Chomsky
Chomsky is a prominent linguist known for his influential theories on language acquisition and generative grammar. He proposed the idea of a universal grammar that underlies all human languages, suggesting that humans are born with an innate ability to understand and produce language. Chomsky's work has had a significant impact on the field of linguistics and cognitive science.
8 Key excerpts on "Chomsky"
- Jessica Kuper, Jessica Kuper(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chomsky, Noam (1928–) Noam Chomsky, born 1928 in Philadelphia, the son of a Hebrew scholar, has achieved eminence both as a linguist and as a political activist and writer. His linguistic research, conducted for the last 30 years at MIT, has revolutionized the study of language, has been profoundly influential in psychology and philosophy, and has had repercussions in mathematics, anthropology, sociology and the study of literature. His political work is less original but, in reflecting his adopted role of conscience of the West, has been important in focusing attention on the perceived injustices of the American social and political system. Twentieth-century linguistics prior to Chomsky (e.g. Bloom-field) was preoccupied with cataloguing and describing the facts of language, and was largely limited to phonology (sound structure) and morphology (word structure). Chomsky reoriented the discipline in two ways: on the one hand he initiated a technical breakthrough which for the first time made possible a rigorous account of syntax; on the other he moved beyond the description of data to concentrate on those human mental properties which underlie our observable linguistic abilities. The ability to speak and understand a language entails having a certain body of linguistic knowledge, usually referred to as our competence. This knowledge is conceived as being embodied in a set of mentally represented rules which interact with other cognitive systems (memory, logic) to determine our linguistic behaviour or performance...
eBook - ePub- Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick, Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chomsky, NOAM (1928–) American linguist, whose work was fundamental to the development of modern approaches to the study of language. In addition to his research in linguistics he has a sustained role in political activism and reflection, and has written copiously from an anarcho-socialist perspective on American and global issues, particularly focusing on the oppressive nature of capitalist governments and businesses (Chomsky 1969, 1973, 1983, 1989, 1991). At the core of Chomsky’s approach to linguistics is the thesis that certain aspects of language use and acquisition must be innate to the human mind, and not the product of individual learning. Chomsky reacted against the empiricist approaches that were dominant in linguistics in the 1950s. Behaviourists argued that stimulus–response models could explain how language was acquired. Chomsky (1964a) replies by observing that such accounts of language learning cannot take account of the potentially infinite number of utterances that the language user will create and encounter (so that competent language users must be able to understand sentences that they have never before encountered). Further, empirical accounts of language acquisition do not adequately account for the uniformity of individuals’ knowledge and use of language. Structuralists, such as Chomsky’s teacher Zellig Harris, treated any given language as the collection of utterances made by speakers. Linguists sought to explicate the grammar of such languages, with ‘grammar’ being understood as the set of mathematical formulae that structure the collection of utterances. While Chomsky holds to the mathematical notion of grammar generating language (akin to mathematical equations generating infinite sets of values), he goes beyond Harris’s structuralism by abandoning an empirical concern with diverse natural languages, each with a distinct grammar, to focus instead upon a core grammar that is common to all languages (Chomsky 1964b)...
eBook - ePubTheory in Social and Cultural Anthropology
An Encyclopedia
- R. Jon McGee, Richard L. Warms(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Omnia El Shakry Omnia El Shakry Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, Noam 113 117 Chomsky, Noam Avram Noam Chomsky (1928–) is an American linguist, anarchist, political theorist and activist, a leading thinker of our times, and, according to the New York Times, arguably the most important intellectual alive. Chomsky’s approach to linguistics has become known as the Chomskyan revolution and has earned him the title of “father of modern linguistics.” Chomsky attracts both passionate disciples and antagonists. He bridges disciplines, yet some consider him extremely divisive. There is no doubt that the academic world has never been quite the same since Chomsky first published the now famous sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” This entry will focus on Chomsky’s contribution to linguistics, which has exerted a strong influence in other disciplines including anthropology. Biography and Scholarship Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 7, 1928. He was the first of the two children of William Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky, Lithuanian and Russian émigrés, respectively. The Chomskys were Hebrew teachers. They were scholarly and politically active, involving their children in their passions, including the revival of Jewish language, cultural activities, and Zionism. Chomsky grew up to become a public intellectual and activist. In 1945, Chomsky enrolled in the general studies program at the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate. Most accounts of Chomsky’s life note his aversion to institutional structures, especially instructional adherence to standardized and structured curricula, which he believes stifles creativity and independent thinking. His scholarship and politics would eventually be dedicated to advocacy for creativity and freedom. In 1947, Chomsky met Zellig Harris, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who inspired him professionally and politically...
eBook - ePubLinguistic Theory
The Discourse of Fundamental Works
- Robert De Beaugrande(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 7 Noam Chomsky 1 7.1 Both inside and outside the discipline, Chomsky's work has fundamentally affected views of what of linguistics is or should be, and reopened issues many linguists had long thought were settled. On the jacket of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (hereafter AT), a reviewer calls the ‘approach’ ‘truly fresh and revolutionary’; and Chomsky often stresses how it is different from, and better than, various alternatives. Yet many of his ideas are conservative in that they derive from traditional philosophy, grammar, and logic. The most ‘revolutionary’ aspect lies in his claims about how these ideas apply to language and linguistics (cf. 7.78, 95). 7.2 A skilful public debater, Chomsky intensifies the forensic and polemical aspects of the discipline by using theoretical arguments about ‘the nature of language’ to fortify his positions against competitors (cf. 9.3 ; 12 2). He foregrounds points of contention even where he implicitly agrees with or borrows from his adversaries, and uses a highly confident rhetoric for his ‘tentative’ views and proposals (cf. 7.85, 94). 2 His argumentation oscillates from intuitive reasoning and philosophical speculations on ‘the mind’, over to technical points drawn from formal language theory and from such sciences as biology and neurology...
