He does lack field work. But there are many other linguists, like Pesetsky and Stephen Pinker who have spent plenty of time in the field.
Field work for linguists amounts to working with people on dying and lost languages, but also the hard work of understanding and analyzing the intricacies of common languages like Hindi, German, and English. While Chomsky himself may not spend an inordinate amount of time proving his theories in the field, others have.
It should be noted, that Chomsky's theories have changed over time to reflect current findings. But the basic ideas of Universal Grammar and the essence of recursion in language have stayed the same.
Comments
He does lack field work. But there are many other linguists, like Pesetsky and Stephen Pinker who have spent plenty of time in the field.
Field work for linguists amounts to working with people on dying and lost languages, but also the hard work of understanding and analyzing the intricacies of common languages like Hindi, German, and English. While Chomsky himself may not spend an inordinate amount of time proving his theories in the field, others have.
It should be noted, that Chomsky's theories have changed over time to reflect current findings. But the basic ideas of Universal Grammar and the essence of recursion in language have stayed the same.