This article examines the critique of materialism in the work of Noam Chomsky which treats the doctrine as lacking in any clear content. It is argued that Chomsky’s critique is a coherent one drawing on an understanding of the Newtonian revolution in science, on a modular conception of the mind, and on the related conception of epistemic boundedness. The article also seeks to demonstrate the limits of Chomsky’s position by drawing attention to his use of the third-person point (...) of view in considering the mental and his resulting failure to make good sense of consciousness. Finally, a dual-aspect theory is recommended which would incorporate Chomsky’s agnosticism about the nature of matter. (shrink)

This is the third edition of Chomsky's outstanding collection of essays on language and mind, first published in 2006. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky's influential approach into the twenty-first century. Chapters 1-6 present Chomsky's early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically endowed, biological system, through the rules (...) and principles of which we acquire an internalized knowledge. Over the past fifty years, this framework has sparked an explosion of inquiry into a wide range of languages, and has yielded some major theoretical questions. The final chapter revisits the key issues, reviewing the 'biolinguistic' approach that has guided Chomsky's work from its origins to the present day, and raising some novel and exciting challenges for the study of language and mind. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature comparing the politics, sociology and economics of the United States and Canada, but very little work comparing the role that public intellectuals play in the space of public opinion and how their ideas are received in both nations simultaneously. Noam Chomsky provides a theoretically useful example of an established academic and public intellectual whose reputation is deeply contested in both countries. Our comparative case study offers leverage to contribute to debates on the sociology (...) of knowledge, reputations, intellectuals, and the politics of professors using data from six major Canadian and American newspapers from 1995–2009 and an innovative coding of media portrayal. Earlier work has demonstrated that Chomsky is discussed as a public intellectual more prominently in Canada than in the United States (McLaughlin and Townsley in Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(4):341–368, 2011). Here we examine the comparative construction of a “public intellectual” reputation in the context of significant political change. We document small differences between the Canadian and American receptions of Chomsky, show change in the patterns of portrayal and number of publications over time, and offer an analysis of differences between political attacks and consecrations. We demonstrate more engagement with Chomsky’s political view in Canada than in the United States, a rise in Chomsky’s fame post 9/11, and illustrate clear political patterns in attempts to marginalize him. (shrink)

'Chomsky's work is neither theoretical, nor ideological: it is passionate and righteous. It has some of the qualities of Revelations, the Old Testament prophets and Blake' Ken Jowitt, TLSA brilliant distillation of the real motivations behind U.S. foreign policy, compiled from talks and interviews completed between 1986 and 1991, with particular attention to Central America.Quotes from Noam Chomsky:* Contrary to what virtually everyone - left or right - says, the United States achieved its major objectives in Indochina. (...) Vietnam was demolished. There's no danger that successful development there will provide a model for other nations in the region.* At exactly the moment it invaded Panama... the Bush administration announced new high-technology sales to China [and] plans... to lift ban on loans to Iraq... Compared to Bush's buddies in Baghdad and Beijing, Noriega looked like Mother Teresa.* Prospects are pretty dim for Eastern Europe. The West has a plan for it - they want to turn large parts of it into a new, easily exploitable part of the Third World. (shrink)

World politics, international relations, representative government. Author's works in demand.

Education stands at the intersection of Noam Chomsky's two lives as scholar and social critic: As a linguist he is keenly interested in how children acquire language, and as a political activist he views the education system as an important lever of social change. Chomsky on Democracy and Education gathers for the first time his impressive range of writings on these subjects, some previously unpublished and not readily available to the general public. Raised in a progressive school where (...) his father was principal, Chomsky outlines a philosophy of education steeped in the liberal tradition of John Dewey, more concerned with cultivating responsible citizens than feeding children facts. The goal of education, Chomsky argues, is to produce free human beings whose values are not accumulation and domination, but rather free association on terms of equality. Spanning issues of language, power, policy and method, this collection includes seminal theoretical works like Language and Freedom , a social analysis of the role of schools and universities in the American polity, and specific critiques of language instruction in America's classrooms today, along with new interviews conducted by Carlos Otero that serve to encapsulate Chomsky's views. Engaging and incisive, Chomsky on Democracy and Education makes accessible the key insights that have earned Chomsky such a committed following. (shrink)

From interpreting the world to changing it, this book is a synthesis of Chomsky's early work on philosophy, linguistics, and politics.

