I think that’s clearer and clearer. The emergence of language as a system of creative thought was sensed by Descartes and Galileo. But it was not really addressed till the mid-20th century because the tools weren’t available to formulate it properly. You needed the modern theory of computability, which was developed by Alan Turing and other great mathematicians of the 1930s and ’40s. I was lucky that I was becoming an undergraduate at just the time that all these great insights were emerging.

Have you read Tom Wolfe’s book?

It’s so uninformed and distorted that it hardly rises to the level of meeting a laugh test. In the Harper’s Magazine excerpt, there’s exactly one paragraph that is accurate, quoted from an interview we had in which I explain why his crucial example, the Amazonian language Pirahã, is completely irrelevant to his conclusions and claims because what he says about Pirahã — correct or not — is about the language itself, not about the common human faculty of language. To take an analogy: If some tribe were found in which everyone wears a black patch over one eye, it would have no bearing on the study of binocular vision in the human visual system.

How about Chris Knight? He connects your theory of language to Pentagon-funded work you did at M.I.T. during the Cold War.

The Pentagon was the means by which the government carried out industrial policy and developed the high-tech economy of the future. M.I.T. was almost entirely funded by the military, including the music department. Does this mean we were doing military work? There was a study in 1969, the Pounds commission — I was a member of it — to investigate whether any military or classified work was being done on campus. Answer? None.

Why do you think we’re seeing this resurgence of analysis? You must tire of defending your work.

I’ve been defending the legitimacy of this work, extensively and in print, for 60 years. In earlier years, the discussions were with serious philosophers, linguists, cognitive scientists. I’m sorry to see that the resurgence you mention does not begin to approximate that level — one reason why, unlike earlier years, I don’t bother to respond unless asked.