Introducing Chomsky
Noam Chomsky’s significance as a linguist and social reformer makes him one of the 20th century’s most challenging figures.
There are two “Chomskys”. One has introduced new perspectives on language and human creativity; the other has rigorously criticized social injustice and state violence wherever these occur in the world. Both Chomskys can be seen as one and the same heir to the Enlightenment tradition. Let’s begin with Chomsky the linguist.
Being and Language
Language is our humanity. Language is used to understand ourselves and others, to deal with the reality of our world and engage in acts of meaning.
The Language Bell
Language is like a bell. It sounds and it means. Sound is the external face of language. It is merely a series of disturbances in the air. The cluster or sequence of sounds,
in Japanese mean nothing in themselves. When language gongs, it comes into contact with the mind. The sound carries internal meanings which are present to the mind (“It’s 6pm. Time to go home”). Thus, we see the interface between how the sound is represented, Phonetic Form (PF), and how the meaning is represented, the Logical Form (LF). Syntax (an intervening structure) connects the two.
What is the nature of the bridge between sound and meaning, and how does a child manage to acquire the syntactic interface?
Language Use
Language is textually complex, ranging from thousands of floating “uh, huh” conversational fillers to massive narratives which encode philosophical thoughts and powerful emotions.
We each have a highly personal way of using language (idiolect) in a speech community which displays regional characteristics (dialect). Likewise, we are hooked up to multiple stylistic networks.
The changing language of the “I” as it journeys from infancy to old age.
How Do We Know Language?
Speakers of languages constantly cross paths, borrowing and switching. Sometimes new types of makeshift mixed languages occur, like pidgins, which when stabilized, become creoles. Through their channels of speech, writing and sign (deaf-sign), languages traverse great distances throughout time and space.
All these phenomena share in the form of life known as “language”.
What constitutes our knowledge of language? In order to answer this question, we must take several strides back from what is apparently “present to the mind”.
The Diversity Diversion
Language is so close to our Being that we frequently do not notice it. Bewildered by the differences found in language diversity and people’s ability to use a language, we pay little attention to potential similarities. For example, dialects A and B may be superficially remote – the speakers may be almost unintelligible to each other.
These speakers in fact share a central core of common rules and processes. They both “know” the same language.
Getting to the Core of Language
The underlying structures of language may be invariant sleepers over long historical eras. The common core of the language very rarely changes.
Perhaps literature will forever give far deeper insight into “the full human person” than any model of scientific inquiry can hope to do. Chomsky
How Do We Explain Language?
Too often we prefer transparent explanation, near to the surface. The classical philosophy of the mind – both rationalist and empiricist – is deeply flawed in its assumption that the content of the mind is accessible to introspection.