From interpreting the world to changing it, this book is a synthesis of Chomsky's early work on philosophy, linguistics, and politics.

The author identifies selected implicit or not fully explicit assumptions made by Noam Chomsky in his theory of language. Through a careful examination of Chomsky's work, she aims to present the solutions this linguist proposes with respect to two fundamental questions: the question of methodology and the question of the ontological status of language. After reviewing the central theses of Chomsky's theory in the first part of the paper, she turns to the question that is mentioned (...) in the title of this paper, that is, the reservations regarding the assumptions underlying Chomsky's work. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who has had a profound impact on philosophy. Chomsky’s linguistic work has been motivated by the observation that nearly all adult human beings have the ability to effortlessly produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sentences. For instance, it is very likely that … Continue reading Noam Chomsky →.

Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who has had a profound impact on philosophy. Chomsky’s linguistic work has been motivated by the observation that nearly all adult human beings have the ability to effortlessly produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sentences. For instance, it is very likely that … Continue reading Noam Chomsky →.

I had intended this review not specifically as a criticism of Skinner's speculations regarding language, but rather as a more general critique of behaviorist (I would now prefer to say "empiricist") speculation as to the nature of higher mental processes. My reason for discussing Skinner's book in such detail was that it was the most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such speculations, an evaluation that I feel is still accurate. Therefore, if the conclusions I attempted to substantiate in the review (...) are correct, as I believe they are, then Skinner's work can be regarded as, in effect, a reductio ad absurdum of behaviorist assumptions. My personal view is that it is a definite merit, not a defect, of Skinner's work that it can be used for this purpose, and it was for this reason that I tried to deal with it fairly exhaustively. I do not see how his proposals can be improved upon, aside from occasional details and oversights, within the framework of the general assumptions that he accepts. I do not, in other words, see any way in which his proposals can be substantially improved within the general framework of behaviorist or neobehaviorist, or, more generally, empiricist ideas that has dominated much of modern linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. The conclusion that I hoped to establish in the review, by discussing these speculations in their most explicit and detailed form, was that the general point of view was largely mythology, and that its widespread acceptance is not the result of empirical support, persuasive reasoning, or the absence of a plausible alternative. (shrink)

The primary focus on fear, its nature and role, for a new philosophy for the 21st century, has been dubbed "philosophy of fearism" by Desh Subba and complemented by R. Michael Fisher in recent years. While still in its infancy as a social and pragmatic philosophy to counter the increasing danger of an Extreme Fear Age.... This paper looks at the evidence for this challenge and speculated what to expect in the near future. Dr. Noam Chomsky's work (...) on fear and terror is brought to the foreground of a fearanalysis.... (shrink)

It's an exciting story, no doubt, and I hate to be a spoilsport. But there are a few problems. One is that virtually every reference to me or to co-workers around the world, and to the areas in which we work, is fanciful, sometimes even bringing to mind Pauli 's famous observation "not even wrong." I'll review what seems to be a fair sample.

The title and subtitle of this essay may seem unrelated; hence a word of explanation may be useful. The essay was written for a memorial number of Liberation which, as the editor expressed it, "gathered together a series of articles that deal with some of the problems with which A. J. struggled." I think that Muste's revolutionary pacifism was, and is, a profoundly important doctrine, both in the political analysis and the moral conviction that it expresses. The circumstances of the (...) antifascist war subjected it to the most severe of tests. Does it survive this test? When I began working on this article I was not at all sure. I still feel quite ambivalent about the matter. There are several points that seem to me fairly clear, however. The American reaction to Japan's aggressiveness was, in a substantial measure, quite hypocritical. Worse still, there are very striking, quite distressing similarities between Japan's escapades and our own -- both in character and in rationalization -- with the fundamental difference that Japan's appeal to national interest, which was not totally without merit, becomes merely ludicrous when translated into a justification for American conquests in Asia. (shrink)

The privileged often regard these struggles as an assault on their rights, violent outbursts instigated by evil forces bent on our destruction: world Communism, or crazed terrorists and fanatics. The struggle for freedom seems inexplicable in other terms. After all, living standards are higher in Soweto than they were in the Stone Age, or even elsewhere in Black Africa. And the people in the West Bank and Gaza who survive by doing Israel 's dirty work are improving their lot (...) by standard economic measures. Slave owners offered similar arguments. (shrink)

