On C homsky’s View of LanguageAbstract: As a pioneer linguist，Noam Chomsky enjoys a position within linguistics probably unprecedented in the whole history of the subject. From his first book Syntactic Structures, published in 1957, he has been engaged in the linguistic study and brought many innovative ideas to linguistics, especially in the aspects of grammatical theory. His theory of grammar is undoubtedly the most dynamic and influential.This thesis reviews the development of Chomsky’s linguistic the ories and its philosophical foundation for linguistics, including his major contributions, like the theory of transformational-generative grammar that revolutionalized the scientific study of language. This systematic and historical overview of his linguistic studies will surely help to get a deeper understanding of Chomsky’s academic contributions and give a mathematically precise description of some of the most striking features of language.Key words: view of language; philosophical foundation for linguistics1.IntroductionNoam Chomsky is one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. The most cited writer in the humanities, his work has revolutionized the field of linguistics, and has dominated many other disciplines including politics and the philosophy of mind and human nature. He has also contributed significantly to our understanding of the abuse of power, and of the controlling effects of the mass media.Since the very day on which Chomsky’s theories were established, there have been many arguments. There are many faithful followers,while some people are radical objectors. Many researches have been made on his linguistic ideas and there have been quite a few breakthroughs. However, most of the study is limited to a certain developmental period of his theories, or an introduction of a certain theoretical work.This thesis aims to make an exploration of Chomsky’s linguistic ideas, which makes up for the limitation of previous researches. This is not only an exploration of a great linguist’s the ory, but also an exploration of the linguistic development since 1957. By doing this research, we can absorb some conducive experience and study methods.In the following chapter, I will make a comprehensive study of Chomsky’s linguistic revolution, namely the transformational grammar. In Chapter Three, we can see the major developmental phases of Chomsky’s linguistic ideas, from the transformational grammar, to Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory, REST, GB to Minimalist Program. Chapter Four focuses on the philosophical foundation of his linguistic concept, which constitutes the bedrock on which the rest is built. In the last chapter, I will summarize the creative findings and the significance of them, including the great impact on the past and present linguistic study and the outlook of future development.2.Chomsky and His Linguistic Ideas2.1 BiographyNoam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His undergraduate and graduate years were spent at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. While a Junior Fellow hecompleted his doctoral dissertation entitled, "Transformational Analysis." The major theoretical viewpoints of the dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, which was published in 1957. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in 1975.Chomsky received a faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.) From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor.Chomsky has received honorary degrees from University of London, University of Chicago, Loyola University of Chicago, Swarthmore College, Delhi University, Bard College, University of Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Amherst College, Cambridge University, University of Buenos Aires, McGill University, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Columbia University, University of Connecticut, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, Harvard University, University of Calcutta, and Universidad Nacional De Colombia. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Science. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others.Alongside his career as a linguist, Chomsky has been active in left-wing politics. In 1965 he organized a citizen's committee to publicize tax refusal in protest to the war in Vietnam; four years later he published his first book on politics American Power and the New Mandarins. By the 1980's he had become both the most distinguished figure of American linguistics and one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy. He has been extremely prolific as a writer: his web-site in 2003 listed 33 book publications in linguistics (broadly construed), and although the individuation of his political books is complicated, their number definitely exceeds 40. According to a 1992 tabulation of sources from the previous 12 years in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Chomsky was the most frequently-cited person alive, and one of the eight most frequently-cited authors of all time.2.2 Linguistic Revolution2.2.1 Finite-State GrammarsThe aim of the linguistic theory by Chomsky in Syntactic Structures (1957) was essentially to describe syntax, to specify the grammatical rules underlying the construction of sentences. In Syntactic Structure, Chomsky discussed “three models for the description of language”. Before going to deal with these three models, we have to make clear about some assumptions. The first is the language that is described by a particular grammar as the set of all the sentences it generates. In principle, the set of sentences may be finite or infinite in number. However, English comprises an infinite number of sentences, because there are sentences and phrases in the language that can be extended indefinitely and will yet be accepted as perfectly normal by native speakers. The point is that no definite limit can be set to the length of English sentences. Therefore, intheory, the number of grammatical sentences in the language is infinite while the number of words in the vocabulary of English is finite. There is also assumption that the distinct operations that are involved in the generation of English sentences are finite in number. If the grammar is to consist of a finite set of rules operating upon a finite vocabulary and is to be capable of generating an infinite set of sentences, it follows that at least some of the rules must be applicable more than once in the generation of the same sentences. These rules and the structures that they generate are recursive in nature.The simplest grammars that Chomsky discusses are capable of