Noam Chomsky Quotes on Knowledge
Chomsky's linguistics — generative grammar, the principles-and-parameters framework, the minimalist program — argues that human language acquisition can be explained only on the assumption of an innate language faculty supplying the deep structural principles common to every natural language. The implications for epistemology are direct: the empiricist program from Locke through Quine, which treats the mind as initially blank and language as learned wholly from environmental input, fails on the evidence of how children actually acquire grammatical competence. Chomsky's parallel political writing — from American Power and the New Mandarins to Manufacturing Consent — develops a critical analysis of how knowledge is produced and disseminated within state-corporate media systems.
Quotes
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Attributed to Noam Chomsky:
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
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Attributed to Noam Chomsky:
“How is it we have so much information, but know so little?”
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“A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior , Language 35, no. 1 (January–March 1959)”
Suppose that we manage to construct grammars having the properties outlined above. We can then attempt to describe and study the achievement of the speaker, listener, and learner. The speaker and the listener, we must assume, have already acquired the capacities characterized abstractly by the grammar. The speaker’s task is to select a particular compatible set of optional rules. If we know, from -
“Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
Chap. 1 : Introduction -
“Chap. 1 : Introduction”
Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. -
“Chap. 1 : Introduction”
We can determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory by developing rigorously and precisely the form of grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained within this theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing simple and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages. -
“Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic and statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set of grammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and that probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the basic problems of syntactic structure.”
Chap. 2 : The Independence of Grammar -
“Chap. 2 : The Independence of Grammar”
Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic and statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set of grammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and that probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the basic problem -
“Chap. 6 : On the Goals of Linguistic Theory”
The grammar of a language is a complex system with many and varied interconnections between its parts. In order to develop one part of grammar thoroughly, it is often useful, or even necessary, to have some picture of the character of a completed system. Once again, I think that the notion that syntactic theory must await the solution of problems of phonology and morphology is completely untenable -
“There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string (which no one may ever have produced) is or is not a sentence. It is reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some of these facts.”
Chap. 8 : The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory -
“We take for granted that the organism does not learn to grow arms or to reach puberty... When we turn to the mind and its products, the situation is not qualitatively different from what we find in the case of the body.”
Rules and Representations(1980) | p. 2-3 as cited in: Jerry Fodor (1983) Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. p. 4.