Compiled by Riva Sharples, IUP Doctoral Student

July, 2001

Noam Chomsky is a prolific writer and scholar of linguistics and politics. He has written over 700 articles and more than 50 books during the past 40 years. In the field of linguistics, Chomsky is known as the "founder" of transformational generative grammar. His theories, first introduced in the 1950s (and labeled the "Chomskyian revolution"), center on the idea of a Universal Grammar and on the role that the brain plays in language use. Many have said that his early works are "the single most important books in cognitive science."

Noam Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. While working on his dissertation, Chomsky worked as a junior fellow at Harvard University.

In 1955, Chomsky joined the faculty at MIT, hired to teach German and French in the linguistics department. Today (in 2001), Chomsky is still an active member of the MIT faculty, where he is classified as a "professor of Linguistic Theory, Syntax, Semantics, and Philosophy of Language."

In the 1940s and 1950s, before Chomsky emerged on the scene, linguistic study focused mainly on performance (how people spoke – the language that came out of their mouths). Generally, what we might classify as a superficial view of language was held by many in the field. Language was thought to go in and to come out, and not much was believed to happen in between. In other words, linguists of the 1940s and 1950s thought that language existed in itself and that the brain was not involved in the use of language and its process.

In Syntactic Structures (1957), Chomsky first proposed a view that was radically different from this established belief. Chomsky focused his study of language on the area of competence, which he defined as "the unconscious knowledge people have about language." Of course, the idea that language might be "unconscious" or that it was innate (as Chomsky argued) was in direct contrast to popular linguistic beliefs of the 1950s. Chomsky criticized the establishment for describing performance, and instead set out to explain competence. In other words, he wanted to study how the brain processed and dealt with language, an area that was not considered part of the linguistic charge at that time. Said Chomsky, "Our natural order of thoughts is mirrored by our words."

A flurry of criticism and commentary about these new ideas erupted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To further explain his ideas, Chomsky wrote Aspects on the Theory of Syntax (1965) to clarify and refine his somewhat abstract ideas expressed in Syntactic Structures.

In Aspects, Chomsky creates a mathematical formula that attempts to examine how language is situated in the brain. The first half of the book deals with debunking traditional ideas about linguistics and justifying Chomsky’s radical ideas. The second half of the book explains Chomsky’s mathematical structure of language, which he divides into two parts, surface structure and deep structure. Surface structure is defined as a phonetic interpretation of deep structure, though deep structure and surface structure do not always correlate one-to-one in his formula. Deep structure, the focus of Chomsky’s studies, is made up of a system of "base rules." These base rules generate strings of "phrase markers," which are the elementary units of deep structure. Deep structure and surface structure, in Chomsky’s theory, operate as distinct, yet related, entities. It is syntax (the structure of sentences) that ties the two together. For this reason, Chomsky chose to focus on syntax, not on semantics or phonology.

Though Chomsky later recanted some of his ideas about deep structure and language, his theories are still the basis for much linguistic study undertaken today.

The Noam Chomsky Archive http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/

This site focuses on the political side of Chomsky and is associated with Z-Magazine, an anarchy publication. Nonetheless, this site can be valuable to a linguistic study of Chomsky because Chomsky himself is quick to note that politics and linguistics go hand in hand. Many of his "political" articles touch on linguistics in some way.

Chomsky’s MIT Homepage http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html

Though Chomsky himself is reportedly techno-phobic, MIT maintains an informational page about Chomsky that includes information about his latest publications and interviews.

Birthday Celebration in Honor of Chomsky http://mitpress.mit.edu/celebration/

In honor of Chomsky’s 70^th birthday (on Dec. 7, 1998), officials at MIT collected essays and notes for Chomsky from more than 2,000 well-wishers across the country. These essays/notes, some by famous theorists including Steven Pinker, are categorized (syntax, semantics, political, etc.) and can be informative (and amusing) reading.

MSN Encarta Encyclopedia http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=04EEB000

Read how Chomsky has been canonized.