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By mid-twentieth century, a working consensus had been reached in the linguistics community, based on the great achievements of preceding years. Synchronic linguistics had been established as a science, a “taxonomic” science, with sophisticated procedures of analysis of data. Taxonomic science has limits. It does not ask “why?” The time was ripe to seek explanatory theories, using insights provided by the theory of computation and studies of explanatory depth. That effort became the generative enterprise within the biolinguistics framework. Tensions quickly arose: The elements of explanatory theories (generative grammars) were far beyond the reach of taxonomic procedures. The structuralist principle that language is a matter of training and habit, extended by analogy, was unsustainable. More generally, the mood of “virtually everything is known” became “almost nothing is understood,” a familiar phenomenon in the history of science, opening a new and exciting era for a flourishing discipline.

In his introductory comments to this volume, Chomsky reviews the historical background surrounding the emergence of Remarks on Nominalization, the restrictive view of the syntax which it promoted, and, in that context, the need to separate syntactically predictable constructions, such as gerunds from less predictable formations, and specifically derived nominals, as described in Lees’ (1960) seminal study. It is also in that context that Chomsky reviews the emergence of the X’-scheme, offering, in particular, a contemporary perspective on its merits and drawbacks.

Section I. PRELIMINARIES Foreword by Noam Chomsky Chapter 1. From Structuralism to Cognitive Science: Lila R. Gleitman's Contributions to Language and Cognition, Jeffrey Lidz Section II. WHAT DO THEY KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT? Chapter 2. The Impossibility of Language Acquisition (And How They Do It), Lila R. Gleitman, Mark Y. Liberman, Cynthia A. McLemore, and Barbara H. Partee Chapter 3. A Study in the Acquisition of Language: Free Responses to Commands, Elizabeth F. Shipley, Carlota S. Smith, and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 4. The Emergence of the Child as Grammarian, Lila R. Gleitman, Henry Gleitman, and Elizabeth F. Shipley Chapter 5. Language Use and Language Judgment, Henry Gleitman and Lila R. Gleitman Section III. WHERE DOES LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE COME FROM? INPUT AND INNATENESS Chapter 6. Mother, I'd Rather Do It Myself: Some Effects and Non-Effects of Maternal Speech Style, Elissa L. Newport, Henry Gleitman, and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 7. Beyond Herodotus: The Creation of Language by Linguistically Deprived Deaf Children, Heidi Feldman, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 8. Every Child an Isolate: Nature's Experiments in Language Learning, Lila R. Gleitman and Barbara Landau Section IV. HARD WORDS AND SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING A: ESTABLISHING PLAUSIBILITY Chapter 9. Structural Sources of Verb Learning, Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 10. On the Semantic Content of Subcategorization Frames, Cynthia Fisher, Lila R. Gleitman, and Henry Gleitman Chapter 11. Human Simulations of Vocabulary Learning, Jane Gillette, Lila R. Gleitman, Henry Gleitman, and Anne Lederer Section V. HARD WORDS AND SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING B: BUT IS IT TRUE? Chapter 12. Understanding How Input Matters: Verb Learning and the Footprint of Universal Grammar, Jeffrey Lidz, Lila R. Gleitman, and Henry Gleitman Chapter 13. Hard Words, Lila R. Gleitman, Kimberly Cassidy, Anna Papafragou, Rebecca Nappa, and John C. Trueswell Chapter 14. When We Think About Thinking: The Acquisition of Belief Verbs, Anna Papafragou, Kimberly Cassidy, and Lila R. Gleitman Section VI. EASY WORDS? NOT SO EASY Chapter 15. How Words Are (and Are Not) Learned by Observation, Tamara N. Medina, John C. Trueswell, Jesse Snedeker, and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 16. Propose But Verify: Fast Mapping Meets Cross-Situational Word Learning, John C. Trueswell, Tamara N. Medina, Alon Hafri, and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 17. Quality of Input Predicts Child Vocabulary Three Years Later, Erica A. Cartmill, Benjamin F. Armstrong III, Lila R. Gleitman, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Tamara N. Medina, and John C. Trueswell Chapter 18. The Easy Words: Reference Resolution in a Malevolent Referent World, Lila R. Gleitman and John C. Trueswell Section VII. WORDS AND CONCEPTS Chapter 19. What Some Concepts Might Not Be, Sharon Armstrong, Lila R. Gleitman, and Henry Gleitman Chapter 20. Why Stereotypes Aren't Even Good Defaults, Andrew C. Connolly, Jerry A. Fodor, Lila R. Gleitman, and Henry Gleitman Chapter 21. "Similar" and Similar Concepts, Lila R. Gleitman, Henry Gleitman, Carol Miller, and Ruth Ostrin Chapter 22. The Emergence of the Formal Category "Symmetry" in a New Sign Language, Lila R. Gleitman, Ann Senghas, Molly Flaherty, Marie Coppola, and Susan Goldin-Meadow Chapter 23. Turning the Tables: Spatial Language and Spatial Reasoning, Peggy Li and Lila R. Gleitman Chapter 24. Relations Between Language and Thought, Lila R. Gleitman and Anna Papafragou

Aquest treball proporciona una visio general dels aspectes clau actuals en el camp de la gramatica generativa: l’estudi de la facultat del llenguatge huma. Es tractaran algunes de les visions a que aquest enfocament del llenguatge ha donat lloc, incloent-hi exits importants en la comprensio de les propietats basiques del llenguatge i les seves interaccions amb els sistemes d’interficie. Aquest progres dona lloc a noves preguntes de recerca, moltes de les quals fins i tot no es podien formular de manera coherent fins fa poc. Destaquem alguns dels reptes mes destacats amb l’esperanca d’inspirar futures investigacions.

Aquesta es una transcripcio anotada de la presentacio principal de Noam Chomsky a la Universitat de Reading, el maig de 2017. Aqui Chomsky revisa alguns aspectes fundacionals de la teoria de la construccio d’estructures: fonamentalment, fusio i etiquetatge. L’objectiu es eliminar allo que aquest autor anomena extensions de fusio, que aparentment son incompatibles amb la tesi minimalista forta, i continuar donant compte de l’estructura recursiva, el desplacament i la reconstruccio (com a principals objectius empirics del programa minimalista). Aquests inclouen el moviment lateral, la multidominancia i la fusio tardana, que s’han desenvolupat al llarg del cicle de vida de la gramatica generativa transformacional. A mes a mes, Chomsky formula una serie de condicions que ha de complir una formulacio adequada de fusio i indica que les extensions esmentades poden violar aquestes condicions. Chomsky arriba a la formulacio d’una operacio fusio que mante les propietats basiques de fusio pero que queda restringida per limitacions sobre el que la fusio pot fer en els espais de treball on s’apliquen les operacions sintactiques.

With the crystallization of the “generative enterprise” half a century ago, two concepts became salient: the initial state and final states of the language faculty, respectively, UG (the genetic component) and I-languages. Since then inquiry has gained far greater scope and depth. It has also led to sharpening of fundamental principles of language. At first, descriptive adequacy appeared to require rich and complex assumptions about UG. A primary goal has always been to overcome this deficiency. Core properties of concern have included compositionality, order, projection (labeling), and displacement. Early work assigned the first three to phrase structure rules and the last to the transformational component. Simplification of computational procedures suggests that compositionality and displacement (along with the “copy theory”) fall together while order may be a reflex of sensorimotor externalization, conclusions that have far-reaching consequences. As for labeling, minimal computation restricts options to the few that have considerable empirical support.

It would be almost impossible to reduce all your work to one field or theme, and this is why I will try to touch on a few themes from the whole array of contributions you have made to science and human knowledge and spirit. You epitomized for years the freedom of expression for academics, media and the general public. How do you feel having such a distinctive tone in voicing the unspoken words of billions of people? Does it come as a great responsibility or as an exceptional emotionally charged challenge?

Inquiry into the evolution of some biological system evidently can proceed only as far as its nature is understood. Lacking such understanding, its manifestations are likely to appear to be chaotic, highly variable, and lacking significant general properties; and, accordingly, study of its evolution cannot be seriously undertaken. These truisms hold of the study of the human faculty of language FL just as for other biological systems. As discussed below, FL appears to be a shared human capacity in essentials, with options of variation of a kind to which we return. After a long lapse, the problem of evolution of language arose in mid-twentieth century when the first efforts were made to construct accounts of FL as a biological object, internal to an individual, with particular internal languages - I-languages in current terminology - as manifestations of FL.

Human infants develop language remarkably rapidly and without overt instruction. We argue that the distinctive ontogenesis of child language arises from the interplay of three factors: domain-specific principles of language (Universal Grammar), external experience, and properties of non-linguistic domains of cognition including general learning mechanisms and principles of efficient computation. We review developmental evidence that children make use of hierarchically composed structures ('Merge') from the earliest stages and at all levels of linguistic organization. At the same time, longitudinal trajectories of development show sensitivity to the quantity of specific patterns in the input, which suggests the use of probabilistic processes as well as inductive learning mechanisms that are suitable for the psychological constraints on language acquisition. By considering the place of language in human biology and evolution, we propose an approach that integrates principles from Universal Grammar and constraints from other domains of cognition. We outline some initial results of this approach as well as challenges for future research.

The traditional conception of language is that it is, in Aristotle's phrase, sound with meaning. The sound-meaning correlation is, furthermore, unbounded, an elementary fact that came to be understood as of great significance in the 17th century scientific revolution. In contemporary terms, the internal language (I-language) of an individual consists, at the very least, of a generative process that yields an infinite array of structured expressions, each interpreted at two interfaces, the sensory-motor interface (sound, sign, or some other sensory modality) for externalization and the conceptual-intentional interface for thought and planning of action. The earliest efforts to address this problem, in the 1950s, postulated rich descriptive apparatus—in different terms, rich assumptions about the genetic component of the language faculty, what has been called “universal grammar” (UG). That seemed necessary to provide for a modicum of descriptive adequacy. Also, many puzzles were discovered that had passed u...

This is an interview to Noam Chomsky (MIT) on linguistic variation.

In this response to Pinker and Jackendoff's critique, we extend our previous framework for discussion of language evolution, clarifying certain distinctions and elaborating on a number of points. In the first half of the paper, we reiterate that profitable research into the biology and evolution of language requires fractionation of "language" into component mechanisms and interfaces, a non-trivial endeavor whose results are unlikely to map onto traditional disciplinary boundaries. Our terminological distinction between FLN and FLB is intended to help clarify misunderstandings and aid interdisciplinary rapprochement. By blurring this distinction, Pinker and Jackendoff mischaracterize our hypothesis 3 which concerns only FLN, not "language" as a whole. Many of their arguments and examples are thus irrelevant to this hypothesis. Their critique of the minimalist program is for the most part equally irrelevant, because very few of the arguments in our original paper were tied to this program; in an online appendix we detail the deep inaccuracies in their characterization of this program. Concerning evolution, we believe that Pinker and Jackendoff's emphasis on the past adaptive history of the language faculty is misplaced. Such questions are unlikely to be resolved empirically due to a lack of relevant data, and invite speculation rather than research. Preoccupation with the issue has retarded progress in the field by diverting research away from empirical questions, many of which can be addressed with comparative data. Moreover, offering an adaptive hypothesis as an alternative to our hypothesis concerning mechanisms is a logical error, as questions of function are independent of those concerning mechanism. The second half of our paper consists of a detailed response to the specific data discussed by Pinker and Jackendoff. Although many of their examples are irrelevant to our original paper and arguments, we find several areas of substantive disagreement that could be resolved by future empirical research. We conclude that progress in understanding the evolution of language will require much more empirical research, grounded in modern comparative biology, more interdisciplinary collaboration, and much less of the adaptive storytelling and phylogenetic speculation that has traditionally characterized the field.

The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an “organ of the body,” along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena

Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.

Edited correspondence between Ullin T. Place and Noam Chomsky, which occurred in 1993-1994, is presented. The principal topics are (a) deep versus surface structure; (b) computer modeling of the brain; (c) the evolutionary origins of language; (d) behaviorism; and (e) a dispositional account of language. This correspondence includes Chomsky's denial that he ever characterized deep structure as innate; Chomsky's critique of computer modeling (both traditional and connectionist) of the brain; Place's critique of Chomsky's alleged failure to provide an adequate account of the evolutionary origins of language, and Chomsky's response that such accounts are "pop-Darwinian fairy tales"; and Place's arguments for, and Chomsky's against, the relevance of behaviorism to linguistic theory, especially the relevance of a behavioral approach to language that is buttressed by a dispositional account of sentence construction.

Routledge Revivals presents a reissue of Noam Chomksy’s MA thesis, written in 1951, and first published in 1979. Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew is a landmark study in linguistics and generative phonology, which provides not only an analysis of morphophonemics but of the entire grammar of Modern Hebrew from syntax to phonology. Professor Chomsky’s goal in this thesis is nothing less than a complete generative grammar of the Hebrew language. This work is of singular importance as it contains the genesis of the author’s work in the field of generative grammar which has had such a profound impact upon the study of linguistics. This reissue of a truly pioneering work will be of great interest to all those concerned with generative grammar and its origins, and with the progression of thought of one of the greatest minds of our time.

