Contribution of Noam Chomsky
Contribution of Noam
Chomsky in linguistics also mentions how his theory transformation generative
grammar helps overcoming the structural ambiguity through phrase structure
rules.
v Introduction
Avram Noam Chomsky December 7, 1928)
is an American linguist, philosopher,[ cognitive scientist, logician,
historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and
Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT,
where he has worked for over 50 years In addition to his work in linguistics,
he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100
books.[ According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky
was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to
1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. He has been described as a
prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the "world's top public
intellectual" in a 2005 poll.
v "father
of modern linguistics"
Chomsky has been described as the
"father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic
philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science,
mathematics, and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the
Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger
theorem.
After the publication of his first books on linguistics,
Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War, and since then has
continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for
his critiques of U.S.
foreign policy,[24] state capitalismand the mainstream news media. His media
criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass
Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the
propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as
"fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and
classical liberalism and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and
libertarian socialism.
v
critics of American and Israeli policies
Noam
Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States South Asia are being widely reported in many papers. He
is visiting Pakistan
also. He is well known for being one of the most respected and acclaimed
critics of American and Israeli policies in the world.
He has been critical of America’s
violence in Vietnam; The Gulf War of 1991 with Iraq which has resulted in death
and malnutrition for so many Iraqis; American and Israeli suppression of the
Palestinians and nowadays the U.S’s use of overwhelming force against
Afghanistan. As these are all political issues, people often forget that
Chomsky is a profoundly original thinker in linguistics too. There are several
books on the Chomskyan Revolution in linguistics but, since linguistics is not
taught in a systematic manner at the advanced level in Pakistan, most people
are unaware of Chomsky’s contribution to it.
v The aims
of Chomsky
In the Managua lectures of 1986
Chomsky defined his aims. These are to answer the following questions:
1.
What is the system of knowledge? What is in the
mind/brain of the speaker of English or
Spanish or Japanese?
2.
How does this system of knowledge arise in the
mind/brain?
3.
How is this knowledge put to use in speech (or secondary
systems such a writing)
4.
What are the physical mechanisms that serve as the
material basis for this system
of knowledge and for the use of
this knowledge?
These questions lie in the domains of
psychology and philosophy also. That is why Chomsky is not the kind of narrow
linguist who only dabbles in nouns and verbs or compares words in different
languages to find out which family a language belongs to. He is a revolutionary
in linguistics because he has provided theories which give us insights into the
processing of language in the mind.
v Innateness
of language
Basically, Chomsky argues that human
beings are endowed with an innate capacity to learn language (Language
Acquisition Device). We also have certain rules which are universal for
language-learning (Universal Grammar) but we adjust these rules so as to learn
the specific rules of the language to which we are most exposed in childhood.
At the deep level our mind is equipped with the words (Lexicon) and the basic
rules (phrase structure rules) which enable us to make sentences. These basic
sentences are sequences of meaning and have to be transformed by other sets of
rules to be spoken or written down. This device which we have in our minds is
called ‘grammar’. As we have seen, it generates basic sets of meaning (kernel
sentences) and transforms them by using transformational rules. Hence the
grammar in our minds may be called ‘transformational-generative grammar’. In
other words, we have a computer programme in the mind. This programme processes
language to produce sentences. The programme is meant for the production of any
human language but we modify it to produce our first language in early infancy.
After this if we do learn other languages we tend to continue to use some of
the rules of our first language to produce sentences in our newly learned
language. That is why most of us retain a ‘foreign’ accent when we speak
another language. This foreigness comes from using the old rules of our first
language to produce sounds of another language.
v Chomsky’s
contribution
In short, Chomsky’s theories help us understand phenomenon
like language acquisition. These are the insights Chomsky’s theories give us.
These insights are now used into fields as complicated as robotics, artificial
intelligence, psychology and philosophy. Although some aspects of Chomsky’s
theories are unprovable this maybe because he is dealing with very complicated
issues. It is like Stephen Hawking’s theories about what happens just before
one enters a black hole or what happend a micro second after the Big Bang. One
deals with abstractions and not with tangible objects to begin with. Even if
some theories are mistaken, most of Chomsky’s work is still the major
‘paradigm’ (as used by Kuhn) in linguistics. His position in linguistics is
like that of Einstein’s in physics---even to prove part of it wrong, you have
to refer to the work as a whole.
Had
Chomsky taught the world only linguistics he might never have become as famous
as he has. Chomsky has become famous both as a linguist and as a dissident
intellectual. He is an American citizen; yet he opposed the U.S.A’s war in Vietnam . He is
Jewish; yet he opposes Israel ’s
oppression of the Palestinian Arabs. This kind of fearless commitment to
humanity is so rare as to evoke the world’s admiration. Yet, in his own
country, he is reviled by the chauvinistic press, which he exposes.
