re: #446 withak
He decided all languages were at bottom the same—their “deep structures” were identical. Therefore there was no point in learning any new languages, just analyzing English to death would do the job. Besides, people with powerful brains like him found learning all those words excruciatingly boring!
Structural Linguistics in America from Franz Boas on, had been describing disappearing languages and detailing the incredibly diverse ways in which they divided up the universe of experience and the extremely different ways their grammatical structure worked. After Chomsky, everyone gave all that up and began trying to figure out how his imaginary “language organ” in the brain worked.