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Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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He wrote his first article at age 10 on the spread of fascism following the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, from the age of 12 or 13, identified with anarchist politics.He later described his discovery of anarchism as "a lucky accident".
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At the age of 16, Chomsky began a general program of study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he explored philosophy, logic, and languages and developed a primary interest in learning Arabic. While he was living at home, he funded his undergraduate degree by teaching Hebrew
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In 1947 Chomsky began a romantic relationship with Carol Doris Schatz, whom he had known since early childhood and they married in 1949
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Since he grew frustrated with his experiences at the university, he considered dropping out, but his intellectual curiosity was reawakened through conversations with the Russian-born linguist Zellig Harris. Harris introduced Chomsky to the field of theoretical linguistics and convinced him to major in the subject. Chomsky's BA honors thesis, "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", which he later revised this thesis for his MA was subsequently published as a book.
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In 1952 Chomsky published his first academic article, Systems of Syntactic Analysis, which appeared in The Journal of Symbolic Logic.
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Chomsky befriended two linguists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Morris Halle and Roman Jakobson, the latter of whom secured him an assistant professor position there in 1955
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The Chomskys had their first child in 1957, a daughter named Aviva
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In 1961 he became a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics for MIT
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Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
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Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar and Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought
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Chomsky joined protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1962. His 1967 critique of U.S. involvement, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" and other political articles were collected and published in 1969 as part of Chomsky's first political book, American Power and the New Mandarins.
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In 1970 he visited southeast Asia to lecture at Vietnam's Hanoi University of Science and Technology and toured war refugee camps in Laos. In 1973 he helped lead a committee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War Resisters League.
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published the above book as well as For Reasons of State this year.
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Highly critical of the established behaviorist currents in linguistics, in 1955 he submitted a thesis setting out his ideas on transformational grammar; which he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree for it, and it was privately distributed among specialists on microfilm before being published in 1975 as part of The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
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Another political book he published.
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