NOAM CHOMSKY

https://chomsky.info/

Avram Noam Chomsky (Philadelphia, December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political scientist and activist of Jewish origin. He is emeritus professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the leading figures in linguistics of the 20th century, thanks to his work in linguistic theory and cognitive science. He is also recognized for his political activism, characterized by a strong critique of contemporary capitalism and the foreign policy of the United States. He is considered to be of libertarian socialist thinking.2 The New York Times has singled him out as "the most important of contemporary thinkers." He proposed generative grammar, a discipline that placed syntax at the center of linguistic research. With this paradigm, the perspective, programs and research methods in the study of language changed. His linguistics is a theory of individual language acquisition and attempts to explain its deeper structures and principles. He postulated a well-defined aspect of innateness in language acquisition and the autonomy of grammar (over other cognitive systems), as well as the existence of a "language organ" and a universal grammar. He harshly opposed philosophical and scientific empiricism and functionalism, in favor of Cartesian rationalism. All these ideas clashed head-on with the traditional ones of the human sciences, which aroused multiple adhesions, criticisms and controversies that have ended up making him one of the most cited authors.4

He highlights his contribution to the establishment of cognitive sciences based on his critique of Skinner's behaviorism and finite state grammars, questioning the behavior-based method of studying the mind and language that dominated over the years. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has influenced the philosophy of language and mind (see Harman and Fodor). He is the discoverer of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages of great importance in computer theory.

He is also known for his political activism of him and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other countries, such as Israel. Chomsky, who completely disassociates his scientific activity from his political activism, describes himself as a supporter of anarcho-syndicalism (he is a member of the IWW union). Chomsky is considered an influential figure in his country of origin and in the world.



University of Arizona Department of Linguistics (2017)

Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited scholars in modern history. Among his groundbreaking books are “Syntactic Structures”, “Language and Mind,” “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax,” and “The Minimalist Program,” each of which has made distinct contributions to the development of the field. He has received numerous awards, including the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal and the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

Chomsky introduced the Chomsky hierarchy, generative grammar and the concept of a universal grammar, which underlies all human speech and is based in the innate structure of the mind/brain. Chomsky has not only transformed the field of linguistics, his work has influenced fields such as cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, computer science, mathematics, childhood education, and anthropology.

Chomsky is also one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world. He has written more than 100 books, his most recent being “Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.”

Chomsky joined the UA in fall 2017, coming from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked since 1955 as professor of linguistics, then professor of linguistics, emeritus.

Noam Chomsky The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001

Born in Philadelphia, USA, 1928/12/07 educator and linguist, Chomsky, who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, developed a theory of transformational (sometimes called generative or transformational-generative) grammar that revolutionized the scientific study of language. He first set out his abstract analysis of language in his doctoral dissertation (1955) and Syntactic Structures (1957). Instead of starting with minimal sounds, as the structural linguists had done, Chomsky began with the rudimentary or primitive sentence; from this base he developed his argument that innumerable syntactic combinations can be generated by means of a complex series of rules.

According to transformational grammar, every intelligible sentence conforms not only to grammatical rules peculiar to its particular language, but also to “deep structures,” a universal grammar underlying all languages and corresponding to an innate capacity of the human brain. Chomsky and other linguists who built on his work formulated transformational rules, which transform a sentence with a given grammatical structure (e.g., “John saw Mary”) into a sentence with a different grammatical structure but the same essential meaning (“Mary was seen by John”). Transformational linguistics has been influential in psycholinguistics, particularly in the study of language acquisition by children. In the 1990s Chomsky formulated a “Minimalist Program” in an attempt to simplify the symbolic representations of the language facility.

Chomsky is a prolific author whose principal linguistic works after Syntactic Structures include Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964), The Sound Pattern of English (with Morris Halle, 1968), Language and Mind (1972), Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972), and Knowledge of Language (1986). In addition, he has wide-ranging political interests. He was an early and outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and has written extensively on many political issues from a generally left-wing point of view. Among his political writings are American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Peace in the Middle East? (1974), Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding (1982) [this is actually a book on linguistics, not politics –www.chomsky.info], Manufacturing Consent (with E. S. Herman, 1988), Profit over People (1998), and Rogue States (2000). Chomsky’s controversial bestseller 9-11 (2002) is an analysis of the World Trade Center attack that, while denouncing the atrocity of the event, traces its origins to the actions and power of the United States, which he calls “a leading terrorist state.”