Date post: | 15-Jul-2015 |
Category: |
Education |
Upload: | nabeela-taimur-ali |
View: | 322 times |
Download: | 1 times |
Avram Noam Chomsky (7-12-1928)
American Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive scientist and logician.
Noam Chomsky is a prolific writer and
scholar of linguistics etc., written over 700
articles and more than 50 books during the
past 40 years.
In field of linguistics, he is known as father
of modern linguistics, and founder of TGG.
Chomskyian revolution, name given
to his theories; universal grammar n
role of brain in language use is center
of his theories
Was voted "world's top public intellectual" in a
2005 poll.
Many have said that his early works are "the
single most important books in cognitive
science."
Age 16; university of pennsylvania, Arabic. Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew; B-A.
revised it for M-A.
1975 book was published, The Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory.
1955 he was awarded his PHD from the
university of Pennsylvania for a
thesis setting out his ideas on TG.
Syntactic Structures: his first book
published, caused upheaval. Later John Lyon asserted that it "revolutionized the scientific study of
language”.
Aspects of theory of linguistics. Topics in
the theory of Generative Grammar. Language and mind.
1959 he attracted further attention for
his review of B.F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior in which he argued that Skinner ignored the role of human creativity in
linguistics.
Chomsky’s Linguistic Beliefs in a nutshell:
In the 1940s and 1950s, before Chomsky emerged on the scene, linguistic study focused mainly on performance (how people spoke – the language that came out of their mouths). Generally, what we might classify as a superficial view of language was held by many in the field. Language was thought to go in and to come out, and not much was believed to happen in between. In other words, linguists of the 1940s and 1950s thought that language existed in itself and that the brain was not involved in the use of language and its process.
Syntactic Structures(1957)
Competence; radically different view from
establish belief.
“Unconscious knowledge people have about
language”.
Chomsky criticized the establishment for
describing performance, and instead set out to explain competence.
Precisely; he wanted to study how the brain
processed and dealt with language. This was not
part of linguistics.
"Our natural order of thoughts is mirrored by
our words."
Language might be "unconscious" and “innate”
This idea was in direct contrast with the popular linguistic beliefs of 1950s.
This triggered; criticism and commentary on new
ideas.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)
Clarify and refine his abstract ideas.
Created mathematical formula that attempts to examine how language is
situated in the brain.
Deep structure/ base rules. These base rules generate
strings of "phrase markers," which are the elementary units of deep structure.
Surface structure/ phonetic interpretation of deep
structure. Though not always correlate one-to-one in his
formula.
In Chomsky’s theory, both operate as distinct, yet
related, entities. Syntax ties them together; made
Chomsky focus on Syntax.
First half; debunking traditional ideas. Second
half; mathematical structures of language.
Divided into two parts, surface structure and deep
structure,
He later recanted some of his ideas about deep structure and language, his theories
still provide basis for linguistics study.
Minimalism
Principles and Parameters Approach
Standard Theory/ Extended Standard
theory
Transformational Generative Grammar
Transformational Grammar.
Generative Grammar
TG/TGG
Deepstructure; invisible, inaudible
interface to the mental lexicon.
DS is converted by
transformational rules into
surface structure.
• Rationale:certain
constructions at surface
structure n deep
structure.
TGG syntactic theory is the
theory of competence.
Few principleand concepts.
1.Speaker-listener
competence. 2. Language is creative and innovative.
3.TGG is a set of grammatical rules
that provide clarity to the
sentence. 4.The language is a
mirror of mind.
Standard theory.
Theory corresponds
to the original
model of generative grammar.
It’s core aspect is a distinction
between two different
representations of a
sentence.
At first in TGG,
active/passive pairs had identical
deep structures.
Need/result… active/passive pairs had almost-but-
not-quite identical
deep structures.
Semantic component was added.
Extended Standard Theory
(1965–1973)
Had two important features.
Syntactic constraints
.
Generalized phrase
structures (X-bar theory)
Government and Binding theory’s view is that Universal Grammar can be broken down into two main components: levels of representation and a system of constraints.
Lexicon
D-structure
Move-a
S-structure
Move-a
Stylistic and
Phonological
rules
PF LF
Standard
Theory
GB Theory
a. deep structure D- structure
b. surface
structure
S- structure
c. phonological
rules
Phonetic form or
PF rules
d. semantic
component
Logical form or
LF rules
P and P is a framework within generative linguistics in which the
syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with
general principles and specific parameters that for particular
languages are either turned on or off.
Central idea of P & P is that a person's syntactic knowledge can be
modeled with two formal mechanisms:
1.A finite set of fundamental principles . 2. A finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst
languages
Principles and Parameters is also known as
GB theory. Both refers to the
same school in the generative
tradition grammar of
phrase structure.
Within this framework goal of linguistics is to identify all the principles
and parameters that are
universal to human
language.
Some of the most important technical
innovations are:
1. The generalization of X-bar theory into the
bare phrase structure. Bottom-up sentence construction/ Top-
down….x-bar.
2. Eliminating the distinction between deep structure and surface structure.
3. The elimination of the notion of government.
4. The idea that syntactic derivations proceed by
clearly delineated stages called phases.
5. The inclusion of a single point of
interaction between syntax and the interfaces;
called Spell out.
Two Basic Theories Related To The
Economy:
Economy of derivation; movements (i.e.
Transformations) only occur in order to match
interpretable featureswith uninterpretable
features.
Economy of representation;
grammatical structures must exist for a purpose.
MP is a major line of inquiry
developed inside
generative grammar, Chomsky
presents MP as a program not as
a theory. For Chomsky there are minimalist questions and there answers
can form a theory. The one question which
plays most crucial role is; why language
has the properties it
has?
CONCULSION: Chomsky brought revolution in the world of linguistics; by
focusing on syntax. That’s the reason why he was voted as one of world’s top public intellectuals. From 1950 till now he is continuously working hard; bringing positive changes to his theories; facing criticism and moving ahead with his head held high. His works at first faced criticism, but later accepted by other linguists and explored further. His latest work Minimalist Program faced criticism too, but by his past records he proved that he takes them positively and keeps on striving for better results. That’s the reason why he is called father of modern linguistics.