Abstract
Trained as a structuralist linguist with Zellig Harris, Chomksy made his name as a revolutionary figure in twentieth-century linguistics by proposing a new model of linguistic description—generative grammar—and eventually a new model of doing linguistic science. While I believe that Chomsky (especially in his later phase) may have moved out of the structuralist camp, it will be argued that he still espouses a reified and systemic view of language. I will in this part investigate how Chomskyan linguistics subscribes to a system view of language and how this view is closely linked to his advocacy of linguistics as a science. By placing language users’ competence at a central place, Chomsky draws attention to the role of human speakers; yet as will be made clear in the following discussions, his idealized scientific model gives rise to and sponsors a constrained and deterministic image of the human speaker.
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Notes
- 1.
As is observed by Martin Joos, ‘We must attempt to place this movement in relation to our neo-Saussurean tradition, in which our neo-Bloomfieldian “discriptive linguistics” is the most conspicuous sect on the American scene. The Generative Grammar movement seems to flout this tradition; but it does not so much by denying or reversing any of its tenets as by disregarding some of them as irrelevant to the descriptive program. This makes it possible to attempt to describe the movement as a heresy within the neo-Saussurean tradition rather than as a competitor to it’ (1961, p. 17).
- 2.
In his later publications (Chomsky, 1986, pp. 36–37), even this role is diminished when Chomsky plunges deep into researching about the neural-biological basis of the language faculty.
- 3.
Wise (2011, p. 16) points out that influenced by Chomskyan model of linguistic knowledge, primary school teaching in some parts of the USA sets one of its goals to be ‘allowing students to discover the unconscious knowledge they already possess with respect to language and language rules’.
- 4.
He touches upon this issue when talking about Cartesian linguistics: ‘That the principles of language and natural logic are known unconsciously, and that they are in large measure a precondition for language acquisition rather than a matter of ‘institution’ or ‘training’ is the general presupposition of Cartesian linguistics.’ (1966/2009, p. 101)
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Zhou, F. (2020). Chomsky: System and the Ideal Speaker–Hearer. In: Models of the Human in Twentieth-Century Linguistic Theories. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1255-1_4
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