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