Improvisation
by Andrew Gordon MiddletonThe meaning of the word ‘essay’ has a very different sense today than it did when Michel Montaigne first used it to describe his writing exercises. This is unfortunate but not so surprising. History has a tendency to clean up the edges. According to the Oxford American Dictionary the word still includes the original meaning: (formal) an attempt or effort. But then this is a dictionary and we don’t really expect it to reflect any normal usage. If you told your friend you were writing an essay today he is unlikely to rat you out. Your mother would hardly discourage your involvement in this doubtful enterprise.
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Might the Alien Scientist Speak?
by Andrew Gordon MiddletonThe famous linguist and political critic, Noam Chomsky, has occasionally used the story of an extraterrestrial, a ‘Martian scientist’, coming to Earth as a way of making the argument out that such an outside observer would quickly note that one species has a communication system far in advance of all the others, and that this system of language patterns in non-obvious ways (Chomsky [1988]; Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch [2002]). To my knowledge, what Chomsky has not done is to turn the question around and ask what sort of language this intelligent extraterrestrial might use while making these observations. This seems an odd question if we are studying languages; we should be busy enough with attested languages and not need fictitious ones. If, on the other hand, we are studying language this question seems highly relevant. In a mind unconnected with our own genetic heritage could there exist something like our language?
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