“Noam Chomsky: Man or Myth?”
Advertisement by The Greater Lansing Linguistics Association

From Psammeticus Quarterly XVI.1, November 1988

Reviewed by Rasmus Gauthiot

“Noam Chomsky: Man or Myth?” is arguably the first-ever SpecGram article, even though it predates the earliest extant issue of SpecGram, and postdates both Lingua Pranca and Son of Lingua Pranca. It was originally a flyer distributed in the linguistics department at Michigan State University in late 1988, and was soon followed by a similar flyer, “Poll Shows Chomsky Trailing in Presidential Race”. These two flyers were the inspiration for Psammeticus Quarterly, the lineal ancestor of Speculative Grammarian. (Lingua Pranca is a precursor to SpecGram, not an ancestor; in fact, at the time when Ps.Q. came into being, its editors had never even heard of Lingua Pranca).

The original flyer, which was reproduced (with the author’s permission) in the earliest extant issue of Ps.Q., has a few curious features. For example, it lists both a time and a place for the colloquium that it advertises; however, as pointed out by a worried department administrator, “There’s no date on it!” Likewise, it’s always seemed odd that Mustafa Kemal managed to get a job at the Turkish Consulate in Lansing despite not speaking any English.

The advertisement itself is somewhat amusing, and is vaguely similar to the more recent article “Next Noam Chomsky to Be Selected” (SpecGram CLXIX.4, April 2014). Still, “Noam Chomksy: Man or Myth?” is primarily of historical interest these days. Like Gandalf’s meeting with Thorin in T.A. 2941, or the fact that Franz Ferdinand’s driver took a wrong turn on that fateful day in Sarajevo, it proves the wisdom of the old saying, “What mighty contests, and/or journals, rise from trivial things.”

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	SpecGram Vol CLXXI, No 1 Contents