I just read Michael's (Coghlan) message with interest -- I too worked
as an ESL tutor at the school I'm currently attending. I was primarily
attracted to Chomsky through his political writings and not because of
his linguistics work, though I have subsequently found that part of his
ideas intriguing. I've never been interested in Linguistics so much as
etymology, and how it seems there are such great similarities in diverse
languages.
        I was a Comparative Religions major (I have changed majors -- something
I do quite often!), and have found the theories of Jung and Jospeh
Campbell extremely helpful in determining why it is that so many of the
world's religions are similar: most have similar dying-and-rebirth
motifs, or chaos-and-order motifs, expressed in ways that are particular
to each culture. From a literary and folkloric viewpoint, it seems a lot
of the same narrative themes are encountered time and again in different
cultures. For example, the Persians' "Layli and Majnun" is essentially
the same as the Greeks' "Pyramus and Thisbe," which is the same as
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," which is the same as Disney's
"Pocahantas." The outer-trappings of locale and costume are different,
but the underlying themes are similar.
        That Chomsky should find the same with languages comes as no surprise
to me. In fact, I'm sure there are even more areas of the humanities
which would seem to point to a pre-conscious template within which most
religious, artistic, and creative ideas are formed. Jung's ideas of the
archetype, which are mostly seen as being relevant to art and religion,
have implications elsewhere, I'm sure. It could be said that even
government is the act of choosing a symbolic figurehead, a
representation of something (freedom, justice, etc.),  who, in
actuality, may be impotent to effect any real change. Likewise, if all
religious and mythic thought seem to traverse similar thematic lines,
then language, which is an act of human creativity also, should do the
same. I don't find this surprising at all. One question that one could
ask is : given that they probably never contacted each other
historically, why are the organizational forms of many tribal units,
like the aborgines and the wodaabe of africa, so similar? Again, there
seems to be a sub-psychic framework within which all cognitions and
actions are accorded to, and acted upon. Jung, Campbell, and Mircea
Eliade have largely shown this to be true with religion (and government
structures founded on religion), so I see no reason why it should not be
the same with language.
        And I still prefer Chomsky's politcal writings to his linguistics
research! :-)
        Liberty, peace -- anarchy.

                                        --Brian
                                        mailto:generalstrike


--
"If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of
human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry, for free
creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive
institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should
maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to
be realized. Now, a federated, decentralized system of free associations
incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be what I
refer to as anarcho-syndicalism. And it seems to me that it is the
appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological
society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the
position of tools, of cogs in a machine. " -- Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT