Western Philosophy 20th / 21st-century philosophy
Name	Noam Chomsky
Birth	December 7, 1928 (1928-12-07) (age 79) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
School/tradition	Linguistics, Analytic
Main interests	Linguistics · Psychology Philosophy of language Politics · Ethics
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, linguistic minimalism, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model[1]
Influenced by	Pāṇini, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Mikhail Bakunin, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adam Smith, Rudolf Rocker, Zellig Harris, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell, Karl Marx, C. West Churchman, W.V.O. Quine, Alan Turing.
Influenced	Colin McGinn, Edward Said, Steven Pinker, Tanya Reinhart, Daniel Everett, Morris Halle, Gilbert Harman, Jerry Fodor, Howard Lasnik, Robert Fisk, Neil Smith, Ray Jackendoff, Norbert Hornstein, Jean Bricmont, Marc Hauser, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Lees, Mark Baker, Julian Boyd, Bill Hicks, Ray C. Dougherty, Derek Bickerton, Thom Yorke, Michael Albert.

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Western philosophy is a modern claim that there is a line of related philosophical thinking, beginning in ancient Greece (Greek philosophy) and the ancient Near East (the Abrahamic religions), that continues to this day. ... It has been suggested that Contemporary philosophy be merged into this article or section. ... Living philosophers and academics of philosophy (and others important in the history of philosophy), listed alphabetically: (For philosophers who have recently passed away, see the companion list: List of philosophers born in the twentieth century. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Noam_chomsky_cropped. ... is the 341st day of the year (342nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Philadelphia (disambiguation) and Philly. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... Analytic philosophy (sometimes, analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... {redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Ethics (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Generative linguistics. ... Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... In linguistics, a transformational grammar, or transformational-generative grammar (TGG), is a grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Chomskian tradition. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... X-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features common to all languages. ... The Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. ... In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a grammar in which every production rule is of the form V → w where V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (possibly empty). ... Principles and parameters refers to a popular framework in generative linguistics. ... The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated organ of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device for learning symbolic language (ie. ... The poverty of the stimulus (POTS) argument is an argument in favour of linguistic nativism, which is the claim that humans are born with a specific adaptation for language that both funds and limits their competence to acquire specific types of natural languages over the course of their cognitive development... In computer science, a formal grammar is in Chomsky normal form iff all production rules are of the form: A → BC or A → α or S → ε where A, B and C are nonterminal symbols, α is a terminal symbol (a symbol that represents a constant value), S is the start symbol, and... The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes. ... Indian postage stamp depicting (2004), with the implication that he used (पाणिनि; IPA ) was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (traditionally 520–460 BC, but estimates range from the 7th to 4th centuries BC). ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (Russian: Михаил Александрович Бакунин, Michel Bakunin on the grave in Bern), (May 18 (30 N.S.), 1814 – June 19 (July 1 N.S.), 1876) was a well-known Russian revolutionary, and often considered one of the “fathers of modern anarchism. Born in the Russian Empire to a family of Russian... Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt (June 22, 1767 - April 8, 1835), government functionary, foreign diplomat, philosopher, founder of Humboldt Universität in Berlin, friend of Goethe and especially of Schiller, is especially remembered as a German linguist who introduced a knowledge of the Basque... For other persons named Adam Smith, see Adam Smith (disambiguation). ... Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958) Rudolf Rocker (March 25, 1873 - September 19, 1958) was an anarcho-syndicalist writer, historian and prominent activist. ... Zellig Sabbetai Harris (October 23, 1909 - May 22, 1992) was an American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. ... Kant redirects here. ... René Descartes (French IPA:  Latin:Renatus Cartesius) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ... George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903[1][2] – 21 January 1950) who was an English writer and journalist well-noted as a novelist, critic, and commentator on politics and culture. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Charles West Churchman (born August 29, 1913 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, died March 21, 2004 Bolinas, California) was an American philospher in the field of management science, operations research and systems theory. ... W. V. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. ... Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. ... Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. ... Edward Wadie Saïd, Arabic: , , (1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and Palestinian activist. ... Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent Canadian-born American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ... Tanya Reinhart is an Israeli linguist who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ... Daniel Everett is a linguistics professor at the University of Manchester. ... Morris Halle, né Pinkowitz, is an American linguist. ... Gilbert Harman (born 1938) is a contemporary philosopher teaching at Princeton University who has published widely in Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the philosophies of Language and Mind. ... Jerry Alan Fodor (born 1935) is a philosopher at Rutgers University, New Jersey. ... Howard Lasnik is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland. ... Robert Fisk during a lecture at Carleton University, Canada, 2004 Robert Fisk (born July 12, 1946 in Maidstone, Kent) is a British journalist and is currently a Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent. ... Neilson Voyne Smith FBA, better known as Neil Smith (born 1939) is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London. ... Ray Jackendoff (born 1945) is an influential contemporary linguist who has always straddled the boundary between generative linguistics and cognitive linguistics, committed as he is both to the existence of an innate Universal Grammar (an all-important thesis of generative linguistics) and to giving an account of language that meshes... Norbert Hornstein is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland. ... Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist and a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. ... Marc Hauser is an ethologist who teaches at the Psychology Department at Harvard University. ... For other uses, see Norman Finkelstein (disambiguation). ... Robert B. Lees (1922-1996) was an American linguist. ... Mark C. Baker is an American linguist. ... Julian Charles Boyd (December 25, 1931 – April 5, 2005) was an American linguist, reputed for his expertise on modality in English, as well as for his pedagogical excellence at the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent most of his academic career. ... William Melvin Bill Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian. ... Ray C. Dougherty is an American linguist and a member of the Arts and Science faculty at New York University. ... Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. ... Thomas Edward Yorke (born 7 October 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England) is a Grammy-nominated English musician, best known as the lead singer of the band Radiohead. ... Michael Albert (born April 8, 1947) is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. ... is the 341st day of the year (342nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as involvement in action to bring about change, be it social, political, environmental, or other change. ... For other uses, see Author (disambiguation). ... Lecturer is a term of academic rank. ... At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the title of Institute Professor is given to a small number of members of the faculty with extraordinary records of achievement. ... Emeritus (IPA pronunciation: or ) is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... “MIT” redirects here. ...

Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of behavior and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has affected the philosophy of language and mind. He is also credited with the establishment of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. Beginning with his critique of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky has become more widely known for his media criticism and political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Generative linguistics. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... The cognitive revolution is a name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that combined new thinking in psychology, anthropology and linguistics with the nascent fields of computer science and neuroscience. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990), Ph. ... Verbal Behavior (1957), written by psychologist B.F. Skinner, develops a functional analysis [1][2] of human behavior encompassing what is traditionally called language, linguistics, or speech. ... Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. ... Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... A phrenological mapping of the brain. ... The Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. ... In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a formal language is a language that is defined by precise mathematical or machine processable formulas. ... The Responsibility of Intellectuals [1] is an essay by the US academic Noam Chomsky which was published as a special supplement by the The New York Review of Books on the 23rd of February 1967. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action or inaction to bring about social or political change. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For a history, see Timeline of United States diplomatic history For the published diplomatic papers, see The Foreign Relations of the United States For Foreign relations under George W. Bush, see Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. ... ...

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period, and was the eighth most-cited scholar in any time period.^[2][3][4] The Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) is the registered trademark for a citation index of over 1,000 of the worlds leading arts and humanities journals. ...

Biography

Chomsky as a child

Chomsky was born to Jewish parents in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Hebrew scholar and IWW member William Chomsky (1896–1977), who was from a town in Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (born Simonofsky), came from what is now Belarus, but unlike her husband she grew up in the United States and spoke "ordinary New York English". Their first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky says it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. He describes his family as living in a sort of "Jewish ghetto", split into a "Yiddish side" and "Hebrew side", with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up "immersed in Hebrew culture and literature". Chomsky also describes tensions he personally experienced with Irish Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s, stating, "I don't like to say it but I grew up with a kind of visceral fear of Catholics. I knew it was irrational and got over it but it was just the street experience."^[5] This is a screenshot from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. ... This is a screenshot from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... East Oak Lane is a neighborhood in the Northern section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. ... Nickname: City of Brotherly Love, Philly, the Quaker City Motto: Philadelphia maneto (Let brotherly love continue) Location in Pennsylvania Coordinates: Country United States State Pennsylvania County Philadelphia Founded October 27, 1682 Incorporated October 25, 1701 Mayor John F. Street (D) Area    - City 369. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... The IWW Label A Wobbly membership card The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, having much in common with anarcho-syndicalist unions, but also many differences. ... New York Dialect is the variety of the English language spoken by most European Americans in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including Northern New Jersey, Westchester and Rockland counties, and all of Long Island. ... Yiddish ( yidish or idish, literally: Jewish) is a non-territorial Germanic language, spoken throughout the world and written with the Hebrew alphabet. ... For other uses, see Ghetto (disambiguation). ... Irish Catholics is a term used to describe Irish people or people of Irish descent who adhere to the Roman Catholic faith. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ...

Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at the age of ten while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of twelve or thirteen, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.^[6] Fascism is a term used to describe authoritarian nationalist political ideologies or mass movements that are concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence. ... Not to be confused with the Spanish Civil War of 1820-1823. ...

A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, in 1945 Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, learning from philosophers C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky subsequently reinterpreted these as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky. Chomsky received a BA in 1949 and an MA in 1951 from the University of Pennsylvania. Central High School is the second oldest public high school in the United States. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... Charles West Churchman (born August 29, 1913 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, died March 21, 2004 Bolinas, California) was an American philospher in the field of management science, operations research and systems theory. ... Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906, Somerville, Maryland – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, and aesthetics. ... Zellig Sabbetai Harris (October 23, 1909 - May 22, 1992) was an American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. ... In mathematics, a linear transformation (also called linear map or linear operator) is a function between two vector spaces that preserves the operations of vector addition and scalar multiplication. ... In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a grammar in which every production rule is of the form V → w where V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (possibly empty). ... // Definition A tag system is a triplet (m, A, P), where m is a positive integer; A is a finite alphabet of symbols, one of which is a special halting symbol; P is a set of production rules, assigning some word P(x) to each non-halting symbol x in... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ...

In 1949, Chomsky married linguist Carol Schatz. They have two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). Aviva Chomsky is a professor at Salem State College and former professor at Harvard University, specializing in history of Latin America and the Caribbean. ...

Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, his best-known work in linguistics. Aquatint of a Doctor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, in the scarlet and black academic robes corresponding to his position. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... Harvard redirects here. ... The Harvard Society of Fellows is a collection of luminaries selected by Harvard University to be held close to its bosom, given special honors, thrown elegant dinners, and upon whom various privileges are bestowed. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... Syntactic Structures is the name of an influential book by Noam Chomsky first published in 1957. ...

Young Chomsky with parents

Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2008, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 53 years. This is a screenshot from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. ... This is a screenshot from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. ...

In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals",^[7] in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays which established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States,^{[8][9][10][11]} he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets worldwide. Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... The Responsibility of Intellectuals [1] is an essay by the US academic Noam Chomsky which was published as a special supplement by the The New York Review of Books on the 23rd of February 1967. ... This article is about the literary magazine. ... American Power and the New Mandarins is a book by the US academic Noam Chomsky. ... Criticism of Noam Chomsky - the linguist and social critic - typically centers on his political writings on American political and military power. ... Popular press redirects here; note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint The Popular Press. Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. ...

Chomsky has in the past received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S foreign policy.^[12] In addition, he was on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives.^[13] Chomsky states that he frequently receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does not agree with the police protection.^[14] The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. ... Unabomber is a nickname applied to three people: Theodore Kaczynski, an American terrorist. ...

Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts and travels frequently, giving lectures on politics. Lexington is a town located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ...

Contributions to linguistics

Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This theory takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax which can be characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules. Syntactic Structures is the name of an influential book by Noam Chomsky first published in 1957. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... In linguistics, a transformational grammar, or transformational-generative grammar (TGG), is a grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Chomskian tradition. ... In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a grammar in which every production rule is of the form V → w where V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (possibly empty). ...

Children are hypothesized to have an innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure common to all human languages (i.e. they assume that any language which they encounter is of a certain restricted kind). This innate knowledge is often referred to as universal grammar. It is argued that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" of language: with a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of terms, humans are able to produce an infinite number of sentences, including sentences no one has previously said. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar. This is related to Rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge, in that it is not due to experience. Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... Indian postage stamp depicting (2004), with the implication that he used (पाणिनि; IPA ) was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (traditionally 520–460 BC, but estimates range from the 7th to 4th centuries BC). ... This article is not about continental rationalism. ... A priori is originally a Latin phrase meaning from the former or from what comes before. However, several different uses of the term have developed in English: A priori (law) - adj. ...

The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB)—make strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples. A lexicon is a list of words together with additional word-specific information, i. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.

More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters", Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P. Transformational grammar is a broad term describing grammars (almost exclusively those of natural languages) which have been developed in a Chomskyan tradition. ...

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers investigating the acquisition of language in children, though some^[specify] researchers who work in this area today do not support Chomsky's theories, instead advocating emergentist or connectionist theories reducing language to an instance of general processing mechanisms in the brain. For the academic journal, see Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics. ... A termite cathedral mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature. ... Connectionism today generally refers to an approach in the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind which models mental or behavioral phenomena with neural networks, and is associated with a certain set of arguments for why this is a good idea. ...

He also theorizes that unlimited extension of a language such as English is possible only by the recursive device of embedding sentences in sentences.^{[citation needed]} This article is about the concept of recursion. ...

His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky does not publish on phonology anymore. Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... The Sound Pattern of English (frequently referred to as SPE) is a work on phonology (a branch of linguistics) by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. ... Morris Halle, né Pinkowitz, is an American linguist. ... Autosegmental phonology is the name of a framework of phonological analysis proposed by John Goldsmith in his PhD thesis in 1976 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ... Optimality theory or OT is a linguistic model originally proposed by the linguists Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky in 1993. ...

Generative grammar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages.^[15] The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed Universal Grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. He argues that the linguistic data to which children have access radically underdetermine the rich linguistic knowledge which they attain by adulthood (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Generative linguistics. ... Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... The poverty of the stimulus (POTS) argument is an argument in favour of linguistic nativism, which is the claim that humans are born with a specific adaptation for language that both funds and limits their competence to acquire specific types of natural languages over the course of their cognitive development...

Chomsky's theories are popular, particularly in the United States, but they have never been free from controversy. Criticism has come from a number of different directions. Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized both on general methodological grounds, and because it has (some argue) led to an overemphasis on the study of English. As of now, hundreds of different languages have received at least some attention in the generative grammar literature,^{[16][17][18][19][20]} but some critics nonetheless perceive this overemphasis, and a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on an overly small sample of languages. Some psychologists and psycholinguists, though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. More radical critics have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar in order to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient. {redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ...

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskian and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution. The Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is a non-derivational generative grammar theory developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag (1985). ... Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is a reaction to the direction research in the area of transformational grammar began to take in the 1970s. ...

