour grapes about his political theories. It’s hard to remember today how unanimous was the rabid disagreement with Chomsky’s political views all the way up until the rise of the internet made “the US isn’t always the good guys” an acceptable view outside of the fringes. Up until the mid-90s, the motherfucker was more or less Judas Iscariot.
There’s a summary here. I know nothing about the field, and I know his theories were controversial, but just glancing over them right now quickly, they look pretty sensible to me. Also, even if they weren’t totally right from a modern perspective and needed some refinement, it looks like what they replaced at the time was pure nonsense (e.g. Skinner’s total batshit early-days-of-psychology theories about how language worked).
I suspect that a certain amount of criticism of his linguistic theories is from people who had sour grapes about his political theories. It’s hard to remember today how unanimous was the rabid disagreement with Chomsky’s political views all the way up until the rise of the internet made “the US isn’t always the good guys” an acceptable view outside of the fringes. Up until the mid-90s, the motherfucker was more or less Judas Iscariot.