Language and Thought

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Moyer Bell, 1993 - Cooking, Russian - 96 pages
As a linguist, Noam Chomsky aims not only at making a technical contribution with his generative theory of language but also at integrating his linguistic theory into a wider view of the relationship between between language and the human mind. The crux of this view is the hypothesis that human beings are born with an innate knowledge of universal principles underlying the structure of human language. Chomsky's ideas have exerted a powerful influence on the other disciplines by restoring language to a central position in cognitive psychology and in the philosophy of the mind. The wider impact on his redefinition of the subject gives him a permanent place in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
7
ERIC WANNER MODERATOR
57
GEORGE MILLER
68
Copyright

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About the author (1993)

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community. Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War. Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993).

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