Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam ChomskyTemplate:Efn (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian,Template:EfnTemplate:Efn social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics",Template:Efn Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Born to Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.

An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon's Enemies List. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. Chomsky began teaching at the University of Arizona in 2017.

One of the most cited scholars alive,Template:Sfn Chomsky has influenced a broad array of academic fields. He is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. In addition to his continued scholarship, he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mainstream news media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.

Life

Childhood: 1928–1945

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Template:Sfnm His parents, Ze'ev "William" Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky, were Jewish immigrants.Template:Sfnm William had fled the Russian Empire in 1913 to escape conscription and worked in Baltimore sweatshops and Hebrew elementary schools before attending university.Template:Sfn After moving to Philadelphia, William became principal of the Congregation Mikveh Israel religious school and joined the Gratz College faculty. He placed great emphasis on educating people so that they would be "well integrated, free and independent in their thinking, concerned about improving and enhancing the world, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all", a mission that shaped and was subsequently adopted by his son.Template:Sfn Elsie was a teacher and activist born in Belarus. They met at Mikveh Israel, where they both worked.Template:Sfnm

Noam was the Chomskys' first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was born five years later, in 1934.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfnm The brothers were close, though David was more easygoing while Noam could be very competitive.Template:Sfn Chomsky and his brother were raised Jewish, being taught Hebrew and regularly involved with discussing the political theories of Zionism; the family was particularly influenced by the Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am.Template:Sfnm Chomsky faced antisemitism as a child, particularly from Philadelphia's Irish and German communities.Template:Sfn

Chomsky attended the independent, Deweyite Oak Lane Country Day SchoolTemplate:Sfnm and Philadelphia's Central High School, where he excelled academically and joined various clubs and societies, but was troubled by the school's hierarchical and regimented teaching methods.Template:Sfnm He also attended Hebrew High School at Gratz College, where his father taught.Template:Sfnm

Chomsky has described his parents as "normal Roosevelt Democrats" with center-left politics, but relatives involved in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union exposed him to socialism and far-left politics.Template:Sfnm He was substantially influenced by his uncle and the Jewish leftists who frequented his New York City newspaper stand to debate current affairs.Template:Sfnm Chomsky himself often visited left-wing and anarchist bookstores when visiting his uncle in the city, voraciously reading political literature.Template:Sfn He wrote his first article at age 10 on the spread of fascism following the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil WarTemplate:Sfnm and, from the age of 12 or 13, identified with anarchist politics.Template:Sfnm He later described his discovery of anarchism as "a lucky accident"Template:Sfn that made him critical of Stalinism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism.Template:Sfnm

University: 1945–1955

File:Carol Chomsky.jpg

Carol Schatz, whom Chomsky married in 1949

In 1945, aged 16, Chomsky began a general program of study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he explored philosophy, logic, and languages and developed a primary interest in learning Arabic.Template:Sfnm Living at home, he funded his undergraduate degree by teaching Hebrew.Template:Sfn Frustrated with his experiences at the university, he considered dropping out and moving to a kibbutz in Mandatory Palestine,Template:Sfn but his intellectual curiosity was reawakened through conversations with the Russian-born linguist Zellig Harris, whom he first met in a political circle in 1947. Harris introduced Chomsky to the field of theoretical linguistics and convinced him to major in the subject.Template:Sfnm Chomsky's BA honors thesis, "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", applied Harris's methods to the language.Template:Sfnm Chomsky revised this thesis for his MA, which he received from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951; it was subsequently published as a book.Template:Sfnm He also developed his interest in philosophy while at university, in particular under the tutelage of Nelson Goodman.Template:Sfn

From 1951 to 1955 Chomsky was a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, where he undertook research on what became his doctoral dissertation.Template:Sfnm Having been encouraged by Goodman to apply,Template:Sfn Chomsky was attracted to Harvard in part because the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine was based there. Both Quine and a visiting philosopher, J. L. Austin of the University of Oxford, strongly influenced Chomsky.Template:Sfn In 1952 Chomsky published his first academic article, Systems of Syntactic Analysis, which appeared not in a journal of linguistics but in The Journal of Symbolic Logic.Template:Sfn Highly critical of the established behaviorist currents in linguistics, in 1954 he presented his ideas at lectures at the University of Chicago and Yale University.Template:Sfn He had not been registered as a student at Pennsylvania for four years, but in 1955 he submitted a thesis setting out his ideas on transformational grammar; he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree for it, and it was privately distributed among specialists on microfilm before being published in 1975 as part of The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.Template:Sfnm Harvard professor George Armitage Miller was impressed by Chomsky's thesis and collaborated with him on several technical papers in mathematical linguistics.Template:Sfn Chomsky's doctorate exempted him from compulsory military service, which was otherwise due to begin in 1955.Template:Sfn

In 1947 Chomsky began a romantic relationship with Carol Doris Schatz, whom he had known since early childhood. They married in 1949.Template:Sfnm After Chomsky was made a Fellow at Harvard, the couple moved to the Allston area of Boston and remained there until 1965, when they relocated to the suburb of Lexington.Template:Sfn In 1953 the couple took a Harvard travel grant to Europe, from the United Kingdom through France, Switzerland into Italy,Template:Sfn and Israel, where they lived in Hashomer Hatzair's HaZore'a kibbutz. Despite enjoying himself, Chomsky was appalled by the country's Jewish nationalism, anti-Arab racism and, within the kibbutz's leftist community, pro-Stalinism.Template:Sfnm

On visits to New York City, Chomsky continued to frequent the office of the Yiddish anarchist journal Fraye Arbeter Shtime and became enamored with the ideas of Rudolf Rocker, a contributor whose work introduced Chomsky to the link between anarchism and classical liberalism.Template:Sfnm Chomsky also read other political thinkers: the anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Diego Abad de Santillán, democratic socialists George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and Dwight Macdonald, and works by Marxists Karl Liebknecht, Karl Korsch, and Rosa Luxemburg.Template:Sfn His readings convinced him of the desirability of an anarcho-syndicalist society, and he became fascinated by the anarcho-syndicalist communes set up during the Spanish Civil War, as documented in Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938).Template:Sfn He read the leftist journal Politics, which furthered his interest in anarchism,Template:Sfn and the council communist periodical Living Marxism, though he rejected the orthodoxy of its editor, Paul Mattick.Template:Sfn He was also interested in the Marlenite ideas of the Leninist League of the United States, an anti-Stalinist Marxist–Leninist group, impressed by its characterization of World War II as a "phony war" instigated by both by Western capitalists and the Soviet Union. He "never really believed the thesis, but ... found it intriguing enough to try to figure out what they were talking about."

Early career: 1955–1966

Chomsky befriended two linguists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Morris Halle and Roman Jakobson, the latter of whom secured him an assistant professor position there in 1955. At MIT, Chomsky spent half his time on a mechanical translation project and half teaching a course on linguistics and philosophy.Template:Sfnm He described MIT as "a pretty free and open place, open to experimentation and without rigid requirements. It was just perfect for someone of my idiosyncratic interests and work."Template:Sfn In 1957 MIT promoted him to the position of associate professor, and from 1957 to 1958 he was also employed by Columbia University as a visiting professor.Template:Sfnm The Chomskys had their first child that same year, a daughter named Aviva.Template:Sfnm He also published his first book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, a work that radically opposed the dominant Harris–Bloomfield trend in the field.Template:Sfnm Responses to Chomsky's ideas ranged from indifference to hostility, and his work proved divisive and caused "significant upheaval" in the discipline.Template:Sfn The linguist John Lyons later asserted that Syntactic Structures "revolutionized the scientific study of language".Template:Sfn From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.Template:Sfnm

File:MIT Building 10 and the Great Dome, Cambridge MA.jpg

The Great Dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Chomsky began working in 1955

In 1959, Chomsky published a review of B. F. Skinner's 1957 book Verbal Behavior in the academic journal Language, in which he argued against Skinner's view of language as learned behavior.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfn The review argued that Skinner ignored the role of human creativity in linguistics and helped to establish Chomsky as an intellectual.Template:Sfn With Halle, Chomsky proceeded to found MIT's graduate program in linguistics. In 1961 he was awarded tenure, becoming a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics.Template:Sfnm Chomsky went on to be appointed plenary speaker at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, held in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which established him as the de facto spokesperson of American linguistics.Template:Sfn Between 1963 and 1965 he consulted on a military-sponsored project "to establish natural language as an operational language for command and control"; Barbara Partee, a collaborator on this project and then-student of Chomsky, has said this research was justified to the military on the basis that "in the event of a nuclear war, the generals would be underground with some computers trying to manage things, and that it would probably be easier to teach computers to understand English than to teach the generals to program."Template:Sfn

Chomsky continued to publish his linguistic ideas throughout the decade, including in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar (1966), and Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966).Template:Sfn Along with Halle, he also edited the Studies in Language series of books for Harper and Row.Template:Sfn As he began to accrue significant academic recognition and honors for his work, Chomsky lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1966.Template:Sfnm His Beckman lectures at Berkeley were assembled and published as Language and Mind in 1968.Template:Sfn Despite his growing stature, an intellectual falling-out between Chomsky and some of his early colleagues and doctoral students—including Paul Postal, John "Haj" Ross, George Lakoff, and James D. McCawley—triggered a series of academic debates that came to be known as the "Linguistics Wars", although they revolved largely around philosophical issues rather than linguistics proper.Template:Sfn

Anti-war activism and dissent: 1967–1975

[I]t does not require very far-reaching, specialized knowledge to perceive that the United States was invading South Vietnam. And, in fact, to take apart the system of illusions and deception which functions to prevent understanding of contemporary reality [is] not a task that requires extraordinary skill or understanding. It requires the kind of normal skepticism and willingness to apply one's analytical skills that almost all people have and that they can exercise.

