Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics A Review (original) (raw)

Chomsky's Theory of Grammar: A Panacea for Theoretical Disagreement on Grammar

2015

every field of human endeavor is a theory. Theories spell out the principles that govern the mode of operations. Language, been of the most outstanding characteristics of human societies, has several theories that determine which is well form or ill-form in the grammar of a language. Although there are several grammatical theories spanning across ages, - some of which are the traditional, Bloomfieldian, and Chomsky's theories of grammar. Among them, the Chomsky theory stands the tallest. Though there are strength and weakness associated with all grammar theories, Chomsky's theory has been undergoing transformation to take care of the inherent lapses. This make it most current and most relevant among the theories of grammar. This paper therefore take a critical look at Chomsky's theory of grammar and argues that it is a panacea to the lingering theoretical disagreement on grammar.

Chomskyan linguistics: refutation of some misconceptions

When asked whether the history of his work on linguistics is misconceived, Chomsky (p.c.) replied by saying that '[t]he history of [Generative Grammar] is hopelessly misconceived, sometimes ludicrously so,' and he referred, as an example, to overtly hostile critics such as Boden (2006). 1 However, as the present section purports to show, there seems to be no reason to believe that certified members of the Chomskyan school are immune from historical misconceptions, albeit of a different nature to those displayed by Boden. A case in point is Boeckx and Hornstein's (2004/2010) goal-directed approach to the development of Chomsky's work on linguistic theory. 2

A Departure from Cognitivism: Implications of Chomsky’s Second Revolution in Linguistics

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 2000

In 1957 Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, expressing views characterized as constituting a "revolution" in linguistics. Chomsky proposed that the proper subject matter of linguistics is not the utterances of speakers, but what speakers and listeners know. To that end, he theorized that what they know is a system of rules that underlie actual performance. This theory became known as transformational grammar. In subsequent versions of this theory, rules continued to play a dominant role. However, in 1980 Chomsky began a second revolution by proposing the elimination of rules in a new theory: the principles-and-parameters approach. Subsequent writings finalized the abandonment of rules. Given the centrality of rules to cognitivism, this paper argues that Chomsky's second revolution constitutes a departure from cognitivism. "In Woody Allen's story 'The Whore of Mensa,' the patron asks, 'Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?' 'It'd cost you,' she replies" (Pinker, 1994, p. 126; see Allen, 1972, pp. 32-38). Noam Chomsky's linguistics career spans half a century. The scholarly product of that career-papers, books, lectures-has been prodigious. Reviewing enough of this material to develop an easy familiarity with its central themes is a daunting task. Further, Chomsky's work is replete with formalisms and other technical expressions, making much of it unfathomable to those outside the field of linguistics. Because his views have changed frequently over time, any account of Chomskyan linguistics must carefully specify which works by Chomsky are being used as source material. And Chomsky's apparent penchant for historical revisionism-reinterpreting his past statements in a self-serving manner that often strains credulity (e.g., see Matthews, 1993, pp. 191-192)makes it even more difficult to get a

Harris, Chomsky and the origins of transformational grammar

Lingvisticæ Investigationes. International Journal of Linguistics and Language Resources, 2017

According to Chomsky’s report of the mid 1970s, he and Harris developed their theories in an essentially independent way; whereas according to some statements by Harris, some contact actually took place between them. To shed light on this issue, it may be useful to systematically compare their respective views of the notion ‘transformation’ as well as their analyses of certain syntactic phenomena. Among the topics dealt with in the present article are: the system of syntactic categories and their symbols; the notion of ‘zero elements’; the phenomenon of discontinuous constituents; the English auxiliary system;wh-constructions; the typology of transformations; the notions of ‘kernel’ and ‘kernel sentence’.Several of these analyses show many points of contact between the two scholars (e.g., the analysis ofwh-constructions or that of English auxiliaries), which allow us to maintain that they surely influenced each other. The overall differences between the two models are also clear: th...

Chomsky's Generative Transformational Grammar and its Implications on Language Teaching

2016

The relationship between language and mind has had a considerable interest and research among psychologists and language specialists alike. This relation is often regarded as being intricate due to the nature of language itself and the difficulty of studying the mind as a subject matter. The present contribution attempts to highlight and explain the interrelationship between human language and the mind on the basis of Noam Chomsky's works (namely, 1957,1968) focusing on generative linguistics and innateness. In this respect, this paper sheds light on the implications of Chomsky's cognitive views of language on the teaching / learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It also suggests some pedagogical implications so as to alleviate, if not, eradicate some of the problems encountered by the pedagogical couple (the language teacher and the learner).

General Grammar vs. Universal Grammar: an unbridgeable chasm between the Saussureans and Chomsky

General Grammar vs. Universal Grammar: an unbridgeable chasm between the Saussureans and Chomsky, 2018

As Harris (2003: 152-170) has illustrated -especially by his concentration on the notion of ‘creativity’- ‘Chomsky the Saussurean’ is nothing but “an academic fable”. This fable is a result of misreading –by Chomsky himself (1964) and also by others-, assimilating Saussure’s la langue (in the singular form) with the generativist concept of ‘competence’ and, therefore, its grammar with the Universal Grammar (UG). Chomsky’s approach to deviant utterances, from his standpoint of individual psychology, never brings him to a concept of ‘grammar’ which function would also be to explain poems, puns and any kind of wordplay. The contradiction here is that, on one hand, he claims just to speak about the ‘individual faculty of language’ (which can lead to an infinitive number of individual grammars), and on the other hand, his aim is to discover the UG which means “a framework of principles and elements common to attainable human languages” (Chomsky, 1986: 3) (which for him would be a concrete unique absolute one). This situation leads him to assume a completely transcendental postulate which claims that all human beings share an innate, genetically determined language faculty that contains/knows the rules of UG. As a result, Chomsky and others in the huge generativist camp concentrate their attempts on the search for a vouchsafed ‘universal rule-and-concept system’ which is a reproduction of an old traditional dream of a ‘universal language of thought’. In a Saussurean perspective, this assumption, aside from its failure to observe the diversity and specificity of languages, is a metaphysical and, therefore, an incoherent basis for linguistic theory. Basing linguistic theory on language acquisition or biological facts is not at all acceptable for Saussure because any understanding of the faits de parole and ‘substantive facts’ presupposes an understanding or an implicit definition of language which is, in Chomsky’s case, the common modular understanding of language. The generativist modular conception of language, therefore, turns a deaf ear to the fundamental problems propounded by Saussure concerning the very essence of language, especially the arbitrariness of linguistic sign. How does Saussurean linguistics define its own grammar as General Grammar, and how does it deal with the common or universal linguistic facts which are the main goals for the Chomskyans? In the present study, this is a main concern, which I intend to consider as a matter of ‘algebra of language’ and also as a question of typology by investigating the few indications by Saussure in the CLG and ELG and the explications given by Hjelmslev. From this perspective, we will find only the universal arbitrary structural rules in our search for a general framework/calculus susceptible to describe all possible languages and language types. Finally, in agreement with Harris and De Mauro, we will claim that the Chomskyians and the Saussureans are in two fundamentally different paths in dealing with grammar, where the latter –and notably Hjelmslev- provides a broader possibility for theorizing language.

Noam Chomsky - Three Factors in Language

The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an ''organ of the body,'' along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language-or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena.