Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,[1][2] cognitive scientist, logician,[3][4][5] political commentator and anarcho-syndicalist activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics",[6][7] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.[1] He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.[8]
Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from relatives in New York City. He later undertook studies in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his BA, MA, and PhD, while from 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows. In 1955 he began work at MIT, soon becoming a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his publications and lectures on the subject. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. Chomsky also played a major role in the decline of behaviorism, and was especially critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.[9][10] In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, and came to be associated with the New Left while being arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also developed the propaganda model of media criticism with Edward S. Herman. Following his retirement from active teaching, he has continued his vocal public activism, for instance supporting the anti-Iraq War and Occupy movements.
- ^ a b "Noam Chomsky", by Zoltán Gendler Szabó, in Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, 1860–1960, ed. Ernest Lepore (2004). "Chomsky's intellectual life had been divided between his work in linguistics and his political activism, philosophy coming as a distant third. Nonetheless, his influence among analytic philosophers has been enormous because of three factors. First, Chomsky contributed substantially to a major methodological shift in the human sciences, turning away from the prevailing empiricism of the middle of the twentieth century: behaviorism in psychology, structuralism in linguistics and positivism in philosophy. Second, his groundbreaking books on syntax (Chomsky (1957, 1965)) laid a conceptual foundation for a new, cognitivist approach to linguistics and provided philosophers with a new framework for thinking about human language and the mind. And finally, he has persistently defended his views against all takers, engaging in important debates with many of the major figures in analytic philosophy..."
- ^ The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1999), "Chomsky, Noam," Cambridge University Press, pg. 138. "Chomsky, Noam (born 1928), preeminent American linguist, philosopher, and political activist... Many of Chomsky's most significant contributions to philosophy, such as his influential rejection of behaviorism... stem from his elaborations and defenses of the above consequences..."
- ^ Edwin D. Reilly (2003). Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 43–44. ISBN 9781573565219.
In 1956, the logician Noam Chomsky showed that there are only four basically different forms Church-Turing thesis of grammar, which, in decreasing order of sophistication, he called grammars of Type 0, 1, 2, and 3.
. Viewed July 15, 2012. - ^ H. L. Somers (2003). Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks (ed.). Readings in Machine Translation. MIT Press. p. 68. ISBN 9780262140744.
I think that this should be of sufficient interest to warrant some more detailed exhibition, especially since this insight is due to an important new, not to say revolutionary, view of the structure of language, recently outlined by the American linguist and logician Noam Chomsky [2], and could perhaps, in its turn and in due time, be turned into a new method of machine translation, which would be more complex than the known ones but also more effective.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link). Viewed July 15, 2012. - ^ Carlos Peregrín Otero, ed. (1994). Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, Volume 1; Volume 3. Taylor & Francis. pp. 14–15. ISBN 9780415106931.
Chomsky is a professional linguist, a competent mathematical logician, and a trained methodologist with a keen critical sense and an uncanny ability to follow the most abstruse mathematical argument or, if necessary, to produce one himself.
- ^ Fox, Margalit (December 5, 1998). "A Changed Noam Chomsky Simplifies". New York Times. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
Mr. Chomsky...is the father of modern linguistics and remains the field's most influential practitioner.
- ^ Thomas Tymoczko, Jim Henle, James M. Henle, Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic, Birkhäuser, 2000, p. 101.
- ^ Duncan Campbell (2005-10-18). "Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual | World news". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-05-29.
- ^ "Behaviorism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2014-07-11.
- ^ Noam Chomsky (1971-12-30). "The Case Against B.F. Skinner, by Noam Chomsky". Chomsky.info. Retrieved 2014-07-11.