Cultural anthropologist and linguist Daniel Everett of Illinois State University has proposed that the language of the Pirahã people of the northwestern rainforest of Brazil resists Chomsky's theories of generative grammar. Everett asserts that the Pirahã language does not have any evidence of recursion, one of the key properties of generative grammar. Additionally, it is claimed that the Pirahan have no fixed words for colors or numbers, speak in single phonemes, and often speak in prosody.^[21] However, Everett's claims have themselves been criticized. David Pesetsky of MIT, Andrew Nevins of Harvard, and Cilene Rodrigues of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil have argued in a joint paper that all of Everett's major claims contain serious deficiencies.^[22] The dispute continues, pending further field research and analysis.^[23] This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Daniel Everett is a linguistics professor at the University of Manchester. ... Illinois State University is a public university in Normal, Illinois and is the oldest public institution of higher education in the state. ... The Pirahã people are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives, who mainly live on the banks of the Maici River in Brazil. ... Pirahã (also Pirahá, Pirahán) is a language spoken by the Pirahã — an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, who live along the Maici river, a tributary of the Amazon. ... This article is about the concept of recursion. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm, and vocal stress in speech. ...

Chomsky hierarchy

Main article: Chomsky hierarchy

This section does not cite any references or sources. (May 2007) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes, or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in compiler construction and automata theory). The Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. ... In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a formal language is a language that is defined by precise mathematical or machine processable formulas. ... The Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. ... In computer science and linguistics, a formal grammar, or sometimes simply grammar, is a precise description of a formal language — that is, of a set of strings. ... In theoretical computer science, a regular language is a formal language (i. ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... “Automata” redirects here. ...

“Automata” redirects here. ... In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a formal language is a language that is defined by precise mathematical or machine processable formulas. ... In computer science and linguistics, a formal grammar, or sometimes simply grammar, is a precise description of a formal language — that is, of a set of strings. ... The Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages. ... In computer science and linguistics, a formal grammar, or sometimes simply grammar, is a precise description of a formal language — that is, of a set of strings. ... Fig. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... A recursively enumerable language in mathematics, logic and computer science, is a type of formal language which is also called partially decidable or Turing-recognizable. ... For the test of artificial intelligence, see Turing test. ... A recursive language in mathematics, logic and computer science, is a type of formal language which is also called recursive, decidable or Turing-decidable. ... In computability theory, a machine that always halts — also called a decider (Sipser, 1996) — is any abstract machine or model of computation that, contrary to the most general Turing machines, is guaranteed to halt for any particular description and input (see halting problem). ... A context-sensitive grammar is a formal grammar in which the left-hand sides and right-hand sides of any production rules may be surrounded by a context of terminal and nonterminal symbols. ... A context-sensitive language is a formal language that can be defined by a context-sensitive grammar. ... A linear bounded automaton (plural linear bounded automata, abbreviated LBA) is a restricted form of a Turing machine. ... An indexed language is a formal language discovered by Alfred Aho, which are a proper subset of context-sensitive languages and a proper superset of context-free languages. ... An indexed language is a formal language discovered by Alfred Aho, which are a proper subset of context-sensitive languages and a proper superset of context-free languages. ... In automata theory, a nested stack automaton or is a finite automaton that can make use of a stack containing data which can be additional stacks. ... Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG) is a grammar formalism defined by Aravind Joshi which is often used in computational linguistics and natural language processing. ... In formal grammar theory, mildly context-sensitive languages are a class of formal languages which can be efficiently parsed, but still possess enough context sensitivity to allow the parsing of natural languages. ... An embedded pushdown automaton or EPDA is a computational model that parse languages in the tree-adjoining grammar (TAG). ... In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a grammar in which every production rule is of the form V → w where V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (possibly empty). ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... In automata theory, a pushdown automaton (PDA) is a finite automaton that can make use of a stack containing data. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... In automata theory, a deterministic pushdown automaton is a deterministic finite state machine that can make use of a stack containing data. ... In computer science a right regular grammar is a formal grammar (N, Σ, P, S) such that all the production rules in P are of one of the following forms: A → a - where A is a non-terminal in N and a is a terminal in Σ A → aB - where A and... In theoretical computer science, a regular language is a formal language (i. ... In the theory of computation, a finite state machine (FSM) or finite state automaton (FSA) is an abstract machine that has only a finite, constant amount of memory. ... A regular language is said to be star-free if it can be described by a regular expression constructed from the letters of the alphabet, the empty set symbol, boolean operators and concatenation but no Kleene star. ... Superset redirects here. ...

