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The 50th Anniversary of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

50 points by tintinnabula 11y ago

snitzr 11y ago
Recommended: Is The Man Who is Tall Happy? on Netflix. A nice introduction to Chomsky and his linguistic ideas.
- nsajko 11y ago
  Does somebody know any alternative (legal) sources? Netflix is not available to me without proxying through another country.
formerlinguist 11y ago
This was actually not Chomsky's first book on this topic. That was Syntactic Structures (1957).
- simonebrunozzi 11y ago
  Correct. That book, over time, changed a lot of things.
- bdchauvette 11y ago
  Neither the title here nor the article itself claim it to be his first book, only an incredibly influential one. The article even agrees with you: > §3 sets out a radically revised structure for transformational grammars, quietly abandoning the notion of “kernel sentence” from Chomsky’s first book, Syntactic Structures, and introducing the term “deep structure,” which in a sense replaces it.
samch 11y ago
"Chomsky's theories carried an atomistic, bottom-p approach to language to it's natural conclusion. It certainly did inspire a generation of research, most of it misguided. But its real flaw was one it inherited from its structuralist predecessors. It treated utterances as decomposable structures rather than as wholes, which is how the brain treats them. From the very first the Chomskyites had to admit that no research supported any connection whatsoever between the structures they posited and what went on in the brain. They assumed that further brain research would be needed to uncover those connections. But all the brain research since then has shown that transformational grammar (and even its rivals, which I studied) bears no resemblance to what the brain does with language. So what Chomsky gave us was the foundation for the ultimate mathematical elaboration of a structuralist theory that bears no relationship to anything in nature." -My dad (Ph.D. Linguistics, Yale - way back in the day)
- raverbashing 11y ago
  > was the foundation for the ultimate mathematical elaboration of a structuralist theory that bears no relationship to anything in nature So, like most theories? Or do you really think of electrons as 'tiny things'? You do the math and you get the results. But yeah, Chomsky structures seems to be more useful when applying it to computer languages than to real ones.
  - samch 11y ago
    I think I've missed the point of your response (electrons?). Just to clarify, Chomsky's theories setup a framework for artificial reduction of language which did nothing to help elucidate the true nature of language (which is obviously a product of the evolution of the brain). The problem seems to be that Chomsky's influence sent a lot of grad students down a path that didn't really advance linguistics in terms of the human element. I don't even know if his theories really helped with computer analysis of language.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      What is the thing with languages anyway. Previous generations were so fetishist about it. I found I've learned deeper things by toying with musical instruments and geometry, although encoding geometry (among other things) as visual symbols was a great foot in the abstraction door. But these intellectual aesthetics are far from human communication IMHO. ps: sorry for that digression btw
    - discreteinfinit 11y ago
      Chomsky and people who study in the generative tradition have a lot to say about language as a biological organ (which obviously evolved from the language organs Chimps possess). In fact, Chimps have very similar systems to us. They can perceive voiced onset time (VOT) just as we do and they can reason about semantic issues. They can also utter and understand sound-meaning pairs however, they have nothing like our syntax for making novel and complex utterances out of the simple ones.
- lnanek2 11y ago
pc2g4d 11y ago
> It is rather surprising that more has not been done this year (thus far, anyway) to commemorate a significant semicentenary: the 50th anniversary of what could reasonably be called the most influential linguistics book of the 20th century. Linguistics as a field is in a post-Chomsky hangover and none-too-happy to celebrate the man that put them there. Chomsky's many years as the dominant voice in the field were traumatic for linguistics. Once a decade or so he would promulgate The New Way of doing syntax, handed down from on high from this very influential man, which meant incredible disruption not only for syntacticians but also for those working in semantics and morphology/phonology. Much of Chomsky's influence came not from his intellect (though that was surely prodigious) but from his forceful personality. His will to publicly ridicule not only opposing ideas but opposing personalities was a big part of his rise and continuing dominance. Linguistics was a nasty place to work for a long time. (See "The Linguistics Wars"). Now that he's not actively working to maintain it, Chomsky's academic reputation has suffered substantially and the field is largely trying to move on. Large-scale corpora and computational capabilities enable more empiricist rather than rationalist approaches to human language, which has made the argumentation less personal and more productive. At least, that's my take.