eBook - ePub- James D. Williams(Author)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5 NoamChomsky and Grammar THE Chomsky REVOLUTION Academics hate theoretical vacuums. Clearly, one existed with respect to phrase-structure grammar, which, although effective at describing languages, did not have a theoretical component. Structuralists were interested primarily in application, not theory. In the mid-1950s, a young linguist named Noam Chomsky set out to fill the theoretical vacuum by challenging most of the dominant assumptions underlying phrase-structure grammar. Examining Chomsky’s approach to grammar and its influence requires that we step away somewhat from the pragmatic. In the decade between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, Chomsky’s ideas about language and grammar had a significant influence on composition pedagogy, providing the basis for sentence combining and studies of style and writing maturity in children and promising to give teachers valuable insight into composing, reading, and language errors and growth. This influence faded, however. Sentence combining did not survive the shift to process, which focuses on entire papers rather than individual sentences, and the promised insight never materialized (see Williams, 2003a, for a more complete discussion). Also, there is no denying that Chomsky’s views on grammar and language are complex and abstract. This chapter and the next explore the principles and theories, as well as some of the linguistic influences, of his work. They necessarily are demanding. Although trained as a structuralist, Chomsky was intrigued by the idea that grammar could reflect a theory of language and, in turn, a theory of mind. He explored this idea around 1955 in a mimeographed paper titled “The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory,” which formed the foundation for his first book, Syntactic Structures (1957)...
eBook - ePubChomsky
Language, Mind and Politics
- James McGilvray(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...1 Chomsky's Contributions Chomsky's c ontributions and a ccess to t hem Noam Chomsky works in several intellectually important areas and has made significant contributions to others, including some developing fields. Perhaps the most prominent areas in which he works are linguistics, political analysis and criticism, and the philosophies of language and mind. In this chapter, I will outline these contributions and describe how they have been received. At the end of the chapter, I will say something about the extent to which Chomsky's intellectual contributions relate to one another – the extent to which his science of language relates to his political views through his view of the human mind and human nature. The b eginning Chronologically speaking, Chomsky's first contributions were to political and social analysis. At the age of ten, he wrote an essay on the Spanish Civil War and the spread of fascism, noting the role of the fall of Barcelona and Toledo in this regard. This and other early contributions were unrecognized except by a small group associated with his Deweyite grade school run by the Temple University in Philadelphia. The reading he did in preparation for this article in his grade school newspaper indicated his strong interest in politics. Continued reading in political affairs during his early teenage years sufficed to write many years later a sophisticated review of Gabriel Jackson's scholarly book on the Spanish Civil War. There is a lesson in Chomsky's early intellectual achievement in the social/political domain. Perhaps surprisingly, it should not be seen as particularly unusual or remarkable. Any child of his age who focuses their interests in the way he did could do it – although very likely now, of course, with a different political issue...
eBook - ePub- Mark J. Cain(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...This he replaced with an approach known as generative transformational grammar, an approach that has dominated linguistics ever since. The views of Chomsky and his followers have changed over the years, but his overall perspective has remained remarkably consistent. In its present incarnation Chomsky’s perspective is known as minimalism (Chomsky, 1995; Boeckx, 2006), which is itself a development of the principles and parameters approach (Chomsky, 1981). 2 Chomsky’s work can be very technical and forbidding, but a relatively easy way into his outlook can be achieved by contrasting it with a very commonsensical view of language that can be described in the following terms. Languages such as English are social entities. They were created collectively by groups of individuals to facilitate communication between themselves and their fellows. Thus, what words belong to the language (what those words mean and how they sound) and what rules govern how those words can be combined (the grammatical or syntactic rules of the language) are matters of social convention. Thus, languages are akin to other rule-governed social structures such as games like chess, legal systems and codes of etiquette. Accordingly, they are not set in aspic but can change over time as they are passed on from one generation to the next. Moreover, just as different social groups can play very different games, establish divergent legal systems and follow conflicting rules of etiquette, they can speak radically different languages. In order to speak a given language an individual must be in an appropriate psychological state; she must have a rich body of knowledge about that language. That is, she must have knowledge of some of the words that belong to the language and how those words can legitimately be combined, and such like. Such knowledge is about a particular complex social entity and is acquired by means of learning based upon the employment of general learning mechanisms...
eBook - ePub- Alison Edgley(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Introduction Chomsky – Critic or Theorist? How are we to characterise Noam Chomsky’s political writings? Certainly it is notable that Chomsky’s political work is to a great extent marginalised within academic circles. His writings rarely appear on undergraduate reading lists nor do they, on the whole, enter the fray of mainstream debates about social and political organisation. There are perhaps only two areas where this is an exception: media studies and international relations. Given that Chomsky has been writing prolifically on just about every political issue one might care to think of for over thirty years, what reasons may be offered to explain this? It might be suggested that there is a degree of intellectual snobbery attached to the perhaps subconscious decision within the academic community not to give his ideas in this area serious consideration. In other words he is regarded first and foremost as a linguist, and it is therefore inappropriate that he should cross intellectual boundaries and enter debates about subjects that are deemed to lie beyond his academic expertise. Chomsky explains that this argument has indeed been used. Some academics from The University of Victoria in British Columbia for example tried to stop him speaking and ‘they published letters in the press, etc., saying that since I’m a linguist, I shouldn’t be allowed to talk about “their field”’. 1 This is perhaps paradoxical given that Chomsky is accorded wide acclaim as Professor of Linguistics at MIT and that he quite literally generated a revolution within his discipline...