Chomsky on the Vietnam WarTemplate:Sfn

Chomsky joined protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1962, speaking on the subject at small gatherings in churches and homes.Template:Sfn His 1967 critique of U.S. involvement, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", among other contributions to The New York Review of Books, debuted Chomsky as a public dissident.Template:Sfnm This essay and other political articles were collected and published in 1969 as part of Chomsky's first political book, American Power and the New Mandarins.Template:Sfnm He followed this with further political books, including At War with Asia (1971), The Backroom Boys (1973), For Reasons of State (1973), and Peace in the Middle East? (1975), published by Pantheon Books.Template:Sfnm These publications led to Chomsky's association with the American New Left movement,Template:Sfnm though he thought little of prominent New Left intellectuals Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm and preferred the company of activists to that of intellectuals.Template:Sfn Chomsky remained largely ignored by the mainstream press throughout this period.Template:Sfn

He also became involved in left-wing activism. Chomsky refused to pay half his taxes, publicly supported students who refused the draft, and was arrested while participating an anti-war teach-in outside the Pentagon.Template:Sfnm During this time, Chomsky co-founded the anti-war collective RESIST with Mitchell Goodman, Denise Levertov, William Sloane Coffin, and Dwight Macdonald.Template:Sfnm Although he questioned the objectives of the 1968 student protests,Template:Sfn Chomsky gave many lectures to student activist groups and, with his colleague Louis Kampf, ran undergraduate courses on politics at MIT independently of the conservative-dominated political science department.Template:Sfnm When student activists campaigned to stop weapons and counterinsurgency research at MIT, Chomsky was sympathetic but felt that the research should remain under MIT's oversight and limited to systems of deterrence and defense.Template:Sfnm In 1970 he visited southeast Asia to lecture at Vietnam's Hanoi University of Science and Technology and toured war refugee camps in Laos. In 1973 he helped lead a committee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the War Resisters League.Template:Sfnm

Because of his anti-war activism, Chomsky was arrested on multiple occasions and included on President Richard Nixon's master list of political opponents.Template:Sfnm Chomsky was aware of the potential repercussions of his civil disobedience and his wife began studying for her own doctorate in linguistics to support the family in the event of Chomsky's imprisonment or joblessness.Template:Sfnm Chomsky's scientific reputation insulated him from administrative action based on his beliefs.Template:Sfn

His work in linguistics continued to gain international recognition as he received multiple honorary doctorates.Template:Sfnm He delivered public lectures at the University of Cambridge, Columbia University (Woodbridge Lectures), and Stanford University.Template:Sfn His appearance in a 1971 debate with French continental philosopher Michel Foucault positioned Chomsky as a symbolic figurehead of analytic philosophy.Template:Sfn He continued to publish extensively on linguistics, producing Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972),Template:Sfn an enlarged edition of Language and Mind (1972),Template:Sfn and Reflections on Language (1975).Template:Sfn In 1974 Chomsky became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.Template:Sfn

Edward S. Herman and the Faurisson affair: 1976–1980

See also: Cambodian genocide denial#Chomsky and Herman and Faurisson affair

File:Noam Chomsky (1977).jpg

Chomsky, photographed in 1977

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky's linguistic publications expanded and clarified his earlier work, addressing his critics and updating his grammatical theory.Template:Sfn His political talks often generated considerable controversy, particularly when he criticized the Israeli government and military.Template:Sfn In the early 1970s Chomsky began collaborating with Edward S. Herman, who had also published critiques of the U.S. war in Vietnam.Template:Sfn Together they wrote Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda, a book that criticized U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia and the mainstream media's failure to cover it. Warner Modular published it in 1973, but its parent company disapproved of the book's contents and ordered all copies destroyed.Template:Sfnm

While mainstream publishing options proved elusive, Chomsky found support from Michael Albert's South End Press, an activist-oriented publishing company.Template:Sfn In 1979, South End published Chomsky and Herman's revised Counter-Revolutionary Violence as the two-volume The Political Economy of Human Rights,Template:Sfnm which compares U.S. media reactions to the Cambodian genocide and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. It argues that because Indonesia was a U.S. ally, U.S. media ignored the East Timorese situation while focusing on events in Cambodia, a U.S. enemy.Template:Sfn Chomsky's response included two testimonials before the United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization, successful encouragement for American media to cover the occupation, and meetings with refugees in Lisbon.Template:Sfn The Marxist academic Steven Lukes publicly accused Chomsky of betraying his anarchist ideals and acting as an apologist for Cambodian leader Pol Pot.Template:Sfn Herman said that the controversy "imposed a serious personal cost" on Chomsky,Template:Sfn Chomsky said that "conformist intellectuals of East or West" deal with dissident opinion by trying "to overwhelm it with a flood of lies".Template:Sfn He regarded the personal criticism as less important than the evidence that "mainstream intelligentsia suppressed or justified the crimes of their own states".Template:Sfn

Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial. Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Template:Lang.Template:Sfnm Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson,Template:Sfnm and France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, refusing to publish his rebuttals to their accusations.Template:Sfn Critiquing Chomsky's position, sociologist Werner Cohn later published an analysis of the affair titled Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers.Template:Sfn The Faurisson affair had a lasting, damaging effect on Chomsky's career,Template:Sfn especially in France.Template:Sfnm

Critique of propaganda and international affairs: 1980–2001

In 1985, during the Nicaraguan Contra War—in which the U.S. supported the contra militia against the Sandinista government—Chomsky traveled to Managua to meet with workers' organizations and refugees of the conflict, giving public lectures on politics and linguistics.Template:Sfn Many of these lectures were published in 1987 as On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures.Template:Sfn In 1983 he published The Fateful Triangle, which argued that the U.S. had continually used the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for its own ends.Template:Sfnm In 1988, Chomsky visited the Palestinian territories to witness the impact of Israeli occupation.Template:Sfn

Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) outlines their propaganda model for understanding mainstream media. Even in countries without official censorship, they argued, the news is censored through five filters that greatly influence both what and how news is presented.Template:Sfnm The book was inspired by Alex Carey and adapted into a 1992 film.Template:Sfn In 1989, Chomsky published Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, in which he suggests that a worthwhile democracy requires that its citizens undertake intellectual self-defense against the media and elite intellectual culture that seeks to control them.Template:Sfn By the 1980s, Chomsky's students had become prominent linguists who, in turn, expanded and revised his linguistic theories.Template:Sfn

In the 1990s, Chomsky embraced political activism to a greater degree than before.Template:Sfn Retaining his commitment to the cause of East Timorese independence, in 1995 he visited Australia to talk on the issue at the behest of the East Timorese Relief Association and the National Council for East Timorese Resistance.Template:Sfn The lectures he gave on the subject were published as Powers and Prospects in 1996.Template:Sfn As a result of the international publicity Chomsky generated, his biographer Wolfgang Sperlich opined that he did more to aid the cause of East Timorese independence than anyone but the investigative journalist John Pilger.Template:Sfn After East Timor attained independence from Indonesia in 1999, the Australian-led International Force for East Timor arrived as a peacekeeping force; Chomsky was critical of this, believing it was designed to secure Australian access to East Timor's oil and gas reserves under the Timor Gap Treaty.Template:Sfn

Iraq war criticism and retirement from MIT: 2001–2017

File:Noam Chomsky Toronto 2011.jpg

Chomsky speaking in support of the Occupy movement in 2011

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Chomsky was widely interviewed; Seven Stories Press collated and published these interviews that October.Template:Sfn Chomsky argued that the ensuing War on Terror was not a new development but a continuation of U.S. foreign policy and concomitant rhetoric since at least the Reagan era.Template:Sfn He gave the D.T. Lakdawala Memorial Lecture in New Delhi in 2001,Template:Sfn and in 2003 visited Cuba at the invitation of the Latin American Association of Social Scientists.Template:Sfn Chomsky's 2003 Hegemony or Survival articulated what he called the United States' "imperial grand strategy" and critiqued the Iraq War and other aspects of the War on Terror.Template:Sfn Chomsky toured internationally with greater regularity during this period.Template:Sfn

File:Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism - In Conversation with Noam Chomsky - March 28, 2014.webm

Chomsky discussing ecology, ethics and anarchism

Chomsky retired from MIT in 2002,Template:Sfn but continued to conduct research and seminars on campus as an emeritus.Template:Sfn That same year he visited Turkey to attend the trial of a publisher who had been accused of treason for printing one of Chomsky's books; Chomsky insisted on being a co-defendant and amid international media attention the Security Courts dropped the charge on the first day.Template:Sfn During that trip Chomsky visited Kurdish areas of Turkey and spoke out in favor of the Kurds' human rights.Template:Sfn A supporter of the World Social Forum, he attended its conferences in Brazil in both 2002 and 2003, also attending the Forum event in India.Template:Sfn

Chomsky supported the Occupy movement, delivering talks at encampments and producing two works that chronicled its influence: Occupy (2012), a pamphlet, and Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity (2013). He attributed Occupy's growth to a perception that the Democratic Party had abandoned the interests of the white working class.Template:Sfn In March 2014, Chomsky joined the advisory council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,Template:Sfn an organization that advocates the global abolition of nuclear weapons, as a senior fellow.Template:Sfn The 2016 documentary Requiem for the American Dream summarizes his views on capitalism and economic inequality through a "75-minute teach-in".Template:Sfn

University of Arizona: 2017–present

In 2017, Chomsky taught a short-term politics course at the University of Arizona in TucsonTemplate:Sfn and was later hired as a part-time professor in the linguistics department there, with his duties including teaching and public seminars.Template:Sfn His salary is covered by philanthropic donations.Template:Sfn

Chomsky signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins in 2018.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Linguistic theory

What started as purely linguistic research ... has led, through involvement in political causes and an identification with an older philosophic tradition, to no less than an attempt to formulate an overall theory of man. The roots of this are manifest in the linguistic theory ... The discovery of cognitive structures common to the human race but only to humans (species specific), leads quite easily to thinking of unalienable human attributes.

Edward Marcotte on the significance of Chomsky's linguistic theoryTemplate:Sfn

The basis of Chomsky's linguistic theory lies in biolinguistics, the linguistic school that holds that the principles underpinning the structure of language are biologically preset in the human mind and hence genetically inherited.Template:Sfnm As such he argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of sociocultural differences.Template:Sfn In adopting this position Chomsky rejects the radical behaviorist psychology of B. F. Skinner, who viewed behavior (including talking and thinking) as a completely learned product of the interactions between organisms and their environments. Accordingly, Chomsky argues that language is a unique evolutionary development of the human species and distinguished from modes of communication used by any other animal species.Template:SfnmTemplate:Sfn Chomsky's nativist, internalist view of language is consistent with the philosophical school of "rationalism" and contrasts with the anti-nativist, externalist view of language consistent with the philosophical school of "empiricism",Template:Sfn which contends that all knowledge, including language, comes from external stimuli.Template:Sfn

Universal grammar

For a more detailed treatment, see Universal grammar.

Since the 1960s Chomsky has maintained that syntactic knowledge is at least partially inborn, implying that children need only learn certain language-specific features of their native languages. He bases his argument on observations about human language acquisition and describes a "poverty of the stimulus": an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic competence they attain. For example, although children are exposed to only a very small and finite subset of the allowable syntactic variants within their first language, they somehow acquire the highly organized and systematic ability to understand and produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never before been uttered, in that language.Template:Sfn To explain this, Chomsky reasoned that the primary linguistic data must be supplemented by an innate linguistic capacity. Furthermore, while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky referred to this difference in capacity as the language acquisition device, and suggested that linguists needed to determine both what that device is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that result from these constraints would constitute "universal grammar".Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Multiple scholars have challenged universal grammar on the grounds of the evolutionary infeasibility of its genetic basis for language,Template:Sfnm the lack of universal characteristics between languages,Template:Sfnm and the unproven link between innate/universal structures and the structures of specific languages.Template:Sfn Scholar Michael Tomasello has challenged Chomsky's theory of innate syntactic knowledge as based on theory and not behavioral observation.Template:Sfn Although it was influential from 1960s through 1990s, Chomsky's nativist theory was ultimately rejected by the mainstream child language acquisition research community owing to its inconsistency with research evidence.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It was also argued by linguists including Robert Freidin, Geoffrey Sampson, Geoffrey K. Pullum and Barbara Scholz that Chomsky's linguistic evidence for it had been false.Template:Sfn

Transformational-generative grammar

For more detailed treatments, see Transformational grammar and Generative grammar.

Transformational-generative grammar is a broad theory used to model, encode, and deduce a native speaker's linguistic capabilities.Template:Sfn These models, or "formal grammars", show the abstract structures of a specific language as they may relate to structures in other languages.Template:Sfn Chomsky developed transformational grammar in the mid-1950s, whereupon it became the dominant syntactic theory in linguistics for two decades.Template:Sfn "Transformations" refers to syntactic relationships within language, e.g., being able to infer that the subject between two sentences is the same person.Template:Sfn Chomsky's theory posits that language consists of both deep structures and surface structures: Outward-facing surface structures relate phonetic rules into sound, while inward-facing deep structures relate words and conceptual meaning. Transformational-generative grammar uses mathematical notation to express the rules that govern the connection between meaning and sound (deep and surface structures, respectively). By this theory, linguistic principles can mathematically generate potential sentence structures in a language.Template:Sfn

File:Chomsky-hierarchy.svg

Set inclusions described by the Chomsky hierarchy

It is a common conception that Chomsky invented transformational-generative grammar, but his actual contribution to it was considered modest at the time when Chomsky first published his theory. In his 1955 dissertation and his 1957 textbook Syntactic Structures, he presented recent developments in the analysis formulated by Zellig Harris, who was Chomsky's PhD supervisor, and by Charles F. Hockett.Template:Efn Their method is derived from the work of the Danish structural linguist Louis Hjelmslev, who introduced algorithmic grammar to general linguistics.Template:Efn Based on this rule-based notation of grammars, Chomsky grouped logically possible phrase-structure grammar types into a series of four nested subsets and increasingly complex types, together known as the Chomsky hierarchy. This classification remains relevant to formal language theoryTemplate:Sfn and theoretical computer science, especially programming language theory,Template:Sfn compiler construction, and automata theory.Template:Sfn

Following transformational grammar's heyday through the mid-1970s, a derivativeTemplate:Sfn government and binding theory became a dominant research framework through the early 1990s, remaining an influential theory,Template:Sfn when linguists turned to a "minimalist" approach to grammar. This research focused on the principles and parameters framework, which explained children's ability to learn any language by filling open parameters (a set of universal grammar principles) that adapt as the child encounters linguistic data.Template:Sfn The minimalist program, initiated by Chomsky,Template:Sfn asks which minimal principles and parameters theory fits most elegantly, naturally, and simply.Template:Sfn In an attempt to simplify language into a system that relates meaning and sound using the minimum possible faculties, Chomsky dispenses with concepts such as "deep structure" and "surface structure" and instead emphasizes the plasticity of the brain's neural circuits, with which come an infinite number of concepts, or "logical forms".Template:Sfn When exposed to linguistic data, a hearer-speaker's brain proceeds to associate sound and meaning, and the rules of grammar we observe are in fact only the consequences, or side effects, of the way language works. Thus, while much of Chomsky's prior research focused on the rules of language, he now focuses on the mechanisms the brain uses to generate these rules and regulate speech.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Political views

The second major area to which Chomsky has contributed—and surely the best known in terms of the number of people in his audience and the ease of understanding what he writes and says—is his work on sociopolitical analysis; political, social, and economic history; and critical assessment of current political circumstance. In Chomsky's view, although those in power might—and do—try to obscure their intentions and to defend their actions in ways that make them acceptable to citizens, it is easy for anyone who is willing to be critical and consider the facts to discern what they are up to.

