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Born
Avram Noam Chomsky was born on 7 December 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and professors. They encouraged self-directed learning to develop his interests. -
Fundamental Views
At the age of 13, Chomsky started to travel to New York to spend time with his uncle, who owned a newsstand. His interactions with the Jewish community would "enriched and confirmed the beliefs that would underlie his political views throughout his life" (McGilvray). -
College Education
The University of Pennsylvania is where Chomsky first got introduced into his linguistics studies at 16. Zellig Harris, a structural linguistics professor, became a mentor and pushed him into the direction of language and society. He then finished his B.A. and M.A. in nontraditional models of study. His master's thesis was in regards to "the basic concepts of language were innate in every human's mind and then only influenced by one's syntactical environment" (Chomsky). -
Love and New Beginnings
Chomsky married his childhood friend Carol Schatz and had three children together. They lived in Israel between educational focuses. When they returned to the states, he pursued his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania while writing at Harvard University. This writing came to be the book Syntactic Structures. -
Graduate to Professor
Chomsky received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Soon after, he became a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in their Linguistics and Philosophy Department until 2005, when he retired. After his retirement, he continued to lecture at many Ivey League Schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cgpfw4z8cw -
Today
The "father of modern linguistics" is still alive today at the age of 91. He resides in Philadelphia, PA, where he spent his late years after his wife's passing in 2008. His views on the human brain's distinctive traits are what gave birth to language, and grammar has changed how language will forever be viewed.
