Noam Chomsky – Biography of Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, on December 7, 1928. Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Theoretical Communication Technology, he is recognized as the founder of the generative grammar – transformational, which is often indicated as the most important contribution to theoretical linguistics of the 20th century.

Also called “Transformational grammar“, the theory of Chomsky was born in the 50s: Chomsky he argues that structuralism has missed the fundamental problem of the creativity of language; establishes that to understand the functioning of a language it is not enough to discover only the structure. According to Chomsky, grammar is a mental ability that allows endless sentences to be formed and therefore is based on the innate knowledge of the universal principles that govern the creation of language.

The influence of the thought of Chomsky it goes beyond linguistics and offers vivid testimony also in philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theories, neurology, and information science.

His father’s name was William Zev Chomsky, a Hebrew scholar who emigrated to the US from Russia. Noam He studied linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, under the direction of Zellig Harris, founder of the first department of linguistics at an American university. Noam in 1949 he married the linguist Carol Schatz.

In 1955 he began working at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), as an assistant professor at the Institute, where he remained for more than 50 years.

Public in 1957 the book “Syntactic structures“(Syntax Structures), containing the principles of his revolutionary theory of transformational generative grammar. Two years later, he published an extensive review of the”Verbal behavior“By BF Skinner, then the best-known exponent of behaviorism: the article contains a strong and articulate critique of behaviorism.

Between 1965 and 1966, he published “Aspects of syntax theory” Y “Cartesian linguistics“, which importantly fix linguistic positions and philosophical ancestry Chomsky. These were followed by “Language and Mind“, published in 1968.

In the 70s Chomsky He is already the most influential scholar in linguistics, not only in the United States, but also in the rest of the world. However, he continues to deepen and reinforce his theories with numerous articles and essays (“The logical structure of linguistic theory“- 1975,”Reflections on language“- 1976,”Language and knowledge problems“- 1988).

In the mid-60s Chomsky is strongly aligned against the Vietnam War: thus, academic activity is joined by a political and social commitment, which will last for years. The constant and direct criticism of the foreign policy of the different countries and, in particular the USA, as well as the analysis of the role of the media in Western democracies, will make Chomsky one of the most famous and followed intellectuals of the American and world radical left today.