James McGilvray, 2014Template:Sfn

For a more detailed treatment, see Political positions of Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky is a prominent political dissident.Template:Efn His political views have changed little since his childhood,Template:Sfnm when he was influenced by the emphasis on political activism that was ingrained in Jewish working-class tradition.Template:Sfn He usually identifies as an anarcho-syndicalist or a libertarian socialist.Template:Sfnm He views these positions not as precise political theories but as ideals that he thinks best meet human needs: liberty, community, and freedom of association.Template:Sfn Unlike some other socialists, such as Marxists, Chomsky believes that politics lies outside the remit of science,Template:Sfnm but he still roots his ideas about an ideal society in empirical data and empirically justified theories.Template:Sfn

In Chomsky's view, the truth about political realities is systematically distorted or suppressed by an elite corporatocracy, which uses corporate media, advertising, and think tanks to promote its own propaganda. His work seeks to reveal such manipulations and the truth they obscure.Template:Sfnm Chomsky believes this web of falsehood can be broken by "common sense", critical thinking, and understanding the roles of self-interest and self-deception,Template:Sfnm and that intellectuals abdicate their moral responsibility to tell the truth about the world in fear of losing prestige and funding.Template:Sfn He argues that, as such an intellectual, it is his duty to use his social privilege, resources, and training to aid popular democracy movements in their struggles.Template:Sfn

Although he has joined protest marches and organized activist groups, Chomsky's primary political outlets are education and publication. He offers a wide range of political writingsTemplate:Sfn as well as free lessons and lectures to encourage wider political consciousness.Template:Sfn He is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World international union.Template:Sfn

United States foreign policy

File:Noam Chomsky WSF - 2003.jpg

Chomsky at the 2003 World Social Forum, a convention for counter-hegemonic globalization, in Porto Alegre

Chomsky has been a prominent critic of American imperialism;Template:Sfn he believes that the basic principle of the foreign policy of the United States is the establishment of "open societies" that are economically and politically controlled by the United States and where U.S.-based businesses can prosper.Template:Sfn He argues that the U.S. seeks to suppress any movements within these countries that are not compliant with U.S. interests and to ensure that U.S.-friendly governments are placed in power.Template:Sfn When discussing current events, he emphasizes their place within a wider historical perspective.Template:Sfn He believes that official, sanctioned historical accounts of U.S. and British extraterritorial operations have consistently whitewashed these nations' actions in order to present them as having benevolent motives in either spreading democracy or, in older instances, spreading Christianity; criticizing these accounts, he seeks to correct them.Template:Sfn Prominent examples he regularly cites are the actions of the British Empire in India and Africa and the actions of the U.S. in Vietnam, the Philippines, Latin America, and the Middle East.Template:Sfn

Chomsky's political work has centered heavily on criticizing the actions of the United States.Template:Sfn He has said he focuses on the U.S. because the country has militarily and economically dominated the world during his lifetime and because its liberal democratic electoral system allows the citizenry to influence government policy.Template:Sfn His hope is that, by spreading awareness of the impact U.S. foreign policies have on the populations affected by them, he can sway the populations of the U.S. and other countries into opposing the policies.Template:Sfn He urges people to criticize their governments' motivations, decisions, and actions, to accept responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, and to apply the same standards to others as to themselves.Template:Sfn

Chomsky has been critical of U.S. involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, arguing that it has consistently blocked a peaceful settlement.Template:Sfn Chomsky also criticizes the U.S.'s close ties with Saudi Arabia and involvement in Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, highlighting that Saudi Arabia has "one of the most grotesque human rights records in the world".Template:Sfn

Capitalism and socialism

In his youth, Chomsky developed a dislike of capitalism and the pursuit of material wealth.Template:Sfn At the same time, he developed a disdain for authoritarian socialism, as represented by the Marxist–Leninist policies of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfnm Rather than accepting the common view among U.S. economists that a spectrum exists between total state ownership of the economy and total private ownership, he instead suggests that a spectrum should be understood between total democratic control of the economy and total autocratic control (whether state or private).Template:Sfn He argues that Western capitalist countries are not really democratic,Template:Sfn because, in his view, a truly democratic society is one in which all persons have a say in public economic policy.Template:Sfn He has stated his opposition to ruling elites, among them institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and GATT (precursor to the WTO).Template:Sfn

Chomsky highlights that, since the 1970s, the U.S. has become increasingly economically unequal as a result of the repeal of various financial regulations and the rescinding of the Bretton Woods financial control agreement.Template:Sfn He characterizes the U.S. as a de facto one-party state, viewing both the Republican Party and Democratic Party as manifestations of a single "Business Party" controlled by corporate and financial interests.Template:Sfn Chomsky highlights that, within Western capitalist liberal democracies, at least 80% of the population has no control over economic decisions, which are instead in the hands of a management class and ultimately controlled by a small, wealthy elite.Template:Sfn

Noting the entrenchment of such an economic system, Chomsky believes that change is possible through the organized cooperation of large numbers of people who understand the problem and know how they want to reorganize the economy more equitably.Template:Sfn Acknowledging that corporate domination of media and government stifles any significant change to this system, he sees reason for optimism in historical examples such as the social rejection of slavery as immoral, the advances in women's rights, and the forcing of government to justify invasions.Template:Sfn He views violent revolution to overthrow a government as a last resort to be avoided if possible, citing the example of historical revolutions where the population's welfare has worsened as a result of upheaval.Template:Sfn

Chomsky sees libertarian socialist and anarcho-syndicalist ideas as the descendants of the classical liberal ideas of the Age of Enlightenment,Template:Sfnm arguing that his ideological position revolves around "nourishing the libertarian and creative character of the human being".Template:Sfn He envisions an anarcho-syndicalist future with direct worker control of the means of production and government by workers' councils, who would select temporary and revocable representatives to meet together at general assemblies.Template:Sfn The point of this self-governance is to make each citizen, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a direct participator in the government of affairs."Template:Sfn He believes that there will be no need for political parties.Template:Sfn By controlling their productive life, he believes that individuals can gain job satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment and purpose.Template:Sfn He argues that unpleasant and unpopular jobs could be fully automated, carried out by workers who are specially remunerated, or shared among everyone.Template:Sfn

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a [Palestinian] population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army… and calls it a war. It is not a war, it is murder.

Chomsky criticizing Israel, 2012Template:Sfn

Chomsky has written prolifically on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, aiming to raise public awareness of it.Template:Sfn He has long endorsed a left binationalist program in Israel and Palestine, seeking to create a democratic state in the Levant that is home to both Jews and Arabs.Template:Sfnm Nevertheless, given the realpolitik of the situation, he has also considered a two-state solution on the condition that the nation-states exist on equal terms.Template:Sfnm Chomsky was denied entry to the West Bank in 2010 because of his criticisms of Israel. He had been invited to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University and was to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman later said that Chomsky was denied entry by mistake.Template:Sfn

News media and propaganda

For a more detailed treatment, see Propaganda model.

Chomsky's political writings have largely focused on ideology, social and political power, the media, and state policy.Template:Sfn One of his best-known works, Manufacturing Consent, dissects the media's role in reinforcing and acquiescing to state policies across the political spectrum while marginalizing contrary perspectives. Chomsky asserts that this version of censorship, by government-guided "free market" forces, is subtler and harder to undermine than was the equivalent propaganda system in the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn As he argues, the mainstream press is corporate-owned and thus reflects corporate priorities and interests.Template:Sfn Acknowledging that many American journalists are dedicated and well-meaning, he argues that the mass media's choices of topics and issues, the unquestioned premises on which that coverage rests, and the range of opinions expressed are all constrained to reinforce the state's ideology:Template:Sfn although mass media will criticize individual politicians and political parties, it will not undermine the wider state-corporate nexus of which it is a part.Template:Sfn As evidence, he highlights that the U.S. mass media does not employ any socialist journalists or political commentators.Template:Sfn He also points to examples of important news stories that the U.S. mainstream media has ignored because reporting on them would reflect badly upon the country, including the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton with possible FBI involvement, the massacres in Nicaragua perpetrated by U.S.-funded Contras, and the constant reporting on Israeli deaths without equivalent coverage of the far larger number of Palestinian deaths in that conflict.Template:Sfn To remedy this situation, Chomsky calls for grassroots democratic control and involvement of the media.Template:Sfn

Chomsky considers most conspiracy theories fruitless, distracting substitutes for thinking about policy formation in an institutional framework, where individual manipulation is secondary to broader social imperatives.Template:Sfn While not dismissing them outright, he considers them unproductive to challenging power in a substantial way. In response to the labeling of his own ideas as a conspiracy theory, Chomsky has said that it is very rational for the media to manipulate information in order to sell it, like any other business. He asks whether General Motors would be accused of conspiracy if it deliberately selected what it used or discarded to sell its product.Template:Sfn

Other disciplines

Chomsky has also been active in a number of philosophical fields, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.Template:Sfn In these fields he is credited with ushering in the "cognitive revolution",Template:Sfn a significant paradigm shift that rejected logical positivism, the prevailing philosophical methodology of the time, and reframed how philosophers think about language and the mind.Template:Sfn Chomsky views the cognitive revolution as rooted in 17th-century rationalist ideals.Template:Sfn His position—the idea that the mind contains inherent structures to understand language, perception, and thought—has more in common with rationalism (Enlightenment and Cartesian) than behaviorism.Template:Sfn He named one of his key works Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966).Template:Sfn This sparked criticism from historians and philosophers who disagreed with Chomsky's interpretations of classical sources and use of philosophical terminology.Template:Efn In the philosophy of language, Chomsky is particularly known for his criticisms of the notion of reference and meaning in human language and his perspective on the nature and function of mental representations.Template:Sfn

