The goal of linguistics, he argued, should be to reproduce these principles. Chomsky came to believe, was rooted not in behavior but in biology, in an inborn set of principles that speakers unconsciously draw on whenever they produce or understand sentences. Chomsky studied linguistics, mathematics and philosophy, setting the foundation for his novel perspective. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Growing up in Philadelphia, he was exposed to language scholarship firsthand through the work of his father, William, an eminent Hebraist. Chomsky was singularly well suited for the task. When it came to taking on 50 years of structural linguistics, Mr. Over the years, this trait became evident in his political work, including his early opposition to the Vietnam War, his outspoken condemnation of United States policy in Central America, East Timor and elsewhere, and his castigation of the mainstream news media in general (and The New York Times in particular) for what he describes as complicity with governmental and business interests. Chomsky was by nature a questioner - and, where he deemed necessary, an exploder - of received truths. In the mid-1950's he began wrestling with questions he felt the structuralists could not answer: If language was simply learned behavior, what gave people the ability to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences, including those that had never before been uttered? How did children acquire language seemingly spontaneously, without being overtly taught? Chomsky was deeply troubled by this account. Deeper questions of language and mind, including how young children can dope out their native language from the wash of adult talk surrounding them, were never considered.īut Mr.
Structuralism viewed language as a purely social phenomenon, like tool making or table manners. For the first half of this century, structural linguistics reigned as the field's dominant methodology. Chomsky's introduction of his theory of language in 1957, often called the Chomsky revolution, has been equated with Darwin's theory of evolution and Freud's theory of the unconscious in terms of its importance in the history of ideas: it was the first concerted approach to investigating the human mind through a systematic study of how people produce and understand sentences. Chomsky's presence, a colleague once said, is to see ''the overwhelming picture of Rational Man standing before you.'' His voice is soft and measured, and he speaks as he writes, in perfectly formed sentences that spin out into page-long, reasoned paragraphs. Chomsky was dressed casually this morning in a sweater, running shoes and corduroy trousers. ''And they ought to be explained, and maybe can be explained better, without postulating these systems.'' Linguists hope his new approach constitutes a major breakthrough in the field.Ī slender, sharp-featured man with graying wavy hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Mr. ''All the properties which were explained in terms of deep and surface structure were really mistakenly described,'' Mr. But unlike its predecessors, the Minimalist Program (or Minimalism for short) seeks to do this in the most streamlined way possible, dispensing with concepts like ''deep structure'' and ''surface structure,'' which were more or less canonical in Mr. Chomsky's method has changed, his fundamental mission has remained the same: to construct a symbolic representation of the ''language faculty'' - the inborn mental endowment that allows human beings to acquire, use and understand language. Chomsky's longtime colleague at M.I.T., ''is the most radical thing I've ever heard anybody say in linguistics.'' The Minimalist Program, said the linguist Morris Halle, Mr. Although he has revised his theoretical framework over the years, no modification is as dramatic as the present one, called the Minimalist Program, in which he largely breaks with the last four decades of his own work. 7, is the father of modern linguistics and remains the field's most influential practitioner. Chomsky's newest - and most unconventional - approach to the discipline he founded in 1957. This simple idea is the cornerstone of Mr.
Chomsky says, that some divine superengineer, in a single efficient stroke, endowed humans with the power of language where formerly they had none. His office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exudes both a Spartan asceticism and a pleasant disorderliness: the primary decor consists of piles of paper on the floor. He leans slightly back in his chair, one foot propped on the pulled-out bottom drawer of his desk, hands aloft. Chomsky, linguist, teacher, author and social critic, is sitting in a pose so customary it has been captured in scores of photographs taken since he upended the study of language 40 years ago.
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