NOAM CHOMSKY
Linguist, and social and political theorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
USA. The son of a distinguished Hebrew scholar, he studied at the University of
Pennsylvania, where he was especially influenced by Zellig Harris. After taking
his MA there (1951), he spent four years as a junior fellow at Harvard (1951?5),
then was awarded a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (1955). That year he
began a long teaching career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
became known as one of the principal founders of transformational-generative
grammar, a system of linguistic analysis that challenges much traditional
linguistics and has much to do with philosophy, logic, and psycholinguistics.
His book Syntactic Structures (1957) was credited with revolutionizing the
discipline of linguistics. His theory also argued that the means for acquiring a
language is innate in all humans and is triggered as soon as an infant begins to
learn the basics of a language. Later works include Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax (1965), Language and Mind (1968), Knowledge of Language (1986), and On
Nature and Language (2002). Early on he began to promote his radical critique of
American political, social, and economic policies, particularly of American
foreign policy as effected by the Establishment and presented by the media. He
was outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, and
later to the Iraq War. His writings on these include American Power and the New
Mandarins (1969), Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (1978), and Imperial
Ambitions (2005).
Linguist, and social and political theorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
USA. The son of a distinguished Hebrew scholar, he studied at the University of
Pennsylvania, where he was especially influenced by Zellig Harris. After taking
his MA there (1951), he spent four years as a junior fellow at Harvard (1951?5),
then was awarded a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (1955). That year he
began a long teaching career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
became known as one of the principal founders of transformational-generative
grammar, a system of linguistic analysis that challenges much traditional
linguistics and has much to do with philosophy, logic, and psycholinguistics.
His book Syntactic Structures (1957) was credited with revolutionizing the
discipline of linguistics. His theory also argued that the means for acquiring a
language is innate in all humans and is triggered as soon as an infant begins to
learn the basics of a language. Later works include Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax (1965), Language and Mind (1968), Knowledge of Language (1986), and On
Nature and Language (2002). Early on he began to promote his radical critique of
American political, social, and economic policies, particularly of American
foreign policy as effected by the Establishment and presented by the media. He
was outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, and
later to the Iraq War. His writings on these include American Power and the New
Mandarins (1969), Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (1978), and Imperial
Ambitions (2005).