The serviceability of the doctrine is apparent. Those who hope to understand world affairs will naturally resist it. The February elections in Nicaragua are a case in point. The forces at work within Nicaragua are surely worth understanding, the reactions to the elections here no less so -- far more so, in fact, in terms of global import and long-term significance, given the scale and character of U.S. power. These reactions provide quite illuminating insight into the dominant political culture. (...) They provide further and quite dramatic evidence that the concept of democracy is disappearing even as an abstract ideal. (shrink)

One of the constants in Noam Chomsky’s philosophical, linguistic and ethical positions is the existence of what he calls “human nature”. Following Marx, Darwin and last century’s revolutions in the social sciences, human nature has been one of the most contested conceptual holdovers from modern European philosophy. Chomsky’s discoveries and models on syntax and language make up one of the frameworks to most critically offset the traditional moral dimension of human nature. Contrary to most traditions prior to his (...) class='Hi'>work, language can no longer be restricted to either mind, soul or spirit. Language, as Chomsky has continually upheld and sharply refined, is a physical and biological process. But how his notion of human nature derives from this process is complex, as he seems to disregard philosophy’s classic analytic delineation between the descriptive causal realm of human nature and the normative axiological extensions of the same concept. In this paper, we seek to examine the philosophical and ontological implications of Chomsky’s claim that human nature derives from the innate dimension of the language faculty. Not only does Chomsky maintain the category of human nature, he also indexes it to the question of freedom. We thereby argue for the coherence of his proposal and show how it operates to weld the perspective of a modal theory of biologically-rooted creativity to innate conditions specific to his theory of language generation. However, we question whether its restriction to humans alone is sustainable from a scientific perspective by putting forth the claim that Chomsky’s science is in fact a radical ontology of social subjectivation. (shrink)

This chapter presents some reflections by Lila Gleitman on the development of her thinking and her research – in concert with a host of esteemed collaborators over the years – on issues of language and mind, focusing on how language is acquired. Gleitman entered the field of linguistics as a student of Zellig Harris, and learned firsthand of Noam Chomsky's early work. The chapter points out that Goldin‐Meadow's first looks at isolate language, and deaf language, transmuted into (...) her life's work on gesture and sign. Linguists, including particularly Anne Senghas, had the opportunity to look at a remarkable case of a language rising in a hithertofore‐isolated deaf community. Behaviorist psychology saw language learning as an instance of more general principles of operant conditioning, a relatively straightforward distillation and organization of experience. Chomsky continues to frame and expatiate upon the central questions of language learning and knowledge. (shrink)

An introduction for the non-specialist to Chomsky’s thought that explores some of its philosophical implications. Although this is a book about Chomsky, it is a good deal more: Leiber uses Chomsky’s linguistics to point to defects he perceives in Anglo-American analytical philosophy. He contends that a striking feature of Chomsky’s work has been his attempt to breakdown divisions between various spheres of knowledge and to show the interconnections between questions and answers within them which modern methods of scholarship have (...) kept separate. He maintains that most criticisms of Chomsky’s ideas are misguided because they separate his general theses in philosophy and psychology from technical results obtained within linguistics. Leiber holds that one must understand Chomsky’s specific proposals in linguistics before one can assess his positions in other areas. (shrink)

This paper resolves the problems raised by Israel Scheffler and Noam Chomsky against Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. I call Scheffler’s and Chomsky’s problems as (1) the problem of inexorable ontological commitments and (2) the problem of false existential inferences. I extend their problems to a third one, which is called as the problem of extended inexorable ontological commitments to rival entities. In order to present the third problem, two ontological disputes are considered: Russell–Meinong dispute from the context of (...) the referential theory of meaning and David Lewis–Meinong dispute from the context of modal metaphysics. In order to work out a resolution to these three problems, I emphasize the distinction between meta-ontology/meta-theory and object theory. Then, it is explained that there is a functional difference between Quine’s criterion of ontological commitments (meta-theory) and the object theories to which this criterion is applied. Here, considering the functional difference, I introduce different kinds of commitments: direct commitments and indirect commitments. Using Strawson’s views on the notion of presupposition, the distinction between direct commitments and indirect commitments is characterized further. Employing this distinction, I resolve the problem of inexorable ontological commitment to the entities, the problem of false existential inferences and the problems of extended inexorable ontological commitment to the rival entities. (shrink)