Chomsky's famous 1971 debate on human nature with the French philosopher Michel Foucault was symbolic in positioning Chomsky as the prototypical analytic philosopher against Foucault, a stalwart of the continental tradition.Template:Sfn It showed what appeared to be irreconcilable differences between two moral and intellectual luminaries of the 20th century. Foucault's position was that of critique, that human nature could not be conceived in terms foreign to present understanding, while Chomsky held that human nature contained universalities such as a common standard of moral justice as deduced through reason based on what rationally serves human necessity.Template:Sfn Chomsky criticized postmodernism and French philosophy generally, arguing that the obscure language of postmodern, leftist philosophers gives little aid to the working classes.Template:Sfnm He has also debated analytic philosophers, including Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Saul Kripke, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, and John Searle.Template:Sfn

Chomsky's contributions span intellectual and world history, including the history of philosophy.Template:Sfn Irony is a recurring characteristic of his writing, as he often implies that his readers know better, which can make them more engaged in the veracity of his claims.Template:Sfn

Personal life

File:Chomsky and others.jpg

Chomsky (far right) and his wife Valeria (second from right) with David and Carolee Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2014

Chomsky endeavors to separate his family life, linguistic scholarship, and political activism from each other.Template:Sfnm An intensely private person,Template:Sfn he is uninterested in appearances and the fame his work has brought him.Template:Sfn He also has little interest in modern art and music.Template:Sfn McGilvray suggests that Chomsky was never motivated by a desire for fame, but impelled to tell what he perceived as the truth and a desire to aid others in doing so.Template:Sfn Chomsky acknowledges that his income affords him a privileged life compared to the majority of the world's population;Template:Sfn nevertheless, he characterizes himself as a "worker", albeit one who uses his intellect as his employable skill.Template:Sfn He reads four or five newspapers daily; in the US, he subscribes to The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.Template:Sfn Chomsky is non-religious, but has expressed approval of forms of religion such as liberation theology.Template:Sfn

Chomsky has attracted controversy for calling established political and academic figures "corrupt", "fascist", and "fraudulent".Template:Sfn His colleague Steven Pinker has said that he "portrays people who disagree with him as stupid or evil, using withering scorn in his rhetoric", and that this contributes to the extreme reactions he receives from critics.Template:Sfn Chomsky avoids attending academic conferences, including left-oriented ones such as the Socialist Scholars Conference, preferring to speak to activist groups or hold university seminars for mass audiences.Template:Sfn His approach to academic freedom has led him to support MIT academics whose actions he deplores; in 1969, when Chomsky heard that Walt Rostow, a major architect of the Vietnam war, wanted to return to work at MIT, Chomsky threatened "to protest publicly" if Rostow were denied a position at MIT. In 1989, when Pentagon adviser John Deutch applied to be president of MIT, Chomsky supported his candidacy. Later, when Deutch became head of the CIA, The New York Times quoted Chomsky as saying, "He has more honesty and integrity than anyone I've ever met. ... If somebody's got to be running the CIA, I'm glad it's him."Template:Sfnm

Chomsky was married to Carol (Template:Nee) from 1949 until her death in 2008.Template:Sfn They had three children together: Aviva (b. 1957), Diane (b. 1960), and Harry (b. 1967).Template:Sfn In 2014, Chomsky married Valeria Wasserman.Template:Sfn

Reception and influence

[Chomsky's] voice is heard in academia beyond linguistics and philosophy: from computer science to neuroscience, from anthropology to education, mathematics and literary criticism. If we include Chomsky's political activism then the boundaries become quite blurred, and it comes as no surprise that Chomsky is increasingly seen as enemy number one by those who inhabit that wide sphere of reactionary discourse and action.

Sperlich, 2006Template:Sfn

Chomsky has been a defining Western intellectual figure, central to the field of linguistics and definitive in cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, and psychology.Template:Sfn In addition to being known as one of the most important intellectuals of his time,Template:Efn Chomsky carries a dual legacy as both a "leader in the field" of linguistics and "a figure of enlightenment and inspiration" for political dissenters.Template:Sfn Despite his academic success, his political viewpoints and activism have resulted in his being distrusted by the mainstream media apparatus, and he is regarded as being "on the outer margin of acceptability".Template:Sfn The reception of his work is intertwined with his public image as an anarchist, a gadfly, a historian, a Jew, a linguist, and a philosopher.Template:Sfn

In academia

McGilvray observes that Chomsky inaugurated the "cognitive revolution" in linguistics,Template:Sfn and that he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science,Template:Sfn moving it away from the procedural form of structural linguistics dominant during the mid-20th century.Template:Sfn As such, some have called Chomsky "the father of modern linguistics".Template:Efn Linguist John Lyons further remarked that within a few decades of publication, Chomskyan linguistics had become "the most dynamic and influential" school of thought in the field.Template:Sfn By the 1970s his work had also come to exert a considerable influence on philosophy,Template:Sfn and a Minnesota State University Moorhead poll ranked Syntactic Structures as the single most important work in cognitive science.Template:Sfn In addition, his work in automata theory and the Chomsky hierarchy have become well known in computer science, and he is much cited in computational linguistics.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Chomsky's criticisms of behaviorism contributed substantially to the decline of behaviorist psychology;Template:Sfn in addition, he is generally regarded as one of the primary founders of the field of cognitive science.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results;Template:Sfn Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.Template:Sfn

ACM Turing Award winner Donald Knuth credited Chomsky's work with helping him combine his interests in mathematics, linguistics, and computer science.Template:Sfn IBM computer scientist John Backus, another Turing Award winner, used some of Chomsky's concepts to help him develop FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level computer programming language.Template:Sfn Immunologist Niels Kaj Jerne's 1984 Nobel lecture applied Chomsky's generative grammar theory to the immune response process.Template:Sfn Chomsky's theory of generative grammar has also influenced work in music theory and analysis.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

An MIT press release stated that Chomsky was cited within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992.Template:Sfn Chomsky was also extensively cited in the Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index during the same time period, with the librarian who conducted the research commenting that the statistics show that "he is very widely read across disciplines and that his work is used by researchers across disciplines ... it seems that you can't write a paper without citing Noam Chomsky."Template:Sfn As a result of his influence, there are dueling camps of Chomskyan and non-Chomskyan linguistics, with the disputes between the two camps often acrimonious.Template:Sfn

In politics

Chomsky's status as the "most-quoted living author" is credited to his political writings, which vastly outnumber his writings on linguistics.Template:Sfn Chomsky biographer Wolfgang B. Sperlich characterizes him as "one of the most notable contemporary champions of the people";Template:Sfn journalist John Pilger has described him as a "genuine people's hero; an inspiration for struggles all over the world for that basic decency known as freedom. To a lot of people in the margins—activists and movements—he's unfailingly supportive."Template:Sfn Arundhati Roy has called him "one of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time",Template:Sfn and Edward Said thought him "one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions".Template:Sfn Fred Halliday has said that by the start of the 21st century Chomsky had become a "guru" for the world's anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.Template:Sfn The propaganda model of media criticism that he and Herman developed has been widely accepted in radical media critiques and adopted to some level in mainstream criticism of the media,Template:Sfn also exerting a significant influence on the growth of alternative media, including radio, publishers, and the Internet, which in turn have helped to disseminate his work.Template:Sfn

Sperlich also notes that Chomsky has been vilified by corporate interests, particularly in the mainstream press.Template:Sfn University departments devoted to history and political science rarely include Chomsky's work on their undergraduate syllabi.Template:Sfn Critics have argued that despite publishing widely on social and political issues, Chomsky has no formal expertise in these areas; he has responded that such issues are not as complex as many social scientists claim and that almost everyone is able to comprehend them regardless of whether they have been academically trained to do so.Template:Sfn According to McGilvray, many of Chomsky's critics "do not bother quoting his work or quote out of context, distort, and create straw men that cannot be supported by Chomsky's text".Template:Sfn

Chomsky drew criticism for not calling the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War a "genocide", which he said would devalue the word,Template:Sfn and in appearing to deny Ed Vulliamy's reporting on the existence of Bosnian concentration camps. The subsequent editorial correction of his comments, viewed as a capitulation, was criticized by multiple Balkan watchers.Template:Sfn

