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Birth
Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, PA. He is a highly recognized linguist, political activist, and philosopher also known as the "Father of Modern Linguistics." He continues to remain a figure in politics and frequently lectures at various colleges and universities (McGilvray, n.d.). Photograph (Cannon, 2011). -
Academic Pursuits
Chomsky grew up in a household that valued education. He was publishing papers as early as 10 and began his collegiate career at the University of Pennsylvania at 16. He studied philosophy, languages, and linguistics eventually graduating from UPenn with a BA and MA in Linguistics. His Master's Thesis was a book titled "The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory", a portion of which was also submitted as his PhD dissertation (McGilvray, n.d.). Photograph (Creamer, 2011). -
Published Syntactic Structures
Chomsky's first published book was title Syntactic Structures. This book was a compilation of lecture notes for courses he taught at MIT. Syntactic Structures described thoughts on generative grammar, specifically on how grammar is structured. The book was well received in the linguistic community and helped to establish Chomsky as a scholar in the field of linguistics (McGilvray, n.d.). Photograph (Zaheen, 2016). -
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Career in Academia
Chomsky holds Institute Professor Emeritus status at MIT and has been a professor or lecturer there since 1957. He is currently Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. In his career, he has lectured all over the world, including Stanford, MIT, and Harvard (McGilvray, n.d.). -
Thoughts on Universal Grammar
One of Chomsky's most well known theories is one called Universal Grammar. Chomsky theorizes that all humans are born with the same ability to learn every language, regardless of the first language spoken. There is no genetic predisposition to being able to learn one language versus another; evidence shows that the language skills demonstrated by infants is similar across different cultures around the world (Hanoon Umarlebbe & Binti Mat Said, 2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNFGWJOXjA -
Published Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
LSLT was written as Chomsky's Master's Thesis and revised and submitted for his PhD in Linguistics in 1955. It wasn't fully published as a book until 1975. The book present's Chomsky's early thoughts on transformational grammar and how words and sentences combine to form the building blocks of a natural language (Encyclopaedia Brittanica.). Chomsky describes his views on the structure of language in this interview on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3U6MsdBalg.
Photograph (Rusk, 2011)