Noam+Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is a linguist, scientist, political writer, and so many more things. You can read about him [|here].

One thing Chomsky is known for in linguistics is his observation that the human mind has innate structures for learning and using language. The first article to look at is a very early one in which he criticizes B.F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior. Skinner, as you may recall, was an empiricist who believed that one could understand complex behaviors such as language use only through considering the interaction between the organism and the environment and especially the reward structures in place in the environment.

Skinner's theory was widely adopted in the field of education and still limits how we structure our plans for learning, our understanding of interpersonal interactions, and our attempts to solve problems in our school communities. For example, bullying is often defined in behavioral terms, without regard for the internal structures of the human mind that actually govern behavior. Thus, some things get called "bullying" that are not and other things are not identified as bullying when the intent behind them is truly aggressive.

It is important to understand how pervasive Skinner's theory is and also how terribly limited it is. So...partially in the interest of introducing Chomsky and also in the interest of bringing to the foreground one of the most problematic aspects of our beloved field, here is Chomsky's critique of Skinner.

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Later, Chomsky went on to do many things, among them develop his own theory of linguistics that works far better than that of Skinner. Here is a chapter from Chomsky's book, Cartesian Linguistics. Don't panic--Chomsky's actual writing begins on page 62 of the pdf--the rest is introduction, which can actually be helpful, as Chomsky's writing is dense.

http://196.29.172.66:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1627/1/Cartesian%20linguistics.pdf

Chomsky reviews significant thoughts about language development.