Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia to immigrant
Russian parents, both of whom were Hebrew scholars and teachers. He studied
linguistics at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard. In 1957, while a
professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he published ‘Syntactic
Structures’ a theory of transformational 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 the 1990s Chomsky formulated a “Minimalist
Program” in an attempt to simplify the symbolic representations of the language
facility.
Chomsky's generative mentions that the Syntax
of natural language was described by context-free rules combined with
transformation rules. The framework idea for formulating a grammar consisting
of explicit rewrite rules was abandoned. The formalist propositions of Chomsky
regard innateness and stimuli do fit extensively with the cognitive opposition
to behavioristic psychology. His position can be considered as a continuation
of the essential principles of structuralism exposed by Saussure.
Through time, Chomsky has written several books
as a result of their studies in linguistics and his theories of formalism. Some
of them are:
• Syntactic
Structures (1957)
• 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)
• Knowledge
of Language (1986)
• American
Power and the New Mandarins (1969)
According to Chomsky, there is a strong
connection between language and mind. As language is an exclusive
characteristic of the human beings Chomsky says that the study of language
contributes to the comprehension and knowledge of our human condition and the
development and operation of our minds.
Chomsky emphasizes that language is a
fundamental activity of the human beings, and that it distinguishes us from
animals. Also, he defeats Bloomfield’s position and stresses the creativity of
language, how each speaker use language in an infinite way while using a finite
number of elements. That’s what Chomsky considers as the most creative part of
the language: the verbal interaction in different and brand new situations.
For Chomsky, language is not restricted to its
communication functions. In this sense, he is not concerned about the verbal
interaction among speakers but the way those speakers use language.
According to Chomky’s, a formal grammar consists of a group of rules that are
used to transform abstract symbols (morphemes, words, etc.) according to the
mathematical language. It means, language is considered as a set of symbols
that are put into groups in order to generate a sequence and create phrases. In
this sense, we do not repeat phrases that we’ve heard before; we are creating
new sentences according to the patterns that have been established.
Although Chomsk’s formalism began with the
study of language and linguistics, his philosophy of formalism has been applied
in many other sciences such as psychology.
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