Chomsky
has expressed deep insight into the nature and use of power---which is the
central issue in politics---in a series of brilliant books. A book written with
Edward Herman entitled Manufacturing Consent
(1988) makes the point that in democracies, since governments do not find
it convenient to jail or assassinate dissidents, peoples’ views are influenced
by the pressure of the media in the desired direction so much that those who
disagree look like fools or fanatics to the others. In an essay ‘Democracy and
Markets in the New World Order’ he tells us that the ‘free market’ is ‘state
protection and public subsidy for the rich, market discipline for the poor’.
This means making the poor poorer but everyone agrees to use such sanitized
words for it that nobody can understand how cruel and oppressive the system is
for the powerless.
v Chomsky’s
political position
In a number of books and articles,
like Fateful Triangle (1983), Chomsky tells us that America
supports Israel
against the Palestinian Arabs. The Israelis, he says, do not accept the
Palestinians as equal human beings. They suppress them and use them as cheap
labour. The Israeli settlements are formidable places where stone-throwing
Palestinians boys are shot with impunity and torture is used regularly. He ends
this books by predicting that the ‘peace process’ could actually make Israel
dominant and end the Palestinian problem by crushing out the dissidents while
co-opting the others in a new Apartheid kind of Israeli state. He says that if
this happens the ‘privileged sectors of American, Israeli, and Palestinian
society will have a lot to answer for’.
Linguistics
Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with
his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces
transformational grammar.[61] This approach takes utterances (sequences of
words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a
context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.
Perhaps his most influential and
time-tested contribution to the field is the claim that modeling knowledge of
language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In
other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a
hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances,
including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set
of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Panini for his modern notion
of an explicit generative grammar, although it is also related to rationalist
ideas of a priori knowledge.
It is a popular misconception that
Chomsky proved that language is entirely
innate, and that he discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In
fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both
capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same
linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand
and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability.
Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has that the cat lacks
the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the
tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what
constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal
features that would result from these constraints are often termed
"universal grammar" or UG.[62]
The
Principles and Parameters approach (P&P) – developed in his Pisa 1979
Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB) – makes
strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles
underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the
world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the
brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit
subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in
Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and
parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a
language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical
morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which
can be done based on a few key examples.
Proponents of this view argue that
the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless
children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed
by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that
children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language,
whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to
Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific,
learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as indications of innateness.
More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while
retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky
attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB
model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while
advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty
that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a
derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely
representational approach of classic P&P.
Chomsky's ideas have had a strong
influence on researchers of language acquisition in children, though many
researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates[63] and Michael Tomasello[64]
argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate
emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of
general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and
complex social environment in which language is used and learned.
His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968),
written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a
great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory
has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects,
the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential
phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical
phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.
v
Generative grammar
The Chomskyan approach towards
syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge
possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much
of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain
parochial features of their native languages.[65] The innate body of linguistic
knowledge is often termed universal grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the
strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact
that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time.
Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic
stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they
attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of
Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.
Chomsky's theories have been
immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received
criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative
grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists
working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal
Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the
Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However,
hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention
within Chomskyan linguistic analyses.[66][67][68][69][70] In spite of the
diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics
continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are
Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are different
from English.[71][72][73] Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a
form of linguistic imperialism.[74] In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely
heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their
languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general
methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists,[who?] though
sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists
pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with
the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other
critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to
posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that
domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.
Today there are many different branches of generative
grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase
structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, and combinatory categorial
grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with
significant differences in execution.
v Conclusion
Chomsky’s writings on politics,
whether it is East Timor or the West Bank or
any other place, are based on empirical evidence of the kind which takes years
to find. Most dissident writing on such subjects is high on emotion but short
or facts. Chomsky’s writing is full of facts. His argument is built brick by
brick, so to speak, and is impossible to demolish even if one points out
inaccuracies as his critics very often do. As Edward Said said about Fateful
Triangle, his sources are ‘staggeringly complete’ and the book maybe the most
ambitious book ever attempted on the conflict between Zionism and the
Palestinians. Now that Chomsky has spoken out against the U.S.A’s attack on
Afghanistan he has again taught us that if we want to preserve decency and
democratic values then we must have the moral courage of standing up to
opinions which appear to be based on the consent of the powerful---that
‘consent’ which, in his immortal phrase, is ‘manufactured consent’.
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