Location of Lagado in Balnibarbi (original map, Pt III, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels). Wikicommons. Public domain.
Though the discussion of Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory has been conducted at an oblique angle, due to Chris Knight’s focus on the military funding of Chomsky’s early research, Knight’s contribution has provided a long overdue opportunity for public debate over the value of Chomsky’s linguistics and, perhaps, over the value of linguistics itself more broadly.
This is not to say that the funding issue is unimportant, but that it cannot bear the weight that Knight would like to place on it for an understanding of the sources, direction, significance and influence of Chomsky’s linguistic work.
