It was heady stuff, recognizing ourselves as an oppressed class, but the level of discussion was poor. We explained systemic discr...imination, and men looked prettily confused and said: "But, I like women."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absu...rdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the 'creativity of language,' that is, the speaker's ability... to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are 'familiar.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this... faculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all free...ly consent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »