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- Title
Noam Chomsky and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy.
- Authors
Maxwell, Alexander
- Abstract
Noam Chomsky has discussed the language/dialect dichotomy three times in his published works. In the three relevant passages, Chomsky repeatedly denied that the dichotomy is worth analyzing because it is political, yet analyzed it through an implicit definition based on purely linguistic criteria. He specifically alluded to linguistic distance and mutual comprehensibility, ascertained through hypothetical data. Chomsky considered various case studies in light of his implicit definition, comparing the Romance "languages" to the Chinese "dialects", and considering the relationship between German "dialects" and Dutch. He found that his hypothetical data contradict linguistic consensus, which he asserted without documenting, but also treated as infallible. This article fact-checks Chomsky's claims. It compares his hypothetical data on Chinese and Romance linguistic distances to lexicostatistical studies, finding that Chomsky's claims are mostly supported. It compares his asserted scholarly consensus about two distinct German and Dutch languages, and finds abundant counterexamples. A conclusion proposes an analytical strategy for analyzing the language/dialect dichotomy as a form of politics.
- Subjects
CHOMSKY, Noam, 1928-; DIALECTS; DUTCH language; GERMAN language; LANGUAGE &; languages
- Publication
Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 2022, Vol 32, Issue 1, p72
- ISSN
0939-2815
- Publication type
Article