Noam Chomsky and the theory of language

Noam Chomsky is a well known American linguist famous for his psychological investigations on language and one of the great thinkers of the modern age. Since the beginning of his career, Chomsky has turned out to be quite a controversial character because of his political leanings and his career as a recognized activist in the socialist campaigns.

Among many published articles and books, Chomsky is known in the world of psychology for his famous theory of language acquisition. In such a linguistic theory, he claims that we are born with a innate ability to speak and that our purchasing process is based on learning the structures of language and grammar. Do you want to know more about Noam Chomsky and the theory of language? Then we recommend you continue reading this article on Psychology-Online.

Index

1. Who is Chomsky: biography and ideology
2. Noam Chomsky's theory of language development
3. The theory of universal grammar
4. Chomsky's Linguistic Theory: Language and Thought
5. Noam Chomsky: books

Avraham Noam Chomsky he was born in 1928 in Philadelphia, United States. The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Noam decided to orient his life and career to the study of linguistics. He studied philosophy, linguistics and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and, years later, was appointed Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1949, Noam married Carol Schatz, better known as Carol chomskyshe, a well-known linguist who developed her language acquisition studies in parallel with those of her husband. In 1957, Noam Chomsky published the first book that revolutionized the way the scientific community interpreted language: Syntactic Structures. From that moment on, he was making publications, studies and books related to the same subject.

On the other hand, Noam Chomsky also has a strong reputation as an activist and critic of the capitalist system, her ideology has been criticized many times for sympathizing with ideas of socialism. He took a stand against the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish political works harshly criticizing the current system.

Chomsky's theory is also known as biolinguistics. In it, the existence of certain structures in our mind is affirmed that allow both the production of language and the fact of understanding a message whatever the language.

How is language acquired according to Chomsky?

In his first post: Syntactic Structures (1957)[1], Noam Chomsky proposes a revolutionary theory. In it, the famous linguist affirms that there is an element called Language Acquisition Device or LAD (language acquisition device) in the mind of the human being that facilitates, innately, the knowledge of basic structures of the mother tongue.

In this way, the relative similarity in language learning between different cultures and the ease of learning the language native in childhood, are due to the innate ability to understand common language structures such as SVO (Subject - Verb - Object).

Chomsky's linguistic theory

Thus, Chomsky's theory of language considers that a child does not learn language by exposure and imitation, but learns to relate its innate knowledge of the syntactic structures of language, with the limited set of words (also known as a lexicon) that contains its native language. This theory, which marks the beginning of a new conception of linguistics, has been revised and modified by Chomsky himself until reaching the theory of Universal Grammar (UG)

According to linguist Noam Chomsky, there is a limited set of common rules and characteristics in the construction of all languages, known as Universal Grammar (Universal Grammar), innate to the human being. In this way, there is "a certain mental structure formed by a system of rules and principles that generates and relates mental representations of various types”^[2]

Thus, the acquisition of the basic rules of language is unconscious, and Universal Grammar establishes the initial state of a child in his psychological learning process. When the child receives information about the words that the mother tongue contains, he constructs a specific lexicon to which he applies the set of characteristics of Universal Grammar. Thus, from birth, Universal Grammar allows a child to unconsciously know that there are words that behave as verbs, others as nouns, and that there is a limited set of possibilities for ordering these categories to form a prayer.

Modifications of the theory: a more open approach

A few years later, Noam Chomsky claimed that a naturalistic approach to his theory. Thanks to this approach, it is evident that the objective of the innate theory is not to reduce made merely biological, but to unite the principles of cognitive thinking with anatomical study and physiological. Broadly speaking, the naturalistic approach aims to find to what extent the essence of language and its acquisition depend on innate mental operations.

Ultimately, according to Chomsky's innate theory, language is a characteristic that all human beings have even before birth. This theory is completely contrary to the behaviorism of Skinner since in the behaviorist theory it is affirmed that language is acquired through learning and repetition.

According Chomsky's linguistic theory, language acquisition is based on principles such as the following:

• Only the human species can learn to communicate by learning language
• Imitating and repeating are not elements that interfere with language acquisition
• When a child begins to emit sounds, he does not do it by repetition or learning, but by the activation of his acquisition device
• The language development is a property that acts independently of intelligence

Criticisms of Chomsky's Theory: Language and Thought

• It does not explain how language is produced or perceived in a real, everyday environment. His studies focus on controlled scenarios and unreal.
• Many experts claim that it is a theory simple and reductionist and that it does not take into account such important factors as learning and the social environment.
• The empirical evidence supporting this theory are not enough, Noam Chomsky's ideas and his theory of language acquisition are rather abstract in tone and, although attempt to explain processes as important as language acquisition, they need more studies to prove their validity.

We can distinguish between two clearly different editorial lines: his political essays and his studies on linguistics. Then, we will highlight his most emblematic works, classified by theme and following a chronological order.

Books on Chomsky's Theory of Language

• 1955: Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (unpublished until 1975).
• 1957: Syntactic Structures (Syntactic structures).
• 1965: Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Aspects of the theory of syntax).
• 1965: Cartesian Linguistics (Cartesian linguistics).
• 1968: Language and Mind (The language and the understanding).
• 1968: Sound Pattern of English (with Morris Halle).
• 1970: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory.
• 1972: Studies in Semantics in Generative Grammar.
• 1975: Reflections on Language (Reflections on language).
• 1977: Essays on Form and Interpretation (Essays on form and interpretation).
• 1980: Rules and Representations (Rules and representations).
• 1981: Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures.
• 1984: Modular Approaches to the Study of Mind.
• 1986: Barriers (Barriers).
• 1986: Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. (Knowledge of language, its nature, origin and use).
• 1995: The Minimalist Program (The minimalist program).

Noam Chomsky: Political Books and Essays

• 1996: Rollback (How the cake is distributed. US policies at the end of the millennium)
• 1997: The Global Village
• 1997: Class warfare (Class struggle).
• 1997: World Orders, Old and New (The New World Order and the Old).
• 2002: Propaganda and the Public Mind (Propaganda and public opinion)
• 1983-1999: The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians
• 2003: Class Struggle
• 2006: Human nature: justice versus power, debate with Michel Foucault
• 2007: Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. (Failed states. The abuse of power and the attack on democracy).
• 2008: Interventions (Interventions)
• 2013: On Anarchism (Reasons for anarchy)
• 2016: Who rules the world (Who rules the world?)
• 2017: Requiem for the American Dream (Requiem for the American Dream)

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Noam Chomsky and the theory of language, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.

1. Chomsky, N. (1980). Rules and representations. Oxford: Blackwell.
2. White, L., & White, L. (2003). Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Cambridge University Press.

• Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures, ed. XXI century.
• Birchenall, L. B., & Müller, O. (2014). The linguistic theory of Noam Chomsky: from beginning to present. Language, 42(2), 417-442.
• Analysis of Chomsky's theory by Vegas, M. (2018).