Barry C. Smith: Quine and Chomsky on the Ins and Outs of Language: W.V.O. Quine's thinking has had a profound and lasting influence on the philosophy of language despite the fact that he remained firmly at odds with the science of linguistics for over thirty years. His rejection of the cognitive revolution ushered in by Noam Chomsky's work on language was rooted in a deeply held philosophical conviction that language was a publicly observable medium. However, Quine's advocacy (...) of naturalized epistemology should have inclined him to defer to advances in empirical linguistics due to generative grammar. Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior provided a devastating critique of behaviorism in the study of language and led to a subsequent mentalism about linguistic phenomena. But Quine did not revise his view about the proper way to study language, or his attendant view about the nature of language. His reasons for resisting Chomsky's position are worth reconsidering since they are in the background to many philosophers' views about the nature of language. The question addressed here is whether the dispute between Quine and Chomsky was a purely philosophical one, or whether it could have been resolved had greater attention been paid to the empirical facts. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's ideas and work on the human language faculty and how language is acquired opened new territory on which a whole new framework in non‐native language acquisition was established: generative second language acquisition, or GenSLA. Investigating Chomsky's principles and parameters within the GenSLA framework has brought additional and convincing evidence for the essential validity of Chomsky's original insights. This chapter highlights Chomsky's lasting legacy embodied in the GenSLA framework. In addition to interpretation, poverty (...) of the stimulus situations provide an opportunity to test Universal Grammar (UG)‐based knowledge of graded distinctions beyond simple acceptability. The Subjacency Condition was probably the most studied principle of UG in the 1980s and 1990s. Structure dependence is directly demonstrated in languages with auxiliary verb movement to form questions. The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis brought grammatical features reflected in functional categories to the front of GenSLA research. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky is one of the leading intellectual figures of modern times. He has had a major influence on linguistics, psychology and philosophy, and a significant effect on many other disciplines, from anthropology to mathematics, education to literary criticism. In this rigorous yet accessible account of Chomsky's work and influence, Neil Smith analyses Chomsky's key contributions to the study of language and the study of mind. He gives a detailed exposition of Chomsky's linguistic theorizing, discusses (...) the psychological and philosophical implications of Chomsky's work, and argues that he has fundamentally changed the way we think of ourselves, gaining a position in the history of ideas on a par with that of Darwin or Descartes. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to account for Chomsky's most recent work, including his continued contributions to linguistics, his further discussion on evolution, and his extensive work on the events of September 11th, 2001. (shrink)

A comprehensive and accessible companion to the various aspects of Noam Chomsky's work.

In Rules and Representations, first published in 1980, Noam Chomsky lays out many of the concepts that have made his approach to linguistics and human cognition so instrumental to our understanding of language.Chomsky arrives at his well-known position that there is a universal grammar, structured in the human mind and common to all human languages. Based on Chomsky's 1978 Woodbridge Lectures, this edition contains revised versions of the lectures and two new essays.

In this compelling volume, ten distinguished thinkers -- William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, Jeffrey Poland, Georges Rey, Frances Egan, Paul Horwich, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Millikan -- address a variety of conceptual issues raised in Noam Chomsky's work. Distinguished list of critics: William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, Jeffrey Poland, Georges Rey, Frances Egan, Paul Horwich, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Millikan. Includes Chomsky's substantial new replies and responses to each (...) essay. The best critical introduction to Chomsky's thought as a whole. (shrink)

In this work, McGilvray explains Noam Chomsky's rationalist view of human nature.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of scientific development (...) in the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky has made major contributions to three fields: political history and analysis, linguistics, and the philosophies of mind, language, and human nature. In this thoroughly revised and updated volume, James McGilvray provides a critical introduction to Chomsky's work in these three key areas and assesses their continuing importance and relevance for today. In an incisive and comprehensive analysis, McGilvray argues that Chomsky’s work can be seen as a unified intellectual project. He shows how Chomsky adapts (...) the tools of natural science to the study of mind and of language in particular and explains why Chomsky's "rationalist" approach to the mind continues to be opposed by the majority of contemporary cognitive scientists. The book also discusses some of Chomsky’s central political themes in depth, examining how Chomsky's view of the good life and the ideal form of social organization is related to and in part dependent on his biologically based account of human nature and the place of language within it. As in the first edition, McGilvray emphasizes the distinction between common sense and science and the difference between rationalist and empiricist approaches to the mind, making clear the importance of these themes for understanding Chomsky's work and showing that they are based on elementary observations that are accessible to everyone. This edition has been extensively re-written to emphasize Chomsky's recent work, which increasingly 'biologizes' the study of language and mind and - by implication - the study of human nature. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, linguistics, and politics, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers writing today. (shrink)