generating an infinite set of sentences by means of a finite number of recursive rules operating upon a finite vocabulary. These are what he calls finite-state grammars. Chomsky gradually found out the inadequacy of finite-grammars because there are certain regular processes of sentence formation in English that cannot be accounted for within the framework of finite-state grammar.Chomsky gradually found out the inadequacy of finite-grammars because there are certain regular processes of sentence formation in English that cannot be accounted for within the framework of finite-state grammar.2.2.2 Phrase Structure GrammarIn order to make up for the deficiency of finite-state grammars, Chomsky made the second of his “three models for the description of language”, phrase structure grammar. There are sets of sentences that can be generated by a phrase structure grammar but not by a finite-state grammar. As we all know, the first task of Chomsky's syntax is to account for the speaker's understanding of the internal structure ofsentences. In the view of Chomsky, sentences are not unordered strings of words, rather the words and morphemes are grouped into functional constituents such as the subject of the sentence, the predicate, the direct object, and so on. Two strings of elements may have the same linear structure but differ with respect to their phrase structure, and the difference in their phrase structure may be semantically relevant. This phenomenon is “constructional homonymity” in Syntactic Structures or structural ambiguity. With this mode of syntactic structure, Chomsky is the first to show how it could be formalized by means of a system of generative rules and to Chomsky claims that the phrase structure rules constructed by the grammarian "represent" the speaker’s competence. Though phrase structure were already implicit, such rules were not adequate to account for all the syntactical facts of natural languages.Phrase structure rules alone could not account for the various sorts of cases such as "I like her cooking" and "John is eager to please." John R. Searle made some analyses in Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistic s. First, within such a grammar there is no natural way to describe the ambiguities in a sentence such as "I like her cooking." Phrase structure rules alone would provide only one derivation for this sentence; but as the sentence is syntactically ambiguous, the grammar should reflect that fact by providing several different syntactical derivations and hence several different syntactical descriptions. Secondly, phrase structure grammars have no way to picture the differences between "John is easy to please" and "John is eager to please." Though the sentences are syntactically different, phrase structure rules alone would give them similar phrase markers. Thirdly, just as in the above examples surface similarities conceal underlying differences that cannot be revealed by phrase structure grammar, so surface differences also conceal underlyingsimilarities. For example, in spite of the different word order and the addition of certain elements, the sentence "The book will be read by the boy" and the sentence "The boy will read the book" have much in common: they both mean the same thing—the only difference is that one is in the passive mood and the other in the active mood. Phrase structure grammars alone give us no way to picture this similarity.They would give us two unrelated descriptions of these two sentences. Chomsky has not been able to prove the possibility that there are sentences that cannot be generated by phrase structure. But in Syntactic Structures, he claims there are sentences that can only be desc ribed “clumsily” within the framework of phrase structure grammar, in an unrevealing or ad hoc way.2.2.3 Transformational GrammarAs the last one of “three models for the description of language”, transformational grammar, which is far more complex than phrase structure grammar, yields a “simpler” description of certain sentences.A transformational grammar doesn’t consist only of transformational rules, but a set of phrase structure rules as well. Different phrase markers produced by the phrase structure rules are transformed into the same phrase marker by the application of the transformational rules. One of the advantages the earlier version of transformational grammar presented in Syntactic Structures was that it could account more satisfactorily than phrase structure grammar for certain type of structural ambiguity. For example, “Flying planes can be dangerous” is ambiguous. (To fly planes can be dangerous and Planes that are flying can be dangerous). The structurally ambiguous sentences can be accounted for rather nicely in terms of transformational grammar. Instead of generating two unrelatedphrase markers by phrase structure rules, we can construct a simpler grammar by showing how both the active and the passive can be derived from the same underlying phrase marker. Instead of rewriting one element as a string of elements, a transformational rule maps one phrase marker into another. Transformational rules therefore apply after the phrase structure rules have been applied; they operate on the output of the phrase structure rules of the grammar.One of the advantages the earlier version of transformational grammar presented in Syntactic Structures was that it could account more satisfactorily than phrase structure grammar for certain type of structural ambiguity. For example, “Flying planes can be dangerous” is ambiguous. ( To fly planes can be dangerous and Planes that are flying can be dangerous). The structurally ambiguous sentences can be accounted for rather nicely in terms of transformational grammar. With the introduction of transformational rules, Chomsky's grammars are often called“transformational grammars”.3. Major Developmental Phases of Chomsky's Linguistic TheorySince the turning out of his first book Syntactic Structure in which he formulated his transformational grammar, Chomsky has updated his extensively-applied linguistic notions with more lectures given and books issued. It is commonly recognized to be five phases.Phase One: Transformational GrammarIt is impossible to understand C homsky’s linguistic notions without understanding his transformational grammar which is undoubtedly a milestone in the history of modern linguistics. Prior to the publication of Syntactic Structure in 1957, the linguistic study was mainly concernedwith structuralism. Structural linguistics, with its insistence on objective methods of verification and precisely specified techniques of discovery, derives from the "behavioral