Chomsky Noam (b.1928), preeminent American linguist, philosopher, and political activist who has spent his professional career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky’s best-known scientific achievement is the establishment of a rigorous and philosophically compelling foundation for the scientific study of the grammar of natural language. With the use of tools from the study of formal languages, he gave a far more precise and explanatory account of natural language grammar than had previously been given (Syntactic Structures, 1957). He has since developed a number of highly influential frameworks for the study of natural language grammar (e.g., Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965; Lectures on Government and Binding, 1981; The Minimalist Program, 1995). Though there are significant differences in detail, there are also common themes that underlie these approaches. Perhaps the most central is that there is an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans, and the purpose of linguistic inquiry is to describe the initial state of the language learner, and account for linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms.
On Chomsky’s conception of linguistics, languages are structures in the brains of individual speakers, described at a certain level of abstraction within the theory. These structures occur within the language faculty, a hypothesized module of the human brain. Universal Grammar is the set of principles hard-wired into the language faculty that determine the class of possible human languages. This conception of linguistics involves several influential and controversial theses. First, the hypothesis of a Universal Grammar entails the existence of innate linguistic principles. Secondly, the hypothesis of a language faculty entails that our linguistic abilities, at least so far as grammar is concerned, are not a product of general reasoning processes. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, since having one of these structures is an intrinsic property of a speaker, properties of languages so conceived are determined solely by states of the speaker. On this individualistic conception of language, there is no room in scientific linguistics for the social entities determined by linguistic communities that are languages according to previous anthropological conceptions of the discipline. Many of Chomsky’s most significant contributions to philosophy, such as his influential rejection of behaviorism (‘Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,’ Language, 1959), stem from his elaborations and defenses of the above consequences (cf. also Cartesian Linguistics, 1966; Reflections on Language, 1975; Rules and Representations, 1980; Knowledge of Language, 1986). Chomsky’s philosophical writings are characterized by an adherence to methodological naturalism, the view that the mind should be studied like any other natural phenomenon. In recent years, he has also argued that reference, in the sense in which it is used in the philosophy of language, plays no role in a scientific theory of language (‘Language and Nature,’ Mind, 1995). See also FORMAL LEARNABILITY THEORY, GRAMMAR , MEANING , PHILOSOPHY OF LAN – GUAGE , PSYCHOLINGUISTIC. J.Sta.