Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (MIT Press) by Noam Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

Unknown Binding

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

ONE OF THE MAJOR "THEORETICAL" WORKS BY THE NOTED LINGUIST

Avram Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, and outspoken social activist. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1965 book, "The idea that a language is based on a system of rules determining the interpretation of its infinitely many sentences is by no means novel... Nevertheless, within modern linguistics, it is chiefly within the last few years that fairly substantial attempts have been made to construct explicit generative grammars for particular languages and to explore their consequences... In particular, the central role of grammatical transformations in any empirically questions as to the proper form of the theory of transformational grammar. This monograph is an exploratory study of various problems that have arisen in the course of work on transformational grammar, which is presupposed throughout as a general framework for the discussion. What is at issue here is precisely how the theory should be formulated. This study deals, then, with questions that are at the border of research in transformational grammar."

In the first chapter, he says, "in the technical sense, linguistic theory is mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior. Observed use of language or hypothesized dispositions to respond, habits, and so on, may provide evidence as to the nature of this mental reality, but sure cannot constitute the actual subject matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline." (Pg. 4)

He states, "The existence of deep-seated formal universals, in the sense suggested by such examples as these, implies that all languages are cut to the same pattern, but does not imply that there is any point by point correspondence between particular languages. It does not, for example, imply that there must be some reasonable procedure for translating between languages." (Pg. 30)

He points out, "The child who acquires a language in this way of course knows a great deal more than he has `learned.' His knowledge of the language, as this is determined by his internalized grammar, goes far beyond the presented primary linguistic data and is in no sense an `inductive generalization' from these data." (Pg. 32-33)

He acknowledges, "it is clear that no present-day theory of language can hope to attain explanatory adequacy beyond very restricted domains. In other words, we are very far from being able to present a system of formal and substantive linguistic universals that will be sufficiently rich and detailed to account for the facts of language learning." (Pg. 46)

He summarizes, "it seems clear that the present situation with regard to the study of language is essentially as follows. We have a certain amount of evidence about the character of the generative grammars that must be the `output' of an acquisition model for language. This evidence clearly shows that taxonomic views of linguistic structure are inadequate and that knowledge of grammatical structure cannot arise by application of step-by-step inductive operations... of any sort that have yet been developed within linguistics, psychology, or philosophy... It seems plain that language acquisition is based on the child's discovery of what from a formal point of view is a deep and abstract theory---a generative grammar of his language---many of the concepts and principles of which are only remotely related to experience by long and intricate chains of unconscious quasi-inferential steps...

"It is, for the present, impossible to formulate an assumption about initial, innate structure rich enough to account for the fact that grammatical knowledge is attained on the basis of the evidence available to the learner... In short, the structure of particular languages may very well be largely determined by factors over which the individual has no real conscious control and concerning which society may have little choice or freedom... Thus it may well be that the general features of language structure reflect... the general character of one's capacity to acquire knowledge---in the traditional sense, one's innate ideas and innate principles." (Pg. 57-59)

He states, "It is clear from this fragmentary and inconclusive discussion that the interrelation of semantic and syntactic rules is by no means a settled issue, and that there is quite a range of possibilities that deserve serious exploration... Evidently, further insight into these questions will await a much more intensive study of semantic interpretive rules than it has yet been possible to undertake. The work of the last few years, I believe, has laid the groundwork for empirical investigations of this sort. There is a general theoretical framework parts of which have received empirical support. Within this framework it is possible to formulate certain reasonably clear questions, and it is also fairly clear what kind of empirical evidence would be relevant to deciding them. Alternative positions can be formulated, but for the present any one that is adopted must be extremely tentative." (Pg. 159)

He concludes, "I shall simply point out that the syntactic and semantic structure of natural languages evidently offers many mysteries, both of fact and of principle, and that any attempt to delimit the boundaries of these domains must certainly be quite tentative." (Pg. 163) He ends the book with the statement, "the questions we have touched on here have not yet been illuminated in any serious way by approaching them within the framework of any explicit grammatical theory. For the present, one can barely go beyond mere taxonomic arrangement of data. Whether these limitations are intrinsic, or whether a deeper analysis can succeed in unraveling some of these difficulties, remains an open question." (Pg. 192)

This is a very complex book---and Chomsky has modified some of his ideas since it was written---but one that will be "must reading" for anyone studying linguistic theory.