sciences" approach to the study of man, and is also largely a consequence of the philosophical assumptions of logical positivism.During that period, most American linguists, according to Chomsky，defined the task of linguistics as “collecting language elements and classifying them”(Chomsky 1970:100). The approach was the mechanic procedure to find the language truth and discipline. Linguistics was a kind of verbal botany. Linguists at that time were just giving a description of a language by colleting data, colleting a large number of utterances of language. These utterances were always recorded on a tape recorder or in a phonetic script. The second step was to classify these elements of language at different linguistic levels, from the units of sounds, the phonemes, to the morphemes, then to the sequences of word classes. The study target was the rich language elements and structuralism was inductive with a word-grammar.However, with the language ability as the study target, TG aims to establish some theories, by means of which we can make sure which rules form the basis of language structure. The aim of linguistic theory was to provide the linguist with a set of rigorous methods, a set of discovery procedures which he would use to extract from the "corpus" the phonemes, the morphemes, and so on. Its approach is putting forward hypothesis which is to be tested by native language speakers. Therefore, TG is a deductive language-category grammar which can explain infinite sentences with limited analyses.John R. Searle concludes that:Chomsky argued that since any language contains an infinite number of sentences, any "corpus," even if it contained as many sentences as there are in all the books of the Library of Congress, would still be trivially small. Instead of the appropriate subject matter of linguistics being a randomly or arbitrarily selected set of sentences, the proper object of study was the speaker's underlying knowledge of the language, his "linguistic competence" that enables him to produce and understand sentences he has never heard before.(Searle 1972: 29) Once the conception of the "corpus" as the subject matter is rejected, then the notion of mechanical procedures for discovering linguistic truths goes as well. Chomsky argues that no science has a mechanical procedure for discovering the truth anyway. Rather, what happens is that the scientist formulates hypotheses and tests them against evidence. Linguistics is no different: the linguist makes conjectures about linguistic facts and tests them against the evidence provided by native speakers of the language. He has in short a procedure for evaluating rival hypotheses, but no procedure for discovering true theories by mechanically processing evidence.The Transformational Grammar can be expressed in the following way: a. Two levels of representation of the structure of sentences: an underlying, more abstract form, termed 'deep structure', and the actual form of the sentence produced, called 'surface structure'. Deep structure is represented in the form of a hierarchical tree diagram, or "phrase structure tree," depicting the abstract grammatical relationships between the words and phrases within a sentence.b. A system of formal rules specifying how deep structures are to be transformed into surface structures.Like a revolution, the transformational grammar established the basis for other subsequent theories of human grammatical knowledge. Since Chomsky's original presentation, many different theories have emerged. With the notion of a transformation remaining a central element in most models, concepts like deep structure and surface structure, phrase structure tree, phrase structure rules, verb phrase, noun phrase, creativity/ productivity became the grammatical elements in language study.Phase Two: Language Competence and Performance; Standard TheoryIn Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965, Chomsky put forward two sets of concepts, which are now widely known. One is competence and performance and the other deep structure and surface structure. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his or her language, and performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.According to Chomsky，speakers have internalized a set of rules about their language. This rule system enables them to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. Chomsky holds that linguists should study the ideal speaker's competence, because the speaker's performance is too haphazard to be studied. Thus, the task of the linguists is to discover the speaker's internalized rules. Competence is independent from performance. The difference between them is like that between knowledge of language and use of that language. Although the investigation of competence is challenging because of the complexity of our knowledge of language, performance is observable. From this point,Chomsky began to look at language from a psychological point of view and consider linguistic competence as a property of the mind of a speaker.In order to explain the difference between "performance" (all sentences that an individual will ever use) and "competence" (all sentences that an individual can utter, but will not necessarily utter), Chomsky emphasizes the existence of some innate knowledge. Chomsky proves that the grammar of a natural language cannot be reduced to a finite-state automaton. He then argues for the existence of two levels of language: an underlying deep structure, which accounts for the fundamental syntactic relationships among language components, and a surface structure, which accounts for the sentences that are actually uttered, and which is generated by transformations of elements in the deep structure. Transformational analysis does overcome the limitations of phrase structure.Chomsky divides the knowledge of language into two components: a universal grammar, which is the knowledge of language possessed by every human, and a set of parameter values and a lexicon, which together constitute the knowledge of a particular language. On the whole, the various components of the grammar as articulated in Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) are: the base component, transformational rules, the lexicon (the set of lexical items with syntactic, semantic, and phonological information), semantic interpretation rules, and the phonological component. Then comes the other distinctive feature of the second phase is the establishment of the Standard Theory, which defines a grammar as made of a syntactic component (phrase structure rules, lexicon and transformational component), a semantic component