50 points by tintinnabula 11y ago

snitzr 11y ago

Recommended: Is The Man Who is Tall Happy? on Netflix. A nice introduction to Chomsky and his linguistic ideas.

nsajko 11y ago
Does somebody know any alternative (legal) sources? Netflix is not available to me without proxying through another country.

formerlinguist 11y ago

This was actually not Chomsky's first book on this topic. That was Syntactic Structures (1957).

simonebrunozzi 11y ago
Correct. That book, over time, changed a lot of things.
bdchauvette 11y ago
Neither the title here nor the article itself claim it to be his first book, only an incredibly influential one. The article even agrees with you: > §3 sets out a radically revised structure for transformational grammars, quietly abandoning the notion of “kernel sentence” from Chomsky’s first book, Syntactic Structures, and introducing the term “deep structure,” which in a sense replaces it.

samch 11y ago

"Chomsky's theories carried an atomistic, bottom-p approach to language to it's natural conclusion. It certainly did inspire a generation of research, most of it misguided. But its real flaw was one it inherited from its structuralist predecessors. It treated utterances as decomposable structures rather than as wholes, which is how the brain treats them. From the very first the Chomskyites had to admit that no research supported any connection whatsoever between the structures they posited and what went on in the brain. They assumed that further brain research would be needed to uncover those connections. But all the brain research since then has shown that transformational grammar (and even its rivals, which I studied) bears no resemblance to what the brain does with language. So what Chomsky gave us was the foundation for the ultimate mathematical elaboration of a structuralist theory that bears no relationship to anything in nature." -My dad (Ph.D. Linguistics, Yale - way back in the day)

raverbashing 11y ago
> was the foundation for the ultimate mathematical elaboration of a structuralist theory that bears no relationship to anything in nature So, like most theories? Or do you really think of electrons as 'tiny things'? You do the math and you get the results. But yeah, Chomsky structures seems to be more useful when applying it to computer languages than to real ones.
- samch 11y ago
  I think I've missed the point of your response (electrons?). Just to clarify, Chomsky's theories setup a framework for artificial reduction of language which did nothing to help elucidate the true nature of language (which is obviously a product of the evolution of the brain). The problem seems to be that Chomsky's influence sent a lot of grad students down a path that didn't really advance linguistics in terms of the human element. I don't even know if his theories really helped with computer analysis of language.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    What is the thing with languages anyway. Previous generations were so fetishist about it. I found I've learned deeper things by toying with musical instruments and geometry, although encoding geometry (among other things) as visual symbols was a great foot in the abstraction door. But these intellectual aesthetics are far from human communication IMHO. ps: sorry for that digression btw
  - discreteinfinit 11y ago
    Chomsky and people who study in the generative tradition have a lot to say about language as a biological organ (which obviously evolved from the language organs Chimps possess). In fact, Chimps have very similar systems to us. They can perceive voiced onset time (VOT) just as we do and they can reason about semantic issues. They can also utter and understand sound-meaning pairs however, they have nothing like our syntax for making novel and complex utterances out of the simple ones.
lnanek2 11y ago

pc2g4d 11y ago

> It is rather surprising that more has not been done this year (thus far, anyway) to commemorate a significant semicentenary: the 50th anniversary of what could reasonably be called the most influential linguistics book of the 20th century. Linguistics as a field is in a post-Chomsky hangover and none-too-happy to celebrate the man that put them there. Chomsky's many years as the dominant voice in the field were traumatic for linguistics. Once a decade or so he would promulgate The New Way of doing syntax, handed down from on high from this very influential man, which meant incredible disruption not only for syntacticians but also for those working in semantics and morphology/phonology. Much of Chomsky's influence came not from his intellect (though that was surely prodigious) but from his forceful personality. His will to publicly ridicule not only opposing ideas but opposing personalities was a big part of his rise and continuing dominance. Linguistics was a nasty place to work for a long time. (See "The Linguistics Wars"). Now that he's not actively working to maintain it, Chomsky's academic reputation has suffered substantially and the field is largely trying to move on. Large-scale corpora and computational capabilities enable more empiricist rather than rationalist approaches to human language, which has made the argumentation less personal and more productive. At least, that's my take.