Contributions to psychology

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had major implications for modern psychology.^[24] For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how language is learned by children and what, exactly, the ability to use language is. Many of the more basic principles of this theory (though not necessarily the stronger claims made by the principles and parameters approach described above) are now generally accepted in some circles.^{[dubious – discuss]} {redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ... Cognitive Psychology is the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. ... Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. ... Principles and parameters refers to a popular framework in generative linguistics. ...

In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, a book in which Skinner offered a speculative explanation of language in behavioral terms. "Verbal behavior" he defined as learned behavior which has its characteristic consequences being delivered through the learned behavior of others; this makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky-Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances. Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 _ August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... Verbal Behavior (1957) is a book written by B.F. Skinner in which the author presents his ideas on language. ...

In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to "what is learned", cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). This and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties; consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy".^[25]

It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "cognitive revolution", the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 Cartesian Linguistics and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky. The cognitive revolution is a name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that combined new thinking in psychology, anthropology and linguistics with the nascent fields of computer science and neuroscience. ...

There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive", or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin,^[26] and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "modularity" a critical feature of the mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be "turned off" even when they are known to be illusions). Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called genetic epistemology. He created in 1955 the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and... Synapses allow nerve cells to communicate with one another through axons and dendrites, converting electrical signals into chemical ones. ... Jean-Pierre Changeux (born in Domont, France, April 7, 1936) is a French neuroscientist, who researched many different areas of biology in his life, from the structure and function of proteins, to the early development of the nervous system. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Born in Barcelona (Spain) in 1936, Jacques Mehler is an influential cognitive psychologist. ... Stanislas Dehaene is a Professor at the Collège de France and has been director of INSERM Unit 562 (the French equivalent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health or the British Medical Research Council) since 1989. ... Numerical cognition is a subdisipline of cognitive science that studies the cognitive, developmental and neural bases of numbers and mathematics. ... Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind, at least in part, may be composed of separate innate structures which have established evolutionarily-developed functional purposes (ie. ...

He is also not fond of psychoanalysis. In an interview with the New York Times he stated, "I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can't explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?"^[27]

Opinion on cultural criticism of science

Chomsky strongly disagrees with post-structuralist and postmodern criticisms of science: Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of continental philosophers and critical theorists that wrote with tendencies of twentieth-century French philosophy. ... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ...

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality", "logic" and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.^[28] Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Po-mo[1]) is a term originating in architecture, literally after the modern, denoting a style that is more ornamental than modernism, and which borrows from previous architectural styles, often in a playful or ironic fashion. ... A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device. ...

Chomsky believes that science is a good way to start understanding history and human affairs:

I think studying science is a good way to get into fields like history. The reason is, you learn what an argument means, you learn what evidence is, you learn what makes sense to postulate and when, what's going to be convincing. You internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which happen to be much more advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand, applying relativity theory to history isn't going to get you anywhere. So it's a mode of thinking.^[29]

Chomsky has also commented on critiques of "white male science", stating that they are much like the antisemitic and politically motivated attacks against "Jewish physics" used by the Nazis to denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the Deutsche Physik movement: Antisemitism (alternatively spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism, also known as judeophobia) is prejudice and hostility toward Jews as a religious, racial, or ethnic group. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Nazism or National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers Party, German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler. ... Deutsche Physik (literally: German Physics) or Aryan Physics was the name given to a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein, labeled Jewish Physics (German: ). The term was taken from the title of a 4-volume physics textbook by Philipp...

In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm afraid, of "Jewish physics". Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctrine that their thinking and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their "culture or gender and race." I suspect that "surprise" would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.^[30] Cultural bias is the phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to ones own culture. ...