Dem ist kaum allzu viel hinzuzufügen
"Chomsky pronounced that knowledge of grammatical construction constituted the true mastery of a language. 'With a complete list of terminal strings all the basic sentences possible can be worked out.' I am not happy about this. Chinese and Malay do not impose this kind of obligation. Vocabulary is far more important in both than rules of syntax. Grammar has its own fascination and, in a ghostly manner, its own peculiar truth. [...] There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of vocabulary, or lexis, requires before it can become vertebrate and walk the earth. But it is probably unrealistic to stress its importance. It leads us to a world of dreams:
When I corkled the veriduct in morful wurtubs and, prexing the coroflock, chonted the furpool by crerlicoking the fark, I wottled the duneflow by fonking the raketoppled purnlow and then asserticled the prert (in both slonces) through a clariform rarp of werthearkers.
That is good grammar. But it is not anything else."
[Anthony Burgess. A Mouthful of Air. Language and languages, especially English. London: Hutchinson 1992, p. 117-18]
When I corkled the veriduct in morful wurtubs and, prexing the coroflock, chonted the furpool by crerlicoking the fark, I wottled the duneflow by fonking the raketoppled purnlow and then asserticled the prert (in both slonces) through a clariform rarp of werthearkers.
That is good grammar. But it is not anything else."
[Anthony Burgess. A Mouthful of Air. Language and languages, especially English. London: Hutchinson 1992, p. 117-18]
syro0 - Tue, 14.08.2007, 22:14
I didn't know...
Anyway, I used to think more or less the same as Burgess about Chomsky until I came across an article in «Spiegel» a few weeks ago. In this article it was said that some scientists believe the brain works in terms of Generative Grammar when it is working on moral decisions.
Oh, jetzt habe ich Deinem Eintrag doch etwas hinzugefügt. Dabei war das vielleicht gar nicht die Absicht ;)
Die Frage ist bloß, ob Chomsky nicht zu sehr ausspart, was eigentlich von der Sprachverwendung untrennbar ist. Schwierig wird es jedenfalls, wenn die Grammatik, wie in vielen asiatischen Sprachen, auf ein Minimum reduziert ist. Flexion ist ja kein allgemeines Kennzeichen von Sprache. Aber wenn selbst Burgess ein ganzes Buch braucht, um das zu argumentieren, will ich gar nicht versuchen, das Thema auf ein paar Zeilen zu reduzieren.