Who is Noam Chomsky: The Man behind the Theory
Noam Chomsky is an eminent American theoretical linguist, cognitive scientist and philosopher, who radically changed the arena of linguistics by assuming language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. He suggested that innate traits in the human brain give birth to both language and grammar. The most important figure in “cognitive revolution” and “analytic philosophy”.
He was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia. His parents were Hebrew scholars, and Chomsky and his younger brother were steeped in Jewish culture and tradition. Chomsky’s mother was more left-leaning than her husband, and she influenced her son’s interest in social issues and politics.
Chomsky is best known for his influence on linguistics, specifically, the development of transformational grammar. Chomsky believed that formal grammar was directly responsible for a person’s ability to understand and interpret mere utterances.
Chomsky argues that some fundamental structures of every language are innate and universal to all human tongues. He points to the fact that children develop a competent use of language even though they are often exposed to incomplete or inaccurate grammar, and they may not receive much direct teaching about how to speak.
Chomsky further developed his linguistic theories in a series of lectures that were published under the name of Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. The lectures covered the Principles and Parameters (P&P) technique that Chomsky formed based on the assumption that every language had similar parameters that could be manipulated and modified. By doing so, learning a language would only require the acquisition of a core set of linguistic principles.