Vía el blog Faculty of Language un enlace a algunas conferencias recientes de N. Chomsky sobre minimalismo.

Pérez-Jiménez I., and Moreno-Quibén, N. (2012). «On the syntax of exceptions. Evidence from Spanish». Lingua 122: 6, pp. 582-607.

Keywords: Coordination, Free exceptive, Connected exceptive, Subordination, Ellipsis, Spanish

In this paper we offer a syntactic description of Spanish exceptive constructions headed by excepto, salvo or menos (‘except’). Framing our hypothesis in an adjunction analysis of coordination, we argue that these exceptive markers head a Boolean Phrase, like other coordinating conjunctions. Two types of exceptive phrases can be identified, depending on the level of the constituents conjoined. In connected exceptives two DPs are conjoined. In free exceptives two CPs are conjoined; the exceptive markers select for a full-fledged CP as complement, whose null head (C) triggers a process of ellipsis in which all the syntactic material inside TP is marked for PF-deletion, except the remnant constituent(s). Our proposal supports a structural approach to ellipsis whereby elliptical constituents are in fact fully fledged though non-pronounced syntactic structures. It also supports the hypothesis that the differences in the syntactic behaviour of coordinate sentences and subordinate adverbial clauses cannot be derived from their phrase structure geometry but are instead due to the properties of individual conjunctions.

On the syntax of exceptions

Notas biográficas de Noam Chomsky sobre su desarrollo docente

From “Work, Learning and Freedom”, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Michael Kasenbacher, New Left Project, December 24, 2012

Children for example are naturally curious — they want to know about everything, they want to explore everything but that generally gets knocked out of their heads. They’re put into disciplined structures, things are organised for them to act in certain ways so it tends to get beaten out of you. That’s why school’s boring. School can be exciting. It happens that I went to a Deweyite school[^1] until I was about 12. It was an exciting experience, you wanted to be there, you wanted to go. There was no ranking, there were no grades. Things were guided so it wasn’t just do anything you feel like. There was a structure but you were basically encouraged to pursue your own interests and concerns and to work together with others. I basically didn’t know I was a good student until I got to high school. I went to an academic high school in which everybody was ranked and you had to get to college so you had to pass tests. In elementary school I had actually skipped a year but nobody paid much attention to it. The only thing I saw was that I was the smallest kid in the class. But it wasn’t a big thing that anybody paid attention to. High school was totally different — you’ve gotta be first in the class, not second. And that’s a very destructive environment — it drives people into the situation where you really don’t know what you want to do. It happened to me in fact — in high school I kinda lost all interest. When I looked at the college catalogue it was really exciting — lots of courses, great things. But it turned out that the college was like an overgrown high school. After about a year I was going to just drop out and it was just by accident that I stayed in. I happened to meet up with a faculty member who suggested to me I start taking his graduate courses and then I started taking other graduate courses. But I have no professional training. That’s why I’m teaching at MIT — I don’t have the credentials to teach at an academic university.

Asya Pereltsvaig reflexiona sobre el anticosmopolitismo en la enseñanza de las lenguas, una forma camuflada del imperialismo de siempre.

Is Learning a Foreign Language a Waste of Time? – Languages Of The World | Languages Of The World.

As I [Asya Pereltsvaig] have pointed out elsewhere, Google all too often fails to translate both words in context and grammatical concepts, such as gender. In fact, it fails most in piecing together the grammatical structure of a sentence, something than even a child can do for his of her native language. Though it offers translation in 65 languages (and is set to round the number to 100 before too long), for most language pairs Google Translate uses so‑called “intermediary languages”, usually English. Going beyond the most easily translatable forms of language into something as complex as poetry or humor, Google Translate performs even more poorly.

La celebrada reseña de N. Chomsky del libro de B. F. Skinner Verbal Behavior puede encontrase aquí.

«Mi intención en esta reseña no es tanto criticar específicamente las especulaciones de Skinner sobre el lenguaje sino más bien criticar de manera más amplia la visión del conductismo (aunque preferíria calificarlo de «empirismo») sobre los procesos cognitivos superiores […]»