and a phonological component. The deep structure of a sentence is a tree (thephrase marker) that contains all the words that will appear in its surface structure.By including an account of the relation between sound and meaning in the construction of a grammar, Chomsky started coupling syntax and semantics. In this sense the "standard theory" syntax provides the mechanisms for transforming a meaning (a deep structure) into a phonetic representation (a surface structure).Phase Three: Extended Standard TheoryIn early transformational generative grammar, it was assumed that all semantic interpretation would be done off deep structure, but with the proposals for the extended standard theory (EST) of Chomsky came the realization that certain aspects of semantic interpretation, such as focus and presupposition and scope of quantifiers, must be done off surface structure. More recent developments suggest that EST did not go far enough. In Reflections on Language 1975, Chomsky made a good non-technical review of the EST and various philosophical issues related to generative grammar.In fact, the label 'Extended Standard Theory' was used for a while during the 1970's to describe a particular stage in the evolution of the framework. Over the next 15 years, the framework experienced great revision and changes.Phase Four: REST, GBBy the early 1980's a framework of syntactic theory had been developed, which became different enough to require a completely new presentation and a distinctive period.In 1980 Chomsky delivered a series of lectures at Pisa which were published in the subsequent year under the title 'Lectures on Government and Binding'. These lectures essentially presented the new framework for the first time in an organized, relatively coherent form. As a result, the title of the book was very swiftly given to the framework, which consequently is referred to by many as 'Government & Binding' or 'GB'. GB theory develops directly and without a radical break from earlier work in transformational generative grammar, in particular, from research that falls within the framework of the Extended Standard Theory.Government theory deals with the relationship between a syntactic head (e.g., a verb or preposition) and its dependents and binding theory, the relations among anaphors, pronominals, referring expressions, and their possible antecedents in sentences. 'Government & Binding' has been taken for the label 'Revised, Extended Standard Theory', often abbreviated 'REST'. Chomsky (1985) published Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use, in which the concepts of principles and parameters approach, typically abbreviated `P&P' or `PPA', took the place of former rules.The principle advantage of the Principle and Parameters framework lies in its potential for solving "Plato's Problem": how children can acquire their first language with such remarkable speed and efficiency. The principles do not generalize but the approach might be suggestive both in its achievements and apparent boundaries. Along with developments in other fields, especially immunology, it is regarded as a task of selection rather than that of instruction. The idea can be expressed like: everything is already laid out in the child's mind and the acquisition of knowledge lies in selecting particular choices from what has been laid out.Phase Five: Minimalist ProgramIn the 1990s Chomsky formulated a "Minimalist Program" in an attempt to simplify the symbolic representations of the language facility. The MP remains a version of the P&P model and thus enjoys the benefit of reducing the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy. Specific rules and constructions were being abstracted and subsumed under parameterised principles, which were then attributed to the initial state of the language faculty. In general, there are two aspects of this program: first, the minimisation of linguistic levels; second, the economy principles of derivation and representation.Although Chomsky's core ideas and their psychological implications have already formed during the first half of the 20th century, he never stops his revision of his own inventions. Minimalism is a manifestation of Chomsky's intellectual vigor in revision and regarded as the most radical of the periodic upheavals in his thinking.Although this paper have divided the development of Chomsky's language notions into the above five phases, it is no doubt that he has never stopped his devotion to language study and we also see the Post-Chomsky Linguistics which included three major tendencies. The first tendency is generative semantics, which motivates syntactic rules by means of semantic evidence. The second one is the upholding of the viewpoint like "Deep structures are universal" and "All languages have the same deep structure."A third tendency is the constantly increasing employment of the conceptual and terminological apparatus of modern formal logic and formal semantics.4. The Philosophical Foundation of Chomsky's Language ConceptAs a great linguist, Chomsky does make great contribution to the theory of linguistics. One of the reasons why his theories are so powerful and convincing, as we all know, is the solid philosophical bases. His brief commitments include realism, naturalism and mentalism, which render a range of implications for issues like the mind-body problem, innateness, the "private language" argument and the nature of language. In the following parts, this thesis will have an overview of the three stands in his thinking.4.1 RealismRealism is the first important view of Chomsky philosophy , for the reason that the concepts of language and entities put forward by Chomsky are the reflection of real features of the world. Chomsky was insistent on realism from the start. His position is that if one's best theory of some cognitive phenomena involved postulating, for instance, a representation X, then we have no more reason to doubt the existence of X on any a priori grounds.The constructs and entities that Chomsky put forward are just as those in chemistry and biology. They deal with the real features of the world. What he is concerned with is the empirical nature of linguistics, the internalized grammar in an individual's mind or the I-language rather than the social or collective E-language.In his study of realism, Chomsky devotes considerable attention to many indeterminism theses, for instance, Quine's (1972 442) view that it is impossible to decide among extensionally equivalent grammars and "Wittgensteinian"s (1978 31) idea that it is never possible to decide which rules a system is following. Chomsky admonishes these criticisms。