In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the (...) French and German in the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century. (shrink)

A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, (...) philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, yet his views are often misunderstood. In this previously unpublished series of interviews, Chomsky discusses his iconoclastic and important ideas concerning language, human nature and politics. In dialogue with James McGilvray, Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Chomsky takes up a wide variety of topics – the nature of language, the philosophies of language and mind, morality and universality, science and common sense, and the evolution of language. (...) McGilvray's extensive commentary helps make this incisive set of interviews accessible to a variety of readers. The volume is essential reading for those involved in the study of language and mind, as well as anyone with an interest in Chomsky's ideas. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's book on syntactic structures is a serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction ...

Noam Chomsky applies a rational, scientific approach to disciplines as diverse as linguistics, ethics, and politics. His best-known innovations involve a groundbreaking theory of generative grammar, the revolution it initiated in cognitive science, and a radical encounter with political theory and practice. In _Chomsky Notebook_, Cedric Boeckx and Norbert Hornstein tackle the evolution of Chomsky's linguistic theory. Akeel Bilgrami revisits Chomsky's work on freedom and truth, and Pierre Jacob analyzes his naturalism. Chomsky's own contributions include (...) an interview with Jean Bricmont and an essay each on Edward Said and the natural world. Altogether, these works reveal the penetrating insight of a remarkable intellectual whose thought extends into a number of fields within and outside of academia. For the uninitiated reader and longtime fan, this anthology attests to the power of Chomsky's rationalism and the dexterity of his critical investigations. (shrink)

The renowned philosopher and political theorist presents a summation of his influential work in this series of Columbia University lectures. A pioneer in the fields of modern linguistics and cognitive science, Noam Chomsky is also one of the most avidly read political theorist of our time. In this series of lectures, Chomsky presents more than half a century of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas. In precise yet accessible language, Chomsky elaborates on the scientific study of (...) language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, Chomsky concludes with a philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. Demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past, he also shows its urgent relation to our present moment. (shrink)

A fascinating analysis of human language and its influence on other disciplines by one of the nation's most respected linguists. Chomsky is also the author of What Uncle Sam Really Wants and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (15,000 copies sold).

Noam Chomsky argues that, contrary to popular perception, the real â__rogueâ__ states in the world today are not the dictator-led developing countries we hear about in the news, but the United States and its allies. He challenges the legal and humanitarian reasons given to justify intervention in global conflicts in order to reveal the Westâ__s reliance on the rule of force.He examines NATOâ__s intervention in Kosovo, the crisis in East Timor, and US involvement in the Middle East, Southeast Asia (...) and Latin America. Chomsky relies on both historical context and recently released government documents to trace the paths of self-interest and domination that fuelled these violent regional conflicts. Throughout, he reveals the United Statesâ__s increasingly open dismissal of the United Nations and international legal precedent in justifying its motives and actions. Characteristically incisive and provocative, Chomsky demonstrates that the rule of law has been reduced to farce. (shrink)

The book is an inquiry into the presuppositions of the philosophy of language. To this effect, a distinction has been made between theory and its underlying presuppositions. The main thrust of this work is to critically examine these presuppositions so as to make a correct assessment of the theories/approaches that follow from them. Central to this inquiry is Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar. It has been used as a tool in the light of which the investigation has (...) been carried out and it has also been projected as offering an alternative theoretical foundation to the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The distinguished linguist and controversial political critic combines both aspects of his life and work in this wide-ranging and informative discussion that presents his political, moral, and linguistic views on current issues.

