AVRAM NOAM CHOMSKY Linguistics itself is a discipline

AVRAM NOAM CHOMSKY

• Linguistics itself is a discipline of cognitive psychology and strives to understand how language is learned and used by children.

• Psychologist • Linguistic • Political activist

• Was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia • His parents William and Elsie Chomsky were Hebrew • His brother David Eli Chomsky 5 years older than him

PROFESSIONAL LIFE Central High School of Philadelphia

• 1955 he left Harvard and entered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) • Until now…

• He married Doris Schatz • They had two daugthers an a son

CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

• Michael Tomasello and Elizabeth Bates • Contribution to the field of phonology • every language had similar parameters that could be manipulated and modified

AWARDS • benjamin franklin medal on computer and cognitive science • the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

POPULAR CULTURE • Michel Foucault • social structures determine human values, personality, and social problems • human nature is heavily determined by biology

• Chomsky is known as a vigorous debater: • William F. Buckley • Christopher Hitchens • Alan Dershowitz

CONTIBUTIONS TO LANGUAGE ACQUISITIONS AND THEORIES

Linguistic theory • the principles underlying the structure of language are biologically determined in the human mind and hence genetically transmitted • Everybody has the same underlying linguistic structure

Syntactic Structures • challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar.

Another important contribution • Chomsky says that a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearerspeaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances.

Universal grammar • LAD ( languaje acquisition device) • UG (universal grammar) (lack of LAD)

• the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time

LAD • The precise form of language must be acquired through exposure to a speech community. • Words are definitely not inbron, but the capacity to acquire language and use it creatively seems to be inborn.