Chomsky's far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy. A document obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the U.S. government revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) monitored his activities and for years denied doing so. The CIA also destroyed its files on Chomsky at some point, possibly in violation of federal law.Template:Sfn He has often received undercover police protection at MIT and when speaking on the Middle East, but has refused uniformed police protection.Template:Sfn German news magazine Der Spiegel described Chomsky as "the Ayatollah of anti-American hatred",Template:Sfn while American conservative commentator David Horowitz called him "the most devious, the most dishonest and ... the most treacherous intellect in America", whose work is infused with "anti-American dementia" and evidences his "pathological hatred of his own country".Template:Sfn Writing in Commentary magazine, the journalist Jonathan Kay described Chomsky as "a hard-boiled anti-American monomaniac who simply refuses to believe anything that any American leader says".Template:Sfn

Chomsky's criticism of Israel has led to his being called a traitor to the Jewish people and an anti-Semite.Template:Sfn Criticizing Chomsky's defense of the right of individuals to engage in Holocaust denial on the grounds that freedom of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, Werner Cohn called Chomsky "the most important patron" of the neo-Nazi movement.Template:Sfn The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called him a Holocaust denier,Template:Sfn describing him as a "dupe of intellectual pride so overweening that he is incapable of making distinctions between totalitarian and democratic societies, between oppressors and victims".Template:Sfn In turn, Chomsky has claimed that the ADL is dominated by "Stalinist types" who oppose democracy in Israel.Template:Sfn The lawyer Alan Dershowitz has called Chomsky a "false prophet of the left";Template:Sfn Chomsky called Dershowitz "a complete liar" who is on "a crazed jihad, dedicating much of his life to trying to destroy my reputation".Template:Sfn In early 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey publicly rebuked Chomsky after he signed an open letter condemning Erdoğan for his anti-Kurdish repression and double standards on terrorism.Template:Sfn Chomsky accused Erdoğan of hypocrisy, noting that Erdoğan supports al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate,Template:Sfn the al-Nusra Front.Template:Sfn

In February 2020, before attending the 2020 Hay Festival in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Chomsky signed a letter of condemnation of the violation of freedom of speech in the emirate, referring to the arrest of human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor. Other signers included authors Stephen Fry and Jung Chang.Template:Sfn

Academic achievements, awards, and honors

See also: List of honorary degrees awarded to Noam Chomsky

File:Chomsky and Krieger.jpg

Chomsky receiving an award from the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, David Krieger (2014)

In 1970, the London Times named Chomsky one of the "makers of the twentieth century".Template:Sfn He was voted the world's leading public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll jointly conducted by American magazine Foreign Policy and British magazine Prospect.Template:Sfn New Statesman readers listed Chomsky among the world's foremost heroes in 2006.Template:Sfn

In the United States he is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Linguistic Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Association,Template:Sfn and the American Philosophical Society. Abroad he is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, an honorary member of the British Psychological Society, a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina,Template:Sfn and a foreign member of the Department of Social Sciences of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.Template:Sfn He received a 1971 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1984 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology, the 1988 Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the 1996 Helmholtz Medal,Template:Sfn the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science,Template:Sfn the 2010 Erich Fromm Prize,Template:Sfn and the British Academy's 2014 Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics.Template:Sfn He is also a two-time winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (1987 and 1989).Template:Sfn He has also received the Rabindranath Tagore Centenary Award from The Asiatic Society.Template:Sfn

Chomsky received the 2004 Carl-von-Ossietzky Prize from the city of Oldenburg, Germany, to acknowledge his body of work as a political analyst and media critic.Template:Sfn He received an honorary fellowship in 2005 from the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin.Template:Sfn He received the 2008 President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.Template:Sfn Since 2009, he has been an honorary member of International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI).Template:Sfn He received the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical ScholarshipTemplate:Sfn and was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems."Template:Sfn Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.Template:Sfn

In 2011, the US Peace Memorial Foundation awarded Chomsky the US Peace Prize for anti-war activities over five decades.Template:Sfn For his work in human rights, peace, and social criticism, he received the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize,Template:Sfn the Sretenje Order in 2015,Template:Sfn the 2017 Seán MacBride Peace PrizeTemplate:Sfn and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award.Template:Sfn

Chomsky has received honorary doctorates from institutions including the University of London and the University of Chicago (1967), Loyola University Chicago and Swarthmore College (1970), Bard College (1971), Delhi University (1972), and the University of Massachusetts (1973) among others.Template:Sfnm His public lectures have included the 1969 John Locke Lectures,Template:Sfn 1975 Whidden Lectures,Template:Sfn 1977 Huizinga Lecture, and 1988 Massey Lectures, among others.Template:Sfn

Various tributes to Chomsky have been dedicated over the years. He is the eponym for a bee species,Template:Sfn a frog species,Template:Sfn and a building complex at the Indian university Jamia Millia Islamia.Template:Sfn Actor Viggo Mortensen and avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2003 album Pandemoniumfromamerica to Chomsky.Template:Sfn

Selected bibliography

For a more detailed treatment, see Noam Chomsky bibliography and filmography.

Linguistics

• Syntactic Structures (1957)
• Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964)
• Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)
• Cartesian Linguistics (1965)
• Language and Mind (1968)
• The Sound Pattern of English with Morris Halle (1968)
• Reflections on Language (1975)
• Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)
• The Minimalist Program (1995)

Politics

• American Power and the New Mandarins (1969)
• Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda with Edward S. Herman (1973)
• The Political Economy of Human Rights (1979)
• Towards a New Cold War (1982)
• The Fateful Triangle (1983)
• Pirates and Emperors (1986)
• Manufacturing Consent (1988)
• Necessary Illusions (1989)
• Deterring Democracy (1991)
• Letters from Lexington (1993)
• The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993)
• World Orders Old and New (1994)
• Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (1997)

• Profit over People (1999)
• 9-11 (2001)
• Understanding Power (2002)
• Middle East Illusions (2003)
• Hegemony or Survival (2003)
• Getting Haiti Right This Time (2004)
• Imperial Ambitions (2005)
• Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006)
• Interventions (2007)
• Gaza in Crisis (2010)
• Making the Future (2012)
• Occupy (2012)
• Requiem for the American Dream (2017)

See also

• American philosophy
• Theory of language
• The Anti-Chomsky Reader
• Chomsky (surname)
• Knowledge worker
• List of linguists
• List of peace activists
• List of pioneers in computer science

Sources

• Adams, Tim. "Noam Chomsky: Thorn in America's side", November 30, 2003. 
• Aeschimann, Eric. "Chomsky s'est exposé, il est donc une cible désignée", May 31, 2010. (fr) “Template:Lang” 

Albert, Michael (2006). Remembering Tomorrow: From the politics of opposition to what we are for. Seven Stories Press, 97–99. ISBN 978-158322742-8. 

(2003) Chomsky and His Critics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-631-20021-5. 

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak to Litndeb (January 9, 2009).
• "Author, activist Noam Chomsky to receive award", University of Wisconsin–Madison, March 29, 2010. 

(1982) Musical grammars and computer analysis. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 201–218. ISBN 978-882223229-8. 

Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02418-1. 

Barsky, Robert F. (2007). The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower. MIT Press. ISBN 978-026202624-6. 

(2006) "Noam Chomsky", American Decades. Detroit, MI: Gale. 

• Birnbaum, Jean. "Chomsky à Paris: chronique d'un malentendu", June 3, 2010. (fr) “Template:Lang” 
• Bobanović, Paula. "Chomsky: Hrvati, Srbi i Bošnjaci govore isti jezik", April 14, 2018. (sh) 

Boden, Margaret A. (2006). Mind As Machine: a History of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-019924144-6. 

de Bot, Kees (2015). A History of Applied Linguistics: From 1980 to the Present. Routledge. ISBN 978-113882065-4. 

• Braun, Stuart. "Dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky at 90", Deutsche Welle. 
• "British Academy announces 2014 prize and medal winners", British Academy, July 24, 2014. 
• Bronner, Ethan. "Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank", May 17, 2010. 
• Burris, Greg. "What the Chomsky-Žižek debate tells us about Snowden's NSA revelations", August 11, 2013. 

(2016) "Chomsky hierarchy", A Dictionary of Computer Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968897-5. 

• Campbell, Duncan. "Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual", October 18, 2005. 
• Chomsky. inventio-musikverlag.de.
• Chomsky Amid the Philosophers. University of East Anglia.
• "Chomsky Is Citation Champ", April 15, 1992. 
• "Chomsky is Citation Champ", MIT, April 15, 1992. 
• Chomsky, Noam. The 'Chomskyan Era' (excerpted from The Architecture of Language).

Chomsky, Noam (1991). Linguistics and Cognitive Science: Problems and Mysteries. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Chomsky, Noam (1996). Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian. Pluto Press, 135–136. ISBN 978-074531137-1. 

• Chomsky, Noam (May 18, 2016). Is the US Ready for Socialism? An Interview With Noam Chomsky. also available, in part, on chomsky.info.
• "Chomsky: Saudi Arabia is the "Center of Radical Islamic Extremism" Now Spreading Among Sunni Muslims", May 17, 2016. 
• Christiansen, Morten H.; Chater, Nick (October 2010). "Language as shaped by the brain". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5): 489–509. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08004998. ISSN 1469-1825. PMID 18826669. 
• Cipriani, Enrico (2016). "Some reflections on Chomsky's notion of reference". Linguistics Beyond and within 2: 44–60. doi:10.31743/lingbaw.5637. 

