The linguistic philosophy of Noam Chomsky

Much of what is distinctive among human beings is a specific manner in which a variety of shared cognitive structures develops. Chomsky holds that language is the most intricate of these structures. In studying language, one can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and the genetic predispositions that provide the foundation for its development. It proves to be a universal tool for discovering the most elaborate features of other cognitive systems.

As a declared Cartesian, Chomsky via Cartesian Linguistics (1966) clearly embraces the interpretation of Descartes' famous dictum 'I think therefore I am' (cogito ergo sum) as the solid foundation for knowledge. With this Cartesian spirit, Chomsky claims that language refers to certain mental states, which a linguistic theory will explicate. He says: “We should, so it appears, think of knowledge of language as a certain state of mind/brain, a relatively stable element in transitory mental states once it is attained; furthermore, as a state of some distinguishable faculty of the mind - the language faculty - with its specific properties, structure and organization, one module of the mind” (Binoy Barman, 2012).

Following the Cartesian dichotomy, humans vs. animals with respect to language faculty, he postulates that humans are different from other creatures, whereas every human is identical in this respect. Chomsky postulates that there has to be a human universal, more precisely, a universal cognitive and behavioral capacity, equally shared by the Amazon hunter-gatherers and us, manifested in every culture and every level of personal achievement (Marion Long, 2011).

The latter is supported by language creativity postulate, which follows from a fundamental insight of philosophical rationalism. Each language in effect provides a means to construct and interpret infinitely many structured expressions, each of which has a semantic interpretation (LF) and an expression in sound (PF). Thus, there has to be what is called a generative procedure, an ability to generate infinite sentences or expressions and then to connect them to thought systems and to sensory motor systems. One has to begin by focusing on this central property, the unbounded generation of structured expressions and their interpretations. Those ideas crystallized and became part of the so-called biolinguistic framework, which looks at language as an element of human biology, rather like, say, the visual system.

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Given these views, one has to conclude that the central object of study in theoretical linguistics is `the language faculty', a postulated mental organ which is dedicated to acquiring linguistic knowledge and is involved in various aspects of languageuse, including the production and understanding of utterances.

Hence, the aim of linguistic theory is to describe (i) the initial state of this faculty; and (ii) how it changes through exposure to linguistic data. Chomsky (1981) characterizes the initial state of the language faculty as a set of principles and parameters. Language acquisition consists in setting these open parameter values based on linguistic data available to a child. The initial state of the system is UG: a superrecipe for concocting language-specific grammars. Grammars constitute the knowledge of particular languages that result when parametric values are fixed (Norbert Horstein, 1998).

Linguistic theory, thus, has a double mission. First, it aims to `adequately' characterize the grammars (and hence the mental states) attained by native speakers. Theories are `descriptively adequate' if they attain this goal. In addition, linguistic theory aims to explain how grammatical competence is attained. Theories are `explanatorily adequate' if they show how descriptively adequate grammars can arise on the basis of exposure to `primary linguistic data' (PLD): the data children are exposed to and use in attaining their native grammars. Explanatory adequacy rests on an articulated theory of UG, and in particular a detailed theory of the general principles and open parameters that characterize the initial state of the language faculty (that is, the biologically endowed mental structures).

2.2 The aims and principles of linguistic theory

There is an intimate relation between how a problem is conceived and the kinds of explanations one should offer. Chomsky proposes that we identify explanation in linguistics with a solution to the problem of how children can attain mastery of their native languages based on a rather slender database. This is often referred to as `the logical problem of language acquisition'. A natural language assigns meaning to an unbounded number of sentences. Humans typically come to master at least one such language in a surprisingly short time, without conscious effort, explicit instruction or apparent difficulty. How is this possible? There are significant constraints on any acceptable answer.

First, a human can acquire any language if placed in the appropriate speech community. Grow up in Boston and one grows up speaking English the way Bostonians do. However, PLD available to the child are unable to guide the task unaided. There are four kinds of problems with the data that prevent it from shaping the outcome:

(a) The set of sentences the child is exposed to is finite. However, the knowledge attained extends over an unbounded domain of sentences.

(b) The child is exposed not to sentences but to utterances of sentences. These are imperfect vehicles for the transmission of sentential information as they can be defective in various ways. Slurred speech, half sentences, slips of the tongue and mispronunciations are only a few of the ways that utterances can obscure sentence structure.

(c) Acquisition takes place without explicit guidance by the speech community. This is so for a variety of reasons. Children do not make many errors to begin with when one considers the range of logically possible mistakes. Moreover, adults do not engage in systematic corrections of errors that do occur and even when correction is offered children seem neither to notice nor to care. At any rate, children seem surprisingly immune to any form of adult linguistic intrusion (Lightfoot, 1982).

(d) Last of all, and most importantly, of the linguistic evidence theoretically available to the child, it is likely that only simple sentences are absorbed. The gap between input and intake is attributable to various cognitive limitations such as short attention span and limited memory. This implies that the acquisition process is primarily guided by the information available in well-formed simple sentences. Negative data (the information available in unacceptable ill-formed sentences) and complex data (the information yielded by complex constructions) are not among the PLD that guide the process of grammar acquisition. The child constructing its native grammar is limited to an informationally restricted subset of the relevant data. In contrast to the evidence that the linguist exploits in theory construction, the information the child uses in building its grammar is severely restricted. This suggests that whenever the linguistic properties of complex clauses diverge from simple ones, the acquisition of this knowledge cannot be driven by data. Induction is insufficient as the relevant information is simply unavailable in the PLD.

The general picture that emerges from these considerations is that attaining linguistic competence involves the acquisition of a grammar, and that humans come equipped with a rich innate system that guides the process of grammar construction. This system is supple enough to allow for the acquisition of any natural language grammar, yet rigid enough to guide the process despite the degeneracy and deficiency of the PLD. Linguistic theorizing takes the above facts as boundary conditions and aims both at descriptive adequacy (that is, to characterize the knowledge that speakers have of their native grammars) and explanatory adequacy (that is, to adumbrate the fine structure of the innate capacity).

Issues of descriptive and explanatory adequacy have loomed large in Chomsky's work since the beginning. His argument in favour of a transformational approach to grammar rested on the claim that it allowed for the statement of crucial generalizations evident in the judgments of native speakers and so advanced the goal of descriptive adequacy (Chomsky, 1957). Similarly, his influential critique (1959) of Skinner's Verbal Behavior consisted in showing that the learning theory presented therein was explanatorily inadequate. It was either too vague to be of scientific value or clearly incorrect given even moderately precise notions of stimulus or reinforcement.

The general conclusion Chomsky draws is that whatever problems linguistic theory encounters, it is no more methodologically problematic than theories in other domains. He attributes the qualms of philosophers to lingering empiricist dogma or an indefensible epistemological dualism.