I suspect that some of the discomfort with Esperanto, at least among poets and other language-artists (to say nothing of "philosophers of language") involves a rejection of the possibility that humans are not servants of, are not limited by, the arbitrary facts of the language they happen to speak. (As if mastery by one's own cognitive processes were not just as nonsensical as mastery of them.) In any case, in seeming to demystify language so completely, it flies in the face of the post-modern "spirit of surrender."
Of course, that's assuming that isn't simple outright ignorance, as in the case of Chomsky. But then, it is Chomsky. Disregard of actual spoken languages that aren't English, and retreat into the black box of magic (also known as Universal Grammar) is sort of a given with him.
Of course, that's assuming that isn't simple outright ignorance, as in the case of Chomsky. But then, it is Chomsky. Disregard of actual spoken languages that aren't English, and retreat into the black box of magic (also known as Universal Grammar) is sort of a given with him.
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