This chapter restricts the term "linguistic theory" to systems of hypotheses concerning the general features of human language put forth in an attempt to account for a certain range of linguistic phenomena. Linguistic theory addresses that a mature speaker can produce a new sentence of his language on the appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it is equally new to them. The grammar is a device that specifies the infinite set of well-formed sentences and assigns to each of these one or more structural descriptions. A concern with perception and acquisition of language has played a significant role in determining the course of development of linguistic theory, as it should if this theory is ever to have broader scientific significance. The present theories of transformational generative grammar provide a basis for extending and deepening our understanding of linguistic structure. Keywords:generative grammar; language; linguistic theory; perception; structural descriptions

JM: OK, now I'd like to get clear about the current status of Universal Grammar (UG). When you begin to focus in the account of acquisition on the notion of biological development, it seems to throw into the study of language a lot more – or at least different – issues than had been anticipated before. There are not only the questions of the structure of the particular faculty that we happen to have, and whatever kinds of states it can assume, but also the study of how that particular faculty developed . . . NC: How it evolved? Or how it develops in the individual? Genetically, or developmentally? JM: Well, certainly genetically in the sense of how it came about biologically, but also the notion of development in a particular individual, where you have to take into account – as you make very clear in your recent work – the contributions of this third factor that you have been emphasizing. I wonder if that doesn't bring into question the nature of modularity [of language] – it's an issue that used to be discussed with a set of assumptions that amounted to thinking that one could look at a particular part of the brain and ignore the rest of it . NC: I never believed that. Way back about fifty years ago, when we were starting to talk about it, I don't think anyone assumed that that had to be true. Eric Lenneberg was interested in – we were all interested in – whatever is known about localization, which does tell us something about what the faculty is. But if it was distributed all over the brain, so be it . . . JM: It's not so much the matter of localization that is of interest to me, but rather the matter of what you have to take into account in producing an account of development. And that seems to have grown in recent years . NC: Well, the third factor was always in the background. It's just that it was out of reach. And the reason it was out of reach, as I tried to explain in the LSA paper (2005a), was that as long as the concept of Universal Grammar, or linguistic theory, is understood as a format and an evaluation procedure, then you're almost compelled to assume it is highly language-specific and very highly articulated and restricted, or else you can't deal with the acquisition problem. That makes it almost impossible to understand how it could follow any general principles. It's not like a logical contradiction, but the two efforts are tending in opposite directions.

Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, yet his views are often misunderstood. In this previously unpublished series of interviews, Chomsky discusses his iconoclastic and important ideas concerning language, human nature and politics. In dialogue with James McGilvray, Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Chomsky takes up a wide variety of topics – the nature of language, the philosophies of language and mind, morality and universality, science and common sense, and the evolution of language. McGilvray's extensive commentary helps make this incisive set of interviews accessible to a variety of readers. The volume is essential reading for those involved in the study of language and mind, as well as anyone with an interest in Chomsky's ideas.

JM: Still in the vein we've been talking about, I'd like to ask about linguistic development (language growth) in the individual. You've employed the concept of – or at least alluded to the concept of – canalization, C. H. Waddington's term from about fifty or sixty years ago, and suggested that the linguistic development of the child is like canalization. Can parameters be understood as a way of capturing canalization? NC: Canalization sounds like the right idea, but as far as I know, there are not a lot of empirical applications for it in biology. With regard to parameters, there are some basic questions that have to be answered. One question is: why isn't there only a single language? Why do languages vary at all? So suppose this mutation – the great leap forward – took place; why didn't it fix the language exactly? We don't know what the parameters are, but whatever they are, why is it these, and not those? So those questions have got to come up, but they are really at the edge of research. There's a conceivable answer in terms of optimal efficiency – efficiency of computation. That answer could be something like this, although no one's proposed it; it's really speculation. To the extent that biology yields a single language, that increases the genetic load: you have to have more genetic information to determine a single language than you do to allow for a variety of languages. So there's kind of a saving in having languages not be too minimal. On the other hand, it makes acquisition much harder: it's easier to acquire a minimal language. And it could be that there's a mathematical solution to this problem of simultaneous maximization: how can you optimize these two conflicting factors? It would be a nice problem; but you can't formulate it. And there are other speculations around; you've read Mark Baker's book ( Atoms of Language ), haven't you?

Chomsky Noam, Guignard Jean-Baptiste. Beyond Linguistic Wars. An Interview with Noam Chomsky. In: Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, n°56, 2011/2. Linguistique cognitive : une exploration critique. pp. 21-27.

This is the first of a series of three interviews featuring Steven Pinker, Kenneth Wexler, and Noam Chornsky, three giant figures in the fields of Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, and Cognitive Science. The three scientists teach at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States. The fiTst interview is with Professor Steven Pinker, The other two interviews will appear in subsequent issues of this Journal. The contents of the interviews bear on issues related with the evolution of psycholinguistics (past and present), the very notion of language and its acquisition and development in children, the contribution of recent linguistic theories to psycholinguistics and particularly developmental psycholinguistics. Some more personal questions and answers concern the personal contributions of Pinker, Wexler, and Chomsky to the movement of ideas in linguistics and psycholinguistics as they see it, as well as their own professional formation and development. Steven Pinker, ...