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Chomskyan linguistics
Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms
By Richard Nordquist
Grammar & Composition Expert
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- IFC Films
In 2013, French film director Michel Gondry released an animated documentary--Is
the Man Who Is Tall Happy?--based on a series of recent conversations with Noam
Chomsky (b. 1928). IFC Films
Definition:
A broad term for the principles of language and the methods of language study in
troduced and/or popularized by American linguist Noam Chomsky in such groundbrea
king works as Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1
965). Also spelled Chomskian linguistics and sometimes treated as a synonym for
formal linguistics.
In the article "Universalism and Human Difference
in Chomskyan Linguistics" (Chomskyan [R]evolutions, 2010), Christopher Hutton ob
serves that "Chomskyan linguistics is defined by a fundamental commitment to uni
versalism and to the existence of a shared species-wide knowledge grounded in hu
man biology."
See Examples and Observations, below. Also see:
Cognitive Linguistics
Deep Structure and Surface Structure
Generative Grammar and Transformational Grammar
Linguistic Competence and Linguistic Performance
Mental Grammar and Universal Grammar
Pragmatic Competence
Syntax
Ten Types of Grammar
What Is Linguistics?
Examples and Observations:
"The only place a language occupies in Chomskyan linguistics is non-geograph
ical, in the speaker's mind."
(Pius ten Hacken, "The Disappearance of the Geographical Dimension of Langua
ge in American Linguistics." The Space of English, ed. by David Spurr and Cornel
ia Tschichold. Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005)
"Roughly stated, Chomskyan linguistics claims to reveal something about the
mind, but imperviously prefers a strictly autonomist methodology over the open d
ialogue with psychology that would seem to be implied by such a claim."
(Dirk Geeraerts, "Prototype Theory." Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings,
ed. by Dirk Geeraerts. Walter de Gruyter, 2006)

The Origin and Influence of Chomskyan Linguistics

"[I]n 1957, the young American linguist Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Str
uctures, a brief and watered-down summary of several years of original research.
In that book, and in his succeeding publications, Chomsky made a number of revo
lutionary proposals: he introduced the idea of a generative grammar, developed a
particular kind of generative grammar called transformational grammar, rejected
his predecessors' emphasis on the description of data--in favour of a highly th
eoretical approach based upon a search for universal principles of language (lat
er called universal grammar)--proposed to turn linguistics firmly toward mentali
sm, and laid the foundation for integrating the field into the as yet unnamed ne
w discipline of cognitive science.
"Chomsky's ideas excited a whole generation of students . . .. Today Chomsky
's influence is undimmed, and Chomskyan linguistics form a large and maximally p
rominent cohort among the community of linguists, to such an extent that outside
rs often have the impression that linguistics is Chomskyan linguistics . . .. Bu
t this is seriously misleading.
"In fact, the majority of the world's linguists would acknowledge no more th
an the vaguest debt to Chomsky, if even that."
(Robert Lawrence Trask and Peter Stockwell, Language and Linguistics: The Ke
y Concepts, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007)
"In the latter half of the twentieth century, Chomskyan linguistics dominate
d most branches of the field apart from semantics, although many alternative app
roaches were proposed. All of these alternatives share the assumption that a sat
isfactory linguistic theory is in principle applicable to all languages. In that
sense, universal grammar is as alive today as it was in antiquity."
(Jaap Maat, "General or Universal Grammar From Plato to Chomsky." The Oxford
Handbook of the History of Linguistics, ed. by Keith Allan. Oxford University P
ress, 2013)
From Behaviorism to Mentalism
"The revolutionary nature of Chomskyan linguistics must be considered within
the framework of another 'revolution,' in psychology, from behaviorism to cogni
tivism. George Miller dates this paradigm shift to a conference held at M.I.T. i
n 1956, in which Chomsky participated. . . . Chomsky evolves from behaviorism to
mentalism between Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Synt
ax (1965). This led psycholinguists to consider the relationship between deep st
ructure and surface structure in processing. However the results were not very p
romising, and Chomsky himself seemed to abandon psychological reality as a relev
ant consideration in linguistic analysis. His focus on intuition favored rationa
lism over empiricism, and innate structures over acquired behavior. This biologi
cal turn--the search for the language 'organ, the 'language acquisition device,'
etc.--became the new foundation for a science of linguistics."
(Malcolm D. Hyman, "Chomsky Between Revolutions." Chomskyan (R)evolutions, e
d. by Douglas A. Kibbee. John Benjamins, 2010)
Characteristics of Chomskyan Linguistics
"For the sake of simplicity, we list some of the characteristics of the Chom
skyan approach:
- Formalism. . . . Chomskyan linguistics sets out to define and specify
the rules and principles which generate the grammatical or well-formed sentences
of a language.
- Modularity. The mental grammar is regarded as a special module of the
mind which constitutes a separate cognitive faculty which has no connection with
other mental capacities.
- Sub-modularity. Mental grammar is thought to be divided into other sub
-modules. Some of these sub-modules are the X-bar principle or the Theta princip
le. Each of them has a particular function. The interaction of these smaller com
ponents results in the complexities of syntactic structures.

- Abstractness. With the passing of time, Chomskyan linguistics has beco

me more and more abstract. By this we mean that entities and processes put forwa
rd do not overtly manifest themselves in linguistic expressions. By way of illus
tration, take the case of underlying structures which hardly resemble surface st
ructures.
- Search for high-level generalization. Those aspects of linguistic know
ledge which are idiosyncratic and do not abide by general rules are disregarded
from a theoretical point of view since they are regarded as uninteresting. The o
nly aspects which deserve attention are those which are subject to general princ
iples such as wh-movement or raising."
(Ricardo Mairal Usn, et al., Current Trends in Linguistic Theory. UNED, 2006)
Chomskyan Linguistics as a Research Program
"Chomskyan linguistics is a research program in linguistics. As such, it sho
uld be distinguished from Chomsky's linguistic theory. While both were conceived
by Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s, their aims and later development are strikin
gly different. Chomsky's linguistic theory went through a number of stages in it
s development . . .. Chomskyan linguistics, by contrast, remained stable during
this period. It does not refer to tree structures but specifies what a linguisti
c theory should explain and how such a theory should be evaluated.
"Chomskyan linguistics defines the object of study as the knowledge of langu
age a speaker has. This knowledge is called the linguistic competence or interna
lized language (I-language). It is not open to conscious, direct introspection,
but a wide range of its manifestations can be observed and used as data for the
study of language."
(Pius ten Hacken, "Formalism/Formalist Linguistics." Concise Encyclopedia of
Philosophy of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Alex Barber and Robert J. Staint
on. Elsevier, 2010)
Alternate Spellings: Chomskian linguistics
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