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Birth
Born Avram Noam Chomsky in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928. -
PhD in Linguistics
Earned his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. -
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Professor at MIT
Since completing his PhD he has been a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). -
Publication of Syntactic Structures. Chomsky, Noam. “Syntactic Structures." Mouton, (1957).
His doctoral dissertation explored several ideas that he laid out in his best-known book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures (4, 5). Chomsky believed the basic concepts of language were innate in every human’s mind and only influenced by one’s syntactical environment (4). ).” This innate biological basis of language independent of learned grammar “explains why children are able to learn different languages more easily than adults (4)”. -
Impact on linguistics
According to Robert Freidin, “Chomsky has wrought a revolution without precedent in the history of linguistics (2).” -
Relation to the Philosophy of Science
If Chomsky’s premise can be further defined and refined, could it present a partial solution to Kuhn’s concept of incommensurability across paradigms? Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability containing the aspect that individuals from different paradigms not being able to communicate adequately due to different “languages” (3).” -
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Impact on Academia
Whether his idea further impacts the study of science or not, it does currently impact a multitude of other academic pursuits. A cursory search on APUS library for syntactic structure reveals results not only in linguistics but in biology (songbirds), music, psychology, and computer programming. -
References
1 Chomsky, Noam. “Syntactic Structures.” Mouton, (1957). 2 Freidin, Robert. “Noam Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics: A Sketch.” The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, (2013). 3 Godfrey-Smith, Peter. “Theory and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of science.” University of Chicago Press, (2003). 4 https://www.biography.com/scholar/noam-chomsky 5 https://chomsky.info/ -
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