Cohn, Werner (1995). Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers. Cambridge, MA: Avukah Press. ISBN 978-0-9645897-0-4. 

• Cowley, Jason. "New Statesman – Heroes of our time – the top 50", May 22, 2006. 

(1994) Computability, complexity, and languages: fundamentals of theoretical computer science, 2nd, Boston: Academic Press, Harcourt, Brace. ISBN 978-0-12-206382-4. 

• "Denied Entry: Israel Blocks Noam Chomsky from Entering West Bank to Deliver Speech", May 17, 2010. 
• Dovey, Dana. "Noam Chomsky's Theory Of Universal Grammar Is Right; It's Hardwired Into Our Brains", December 7, 2015. 
• The Erdös Number Project. Oakland University (November 21, 2017).
• "Erich-Fromm-Preis: Noam Chomsky in Stuttgart geehrt", March 23, 2010. (de) 
• Evans, Nicholas; Levinson, Stephen C. (October 2009). "The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (5): 429–448. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999094X. ISSN 1469-1825. PMID 19857320. 
• Feinberg, Harriet (February 1999). Elsie Chomsky: A Life in Jewish Education. Brandeis University.
• Ferguson, Joe. "Tickets on sale for Tucson talk on nuclear war with Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg". 

(2006) "Language learning in infancy", Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Academic Press, 1027–1071. ISBN 978-008046641-5. 

• Flint, Anthony. "Divided Legacy", November 19, 1995, p. 25. Template:Proquest. 
• Flood, Alison. "As Hay festival opens in the UAE, authors condemn free speech abuses", February 24, 2020. 
• Fox, Margalit. "A Changed Noam Chomsky Simplifies", December 5, 1998. 

Friesen, Norm (December 10, 2017). The Textbook and the Lecture: Education in the Age of New Media. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-142142434-7. 

• Fulton, Scott M., III. "John W. Backus (1924–2007)", BetaNews, March 20, 2007. 

Gendzier, Irene (2017). "15: Noam Chomsky and the Question of Palestine/Israel: Bearing Witness", The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky, 2nd, Cambridge University Press, 314–329. ISBN 978-131673875-7. 

• Glaser, John (November 18, 2012). It is not a war. It is murder.
• Gold, Daniel M.. "Review: Noam Chomsky Focuses on Financial Inequality in 'Requiem for the American Dream'", January 28, 2016. 

Gould, S. J. (1981). Official Transcript for Gould's deposition in McLean v. Arkansas. 

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Greif, Mark (2015). The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14639-3. 

(2010) "Chomsky in search of a pedigree", Chomskyan (R)evolutions. John Benjamins, 377–394. ISBN 978-902721169-9. 

Harbord, Shaun (1994). "Extracts form 'An historian's appraisal of the political writings of Noam Chomsky'", Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, Volumes 2–3. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-10694-8. 

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Harris, R. Allen (2010). "Chomsky's other Revolution", Chomskyan (R)evolutions. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 237–265. ISBN 978-90-272-1169-9. 

• Harwood, Lori. "Noam Chomsky to Teach Politics Course In Spring", November 21, 2016. 

Hjelmslev, Louis (1969). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 029902470-9. 

• Honorary Members of IAPTI. International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters.
• "Honors & Awards", Fall 2002. 
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• Horowitz, David (September 26, 2001). The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky.
• Hudson, John. "Exclusive: After Multiple Denials, CIA Admits to Snooping on Noam Chomsky", August 13, 2013. 
• Huxley, John. "Sydney Peace Prize goes to Chomsky", June 2, 2011. 
• "IEEE Computer Society Magazine Honors Artificial Intelligence Leaders". Digital Journal. August 24, 2011. http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/399442. 
• Interview: Noam Chomsky Speaks Out On Education and Power (September 20, 2005).
• "Israel: Chomsky ban 'big mistake'", Al Jazeera, May 20, 2010. 
• IWW Biography. Industrial Workers of the World.
• Jaggi, Maya. "Conscience of a nation", January 20, 2001. 
• Jamia Millia Islamia named a complex honoring Noam Chomsky. Jamia Millia Islamia (May 3, 2007).
• Kalman, Matthew. "Palestinians Divided Over Boycott of Israeli Universities", January 19, 2014. 
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• Keller, Katherine (November 12, 2007). Writer, Creator, Journalist, and Uppity Woman: Ann Nocenti.

Knight, Chris (2016). Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-030022876-2. 

• Knight, Chris. "When the Pentagon Looked to Chomsky's Linguistics for their Weapons Systems", March 12, 2018. 

Knuth, Donald (2002). "Preface", Selected Papers on Computer Languages. Center for the Study of Language and Information. ISBN 978-1-57586-381-8. 

Knuth, Donald E. (2003). "Preface: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition", Selected Papers on Computer Languages. ISBN 1-57586-382-0. 

(2003) Knuth: Selected Papers on Computer Languages. Stanford University. ISBN 157586381-2. 

Koerner, E. F. K. (1978). "Towards a historiography of linguistics", Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays. John Benjamins, 21–54. 

• Koerner, E. F. K. (1983). "The Chomskyan 'revolution' and its historiography: a few critical remarks". Language & Communication 3 (2): 147–169. doi:10.1016/0271-5309(83)90012-5. 
• Lecture 6: Evolutionary Psychology, Problem Solving, and 'Machiavellian' Intelligence. School of Psychology, Massey University (1996).
• "Let me introduce myself – leafcutter bee Megachile chomskyi from Texas", Pensoft. 
• Template:Cite magazine(facsimile copy of Lukes's THES article, together with some of the correspondence it provoked, including from Ralph Miliband, Ken Coates and others, with Chomsky's response)

Lyons, John (1978). Noam Chomsky, revised, Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-004370-9. 

• MacCorquodale, Kenneth (January 1970). "On Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 13 (1): 83–99. doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.13-83. ISSN 0022-5002. 
• Mace, Mikayla. "Linguist Noam Chomsky joins University of Arizona faculty". 
• Macintyre, Donald. "Chomsky refused entry into West Bank", May 17, 2010. 

McGilvray, James (2014). Chomsky: Language, Mind, Politics, second, Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-4989-4. 

• McNeill, David. "Noam Chomsky: Truth to power", February 22, 2014. 
• Milne, Seumas. "'US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia'", November 7, 2009. 

Nettelfield, Lara J. (2010). Courting Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-052176380-6. 

• "Nikolic presented the Sretenje Order", February 15, 2015. (sr) 
• Noam Chomsky. MIT Linguistics Program (2002).

(2016) "Noam Chomsky", Contemporary Authors Online, Biography in Context. Detroit, MI: Gale. 

• Noam Chomsky Awarded 2011 US Peace Prize. US Memorial Peace Foundation.
• Noam Chomsky Joins NAPF Advisory Council. Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (March 1, 2014).
• "Noam Chomsky on Life & Love: Still Going at 86, Renowned Dissident is Newly Married", March 3, 2015. 
• O'Grady, Cathleen. "MIT claims to have found a "language universal" that ties all languages together", June 8, 2015. 
• The one hundred most influential works in cognitive science. Center for Cognitive Sciences, Minnesota State University.
• Ortiz, Aimee. "Chomsky joins University of Arizona faculty", August 28, 2017. 

Chomsky, Noam (2003). Chomsky on Democracy & Education. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-041592632-4. 

• Páez, Nadia (2019). "Systematics of Huicundomantis, a new subgenus of Pristimantis (Anura, Strabomantidae) with extraordinary cryptic diversity and eleven new species". ZooKeys (868): 1–112. doi:10.3897/zookeys.868.26766. ISSN 1313-2970. PMID 31406482. 

Partee, Barbara H. (2015). "Asking What a Meaning Does: David Lewis's Contribution to Semantics", A Companion to David Lewis, Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 978-111838818-1. 

(2013) The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, 2nd, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-51426-9. 

• Pilkington, Ed. "Noam Chomsky barred by Israelis from lecturing in Palestinian West Bank", May 16, 2010. 
• Press release: Séan MacBride Peace Prize 2017. International Peace Bureau (September 6, 2017).

Prickett, Stephen (2002). Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism Versus Irony, 1700–1999. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00983-6. 

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• Pullum, Geoffrey; Scholz, Barbara (2002). "Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments". The Linguistic Review 18 (1–2): 9–50. doi:10.1515/tlir.19.1-2.9. http://www.ucd.ie/artspgs/research/pullum.pdf. 
• Rabbani, Mouin (2012). "Reflections on a Lifetime of Engagement with Zionism, the Palestine Question, and American Empire: An Interview with Noam Chomsky". Journal of Palestine Studies 41 (3): 92–120. doi:10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.3.92. http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=11394&jid=1&href=fulltext. 

