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Article: Linguistics
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 24, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Tracks for Language
"SO WHAT in the hell did Noam Chomsky think about language
anyway?" a flustered student asked me last week in an introductory
linguistics course at UC Berkeley. "His politics I can handle, but
this syntax stuff is way out there." Or way up there, I thought,
sitting somewhere in that towering institution of ours which has won
the ivory medal for its inaccessibility.
But times seem to be changing. Since the turn of the decade, a
slew of engaging books on language theory has entered the popular
American market. Perhaps encouraged by the international success of
Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in
Conversation, an ever-increasing number of ...