Historical grammar is a study of how, say, modern English developed from Middle English, and how that developed from Early and Old English, and how that developed from Germanic, and that developed from what's called Proto-Indo-European, a source system that nobody speaks, so you have to try to reconstruct it.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Developed Early English Grammar Historical How Middle Modern Nobody Old Reconstruct Say Source Speaks Study System Try You

Related Quotes

Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.

— Noam Chomsky

AccountAttemptCurrent

Control is the source of strategic power.

— Noam Chomsky

ControlPowerSource

If you don't like what someone has to say, argue with them.

— Noam Chomsky

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won't tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, 'Well, you know: It's secret.'

— Noam Chomsky

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

— Noam Chomsky

BookConceptionDid