Radick, Gregory (2007). The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-022670224-7. 

Rai, Milan (1995). Chomsky's Politics. Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-011-5. 

• Robinson, Paul. "The Chomsky Problem", February 25, 1979. 
• Rohrmeier, Martin (2007). Spyridis, Georgaki; Kouroupetroglou, Anagnostopoulou. eds. "A generative grammar approach to diatonic harmonic structure". Proceedings of the 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference: 97–100. http://smc07.uoa.gr/SMC07%20Proceedings/SMC07%20Paper%2015.pdf. 
• Ruiter, J. P. de; Levinson, Stephen C. (October 2010). "A biological infrastructure for communication underlies the cultural evolution of languages". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5): 518. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005086. ISSN 1469-1825. 
• SASA Member. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (October 30, 2003).
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• Sengupta, Kim. "Turkey and Saudi Arabia alarm the West by backing Islamist extremists the Americans had bombed in Syria", May 12, 2015. 

Seuren, Pieter A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-20891-7. 

Sipser, Michael (1997). Introduction to the Theory of Computation. PWS Publishing. ISBN 978-0-534-94728-6. 

Slife, Brent D. (1993). Time and Psychological Explanation: The Spectacle of Spain's Tourist Boom and the Reinvention of Difference. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-1469-9. 

Smith, Neil (2004). Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-052154688-1. 

Soderqvist, Thomas (2003). Science as Autobiography: The Troubled Life of Niels Jern. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09441-1. 

Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (2006). Noam Chomsky. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-269-0. 

• Steedman, Mark J. (October 1, 1984). "A Generative Grammar for Jazz Chord Sequences". Music Perception 2 (1): 52–77. doi:10.2307/40285282. 
• Swartz, Aaron (May 15, 2006). The Book That Changed My Life. Raw Thought.

Szabó, Zoltán Gendler (2010). "Chomsky, Noam Avram (1928–)", The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-19-975466-3. 

• Tanenhaus, Sam. "Noam Chomsky and the Bicycle Theory", October 31, 2016. 

Thornbury, Scott (2006). An A–Z of ELT (Methodology). Oxford: Macmillan Education. ISBN 978-140507063-8. 

• Tomasello, Michael (January 1995). "Language is not an instinct". Cognitive Development 10 (1): 131–156. doi:10.1016/0885-2014(95)90021-7. ISSN 0885-2014. 

Tomasello, Michael (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01030-7. 

• Tomasello, Michael (October 2009). "Universal grammar is dead". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (5): 470–471. doi:10.1017/S0140525X09990744. ISSN 1469-1825. 
• Tool Module: Chomsky's Universal Grammar. The Brain From Top To Bottom. McGill University.

(April 8, 2004) Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-0-387-98930-3. 

• "U.S., Britain ignored 'culture of terrorism': Chomsky", November 4, 2001. 
• Viggo Mortensen's Spoken Word & Music CDs.
• Vučić, Nikola (March 27, 2018). Noam Chomsky potpisao Deklaraciju o zajedničkom jeziku (sh). N1.
• Weaver, Matthew. "Chomsky hits back at Erdoğan, accusing him of double standards on terrorism", January 14, 2016. 
• Weidenfeld, Lisa. "Noam Chomsky Is Leaving MIT for the University of Arizona", August 29, 2017. “Chomsky has been at MIT since 1955, and retired in 2002.” 
• Weiner, Tim. "The C.I.A.'s most Important Mission: Itself", December 10, 1995. 
• "Noam Chomsky: 'The Occupy movement just lit a spark' – video", July 6, 2012. 

Further reading

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• Changeux, Jean-Pierre; Courrége, Philippe; Danchin, Antoine (1973). "A Theory of the Epigenesis of Neuronal Networks by Selective Stabilization of Synapses". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 70 (10): 2974–2978. doi:10.1073/pnas.70.10.2974. PMID 4517949. Bibcode: 1973PNAS...70.2974C. 
• Chomsky, Noam (1959). "Reviews: Verbal behavior by B. F. Skinner". Language 35 (1): 26–58. doi:10.2307/411334. https://chomsky.info/1967____/. 
• Chomsky, Noam (2008–2009). "Human nature and the origins of language". Radical Anthropology (2): 19–23. http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/journal/journal_02.pdf. 
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Everett, Daniel L. (2008). Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-375-42502-8. 

• Farndale, Nigel. "Noam Chomsky interview". 
• Fox, Margalit. "Carol Chomsky, 78, Linguist and Educator, Dies", December 20, 2008. 
• Gardner, R. A.; Gardner, B. T. (1969). "Teaching Sign Language to a Chimpanzee". Science 165 (3894): 664–672. doi:10.1126/science.165.3894.664. PMID 5793972. Bibcode: 1969Sci...165..664G. http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg2000/Papers/Chimp69ScienceGardner.pdf. 

(1989) Teaching Sign Language to Chimpanzees. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-965-9. 

• IWW Interview with Noam Chomsky: Worker Occupations And The Future Of Radical Labor. IWW (October 9, 2009).

Joseph, John E. (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the history of American linguistics, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences. John Benjamins. DOI:10.1075/sihols.103. ISBN 978-902727537-0. 

Joseph, John E. (2010). "Chomsky's atavistic revolution (with a little help from his enemies)", Chomskyan (R)evolutions. John Benjamins, 1–18. DOI:10.1075/z.154.01jos. ISBN 978-902721169-9. 

• {{subst:#invoke:String|rep|1= |2=1}} (2011). "Théories et politiques de Noam Chomsky" (in fr). Langages 182 (2): 55–68. doi:10.3917/lang.182.0055. ISSN 0458-726X. 
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• Knoester, Matthew (2003). "Education according to Chomsky". Mind, Culture, and Activity 10 (3): 266–270. doi:10.1207/s15327884mca1003_10. 

Laurence, Stephen (2003). "Is Linguistics a Branch of Psychology?", Epistemology of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 69–106. ISBN 978-019925058-5. 

Lehmann, Christian (1982). "On some current views of the language universal", Issues in the Theory of Universal Grammar. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 75–94. ISBN 978-3-87808-565-2. 

(August 5, 2015) "Noam Chomsky", Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship: From the Pioneers to the Next Generation. Palgrave Macmillan, 1–12. ISBN 978-1-137-46342-5. 

• Lim, Ee-Peng (2011). "AI's Hall of Fame: Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science". IEEE Intelligent Systems 26 (4): 12. doi:10.1109/MIS.2011.64. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5968105. 
• McDonald, Alyssa. "The NS Interview: Noam Chomsky", September 2010. 

Miles, H. Lyn White (1990). "The cognitive foundations for reference in a signing orangutan", "Language" and intelligence in monkeys and apes: Comparative developmental perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38028-7. 

(2002) Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. New York: New Press. ISBN 978-156584703-3. OCLC 46936001. 

• Nishida, T. (1968). "The social group of wild chimpanzees in the Mahali Mountains". Primates 9 (3): 167–224. doi:10.1007/BF01730971. http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/213162/1/yrigk00159.pdf. 

Patel, Aniruddh D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512375-3. 

(1981) The Education of Koko. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-046101-9. 

Plooij, F. X. (1978). "Some basic traits of language in wild chimpanzees?", Action, Gesture and Symbol: The Emergence of Language. London: Academic Press, 111–131. ISBN 978-0-12-454050-7. 

Poole, Geoffrey (2005). "Noam Chomsky", Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 53–59. ISBN 978-0-7486-1757-9. 

Posner, Richard A. (2003). Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Revised, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01246-2. 

• Premack, D. (1985). "'Gavagai!' or the future history of the animal language controversy". Cognition 19 (3): 207–296. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90036-8. PMID 4017517. 
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S.; McDonald, K.; Sevcik, R. A.; Hopkins, W. D.; Rubert, E. (1986). "Spontaneous Symbol Acquisition and Communicative Use By Pygmy Chimpanzees (Pan paniscus)". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115 (3): 211–235. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.115.3.211. PMID 2428917. http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~sereno/170/readings/21-ApeLanguage.pdf. 
• Savage-Rumbaugh, S.; Rumbaugh, D. M.; McDonald, K. (1985). "Language learning in two species of apes". Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 9 (4): 653–665. doi:10.1016/0149-7634(85)90012-0. PMID 4080283. 
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• Template:Cite magazine a review of

Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. MIT Press. 

Terrace, Herbert S. (1987). Nim: A Chimpanzee who Learned Sign Language. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-06341-8.  Template:Refend

External links

• Template:Official website
• Noam Chomsky personal archives at MIT
• Faculty page at MIT
• Faculty page at the University of Arizona