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Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky “If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.” Background ▪ Jewish American born to Ukranian and Belarussian immigrants. ▪ Attended a non-competitive elementary school. ▪ Considered dropping out of UPenn and moving to British Palestine. ▪ Life changed when introduced to linguist Zellig Harris. Contributions to Cognitive Science • Deemed the “father of modern linguistics” • One of the founders of Cognitive Science o Linguistics: Syntactic Structures (1957) o Universal Grammar Theory o Generative Grammar Theory o Minimalist Program o Computer Science: Chomsky Hierarchy o Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Language o Psychology: Critical of Behaviorism Transformational Grammar – 1955 Syntactic Structures - 1957 ▪ Made him well-known within the ▪ Big Idea: Given the grammar, linguistics community you should be able to construct various expressions in the ▪ Revolutionized the study of natural language with prior language knowledge. ▪ Describes generative grammars – an explicit statement of what the classes of linguistic expressions in a language are and what kind of structures they have. Universal Grammar Theory ▪ Credited with uncovering ▪ Every sentence has a deep structure universal properties of natural that is mapped onto the surface human languages. structure according to rules. ▪ Key ideas: Humans have an ▪ Language similarities: innate neural capacity for – Deep Structure: Pattern in the mind generating a system of rules. – Surface Structure: Spoken utterances – There is a universal grammar that – Rules: Transformations underlies ALL languages Chomsky Hierarchy ▪ Hierarchy of classes of formal grammars ▪ Focuses on structure of classes and relationship between grammars ▪ Typically used in Computer Science and Linguistics Minimalist Program – 1993 ▪ Program NOT theory ▪ Provides conceptual framework to guide development of linguistic theory. ▪ Developed inside generative grammar ▪ Poses minimalist questions that can be posed in any theory – “What is language?” – “Why does it have the properties it has?” Chomsky Today ▪ Distant from linguistics ▪ Uses his voice for political issues .
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