Pour conclure, il convient de souligner l'intérêt de cet ouvrage, qui met en lumière l'intrication du structuralisme européen, avec la linguistique américaine.
- Jacqueline Léon, CNRS UMR 7597, in Histoire Epistémologie Langage 26/1 (2004),
[...] broad in scope, eclectic in coverage, and highly original in its insights about a history that has alays been far too simple, self-contained, and sanitized to be the whole story.
- Joseph F. Kess, Professor of Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada, in Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 40/2 (2004),
Among the original findings and arguments contained herein:
why ‘American structuralism’ does not end with Chomsky, but begins with him;
how Bloomfield managed to read Saussure as a behaviourist avant la lettre;
why in the long run Skinner has emerged victorious over Chomsky;
how Whorf was directly influenced by the mystical writings of Madame Blavatsky;
how the Whitney–Max Müller debates in the 19th century connect to the intellectual disparity between Chomsky’s linguistic and political writings.