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Birth
Noam Chomsky was born Avram Noam Chomsky in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7th, 1928 (McGilvary, 2022). -
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Elementary Education
Chomsky attended an elementary school that allowed him to study at his own pace and develop his own interests (McGilvary, 2022). -
Interests Develop
When Chomsky was just ten years old, he began writing editorials in the school newspaper. One of these editorials was over the Spanish Civil War and fascism in Europe. These became large topics for Chomsky (McGilvary, 2022). -
Journey to the Future
At thirteen, Chomsky started traveling to New York, alone, where he found yet another interest of his, reading. He would find many different books on different topics that allowed him to expand his knowledge. He also found a jewish community that helped him develop political thinking (McGilcary, 2022). -
College
Chomsky started college at the mere age of 16 years old at the University of Pennsylvania. At first he found nothing that piqued his interests, until he met Zellig Harris, a linguist who had similar political views to Chomsky. Chomsky studied under Harris as well as philosopher Nelson Goodman. -
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Harvard
Chomsky studied at Harvard where he developed his master's thesis his junior year. He based his thesis off of Harris and Goodman's ideas of linguistics and the philosophy of science (McGilvary, 2022). -
PhD
Chomsky received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in linguistics (McGilvary, 2022). -
MIT
Chomsky was offered a teaching position at MIT that required him to spend ample time on machine translation (McGilvary, 2022). -
Syntactic Structures
Chomsky published a book title Syntactic Structures, which would lead MIT to ask Chomsky to help develop and linguistics program (McGilvary, 2022). -
Professor
Chomsky was made a professor at MIT (McGilvary, 2022). -
Another Promotion
Chomsky was made Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics (McGilvary, 2022). -
Interesting Development
Based on his studies he did while in elementary school, Chomsky developed "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" where Chomsky reviewed works by Gabriel Johnson and his views on the same time period of the Spanish Civil War and rise of fascism (McGilvary, 2022). -
Master's Thesis Published
The ideas Chomsky wrote his master's thesis on were published into "The Morphoponemics of Modern Hebrew" and "The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (LSLT)." The ideas written in these were rejected by Harris and Goodman since it went against their own theories. -
Philosophy of Science pt 1
Chomsky challenged Goodman's idea that the child's mind at birth is a blank state to be developed at they grow. Chomsky states that the basics are there, which allows the child's mind to grow depending on the environment they are in (McGilvary, 2022). A great example of this is children who grow up in bilingual homes, they learn speech in both languages as they start talking. -
Philosophy of Science pt. 2
Chomsky also challenged Harris' theories that language studies are data studies. Chomsky states that language studies variable depending on each subject you study, and therefore cannot be studied as data (McGilvary, 2022). -
Philosophy of Science pt. 3
Chomsky goes on to develop his theories of linguistics, explaining that their creativity and problem solving skills develop from the moment they are able to speak. Given an example, mathematics, children may be able to solve a problem with little prompting, and with little background knowledge. Chomsky labels this as "Plato's problem" (McGilvary, 2022). -
Another Promotion pt. 2
Chomsky became Institute professor (McGilvary, 2022). -
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Philosophy of Science pt, 4
Chomsky worked with many other linguists to develop his theories further. He developed his theory of principles and parameters. Principles are steadfast rules in all situations, where parameters vary depending on circumstance. Chomsky would continue to develop these theories until he was satisfied. Many of the theories Chomsky challenged were rejected by philosophers and linguists (McGilvary, 2022). -
Retirement and educational video
Chomsky retired with his final status being professor emeritus (McGilvary, 2022). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br8n_3x6MDo