What is Anarchism? Anarchism is a radical scepticism about structures of domination, authority and hierarchy throughout human life, from the patriarchal family to imperialism. The anarchist asks those in power to prove their claims to authority - and argues that if their systems can't be justified then they ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. In On Anarchism, Noam Chomsky - author, activist and anarchist - offers a vital overview of the meanings of anarchism (...) and the foundations of his thought. Refuting the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, and disputing the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, this is a book sure to challenge, provoke and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, it is a touchstone for political activists and an essential introduction for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of both anarchism and Chomsky's thought. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the frameworks of Head‐Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) as it developed from Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG), and Lexical‐Functional Grammar (LFG). Declarative frameworks are not generative, as they do not ‘generate’ anything in the sense of the preceding paragraph. Pullum refers to that kind of approach as Generative‐Enumerative Syntax and differentiates it from Model‐Theoretic Syntax: GPSG, HPSG, and LFG essentially fall in the latter category. It describes some key aspects of declarative frameworks, and the motivation for (...) them. The chapter considers how declarative frameworks instantiate a view of Generative Grammar directly inspired by Noam Chomsky's early work, but without the procedural component. It presents some of the core design features which motivate declarative frameworks, and explores how syntactic phenomena are factorized and formalized in declarative frameworks, with a view to comparison with Minimalist Program analyses. (shrink)

We recognize today's deep neural network (DNN) models of language behaviors as engineering achievements. However, what we know intuitively and scientifically about language shows that what DNNs are and how they are trained on bare texts, makes them poor models of mind and brain for language organization, as it interacts with infant biology, maturation, experience, unique principles, and natural law.

The relation between “theory of language” and “language” is asymmetrical. There can be no theory of language without language, but it's perfectly coherent to hold that language exists in some form but that it is idle, even seriously misguided, to seek a theory of language. The two most outstanding theoreticians of “post‐Bloomfieldian” structural linguistics, Zellig Harris and Charles Hockett, adopted perspectives of the general nature in the mid‐1960s, in different and instructive ways. Hockett adopts the general American structuralist consensus based (...) on Leonard Bloomfield's conception of language as “a matter of training and habit”. Hockett describes his core objection as a demand to keep to the norms of science, part of the consensus of the Bloomfield‐based structural linguistics of which he was, as noted, the most sophisticated exponent. (shrink)

In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky offered a new vision for linguistic research and syntacticians. This chapter explores some ways in which Chomsky's linguistic work has influenced research on one domain of linguistic performance, sentence processing, over the last half century. It shows that Chomsky's claim in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is largely borne out: "the study of performance will proceed only as far as the study of the underlying competence permits". The chapter briefly addresses (...) a question about the scope of modern sentence processing research and its relationship to specific grammatical formalisms. It reviews the literature on incremental ambiguity resolution, moves to the processing of long‐distance filler‐gap dependency processing, and provides information on the processing of anaphoric relations. In order to illustrate how the phenomenon has contributed to psycholinguistic theorizing, the chapter outlines a well‐known model and then considers how other models diverge. (shrink)

In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language , Saul Kripke presents his influential reading of Wittgenstein’s later writings on language. One of the largely unexplored features of that reading is that Kripke makes a small number of suggestive remarks concerning the possible threat that Wittgenstein’s arguments pose for Chomsky’s linguistic project. In this paper, we attempt to characterise the relevance of Wittgenstein’s later work on meaning and rule-following for transformational linguistics, and in particular to identify the potentially negative (...) impact it has on that project. Although we use Kripke’s remarks to articulate some of the pertinent issues, we return to Wittgenstein’s later writings to address them. We argue that Wittgenstein’s main target in the relevant sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the notion of ‘logical compulsion’, which involves assuming that there is more to applying a word or rule than how we are naturally or “psychologically” compelled to apply. We characterise two of the main lines of argument in the Investigations in terms of the rejection of logical compulsion. We thus propose to address the relevance of Wittgenstein’s writings for Chomsky by considering whether Chomsky’s linguistics presupposes the targeted notion of logical compulsion. We argue that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic competence in terms of successive states of the “language faculty” (containing the principles of universal grammar) does presuppose this problematic notion. Chomsky responded to Kripke by devoting a chapter of his Knowledge of Language to defending this conception of linguistic competence against the Wittgensteinian arguments. We evaluate his response and argue that he has misidentified the threat to his linguistic project as consisting in the attack on its ‘individual psychology’ standpoint, rather than its commitment to logical compulsion. We conclude by arguing that Chomsky’s attempts at defending his individualist or non-communitarian standpoint are undermined by his inability to give a decisive response to Wittgenstein’s attack on logical compulsion. (shrink)