Writing about writing about writing about language: John McWhorter helps kick
off Vox’s new “Big Idea” section with a review of Tom Wolfe’s evaluation of
Chomskyan linguistics. This is a nice opinionated summary of a
decades-long debate.
Our main failure was overambition. "The goals which we have
attempted have obviously proved to be far beyond our grasp." ... What was
amazing was that a large team of highly intelligent programmers could labor
so hard and so long on such an unpromising project. You know, you shouldn’t
trust us intelligent programmers. We can think up such good arguments for
convincing ourselves and each other of the utterly absurd. Especially don’t
believe us when we promise to repeat an earlier success, only bigger and
better next time.