Attempts to indentify the fundamental concepts of language, argues that the study of language reveals hidden facts about the mind, and looks at the impact of propaganda.

In Rules and Representations, first published in 1980, Noam Chomsky lays out many of the concepts that have made his approach to linguistics and human cognition so instrumental to our understanding of language.Chomsky arrives at his well-known position that there is a universal grammar, structured in the human mind and common to all human languages. Based on Chomsky's 1978 Woodbridge Lectures, this edition contains revised versions of the lectures and two new essays.

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as “mental organs.” These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated (...) structures along an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term.Various types of knowledge and modes of knowledge acquisition are discussed in these terms. Some of the properties of the language faculty are investigated. The basic cognitive relation is “knowing a grammar”; knowledge of language is derivative and, correspondingly, raises further problems. Language as commonly understood is not a unitary phenomenon but involves a number of interacting systems: the “computational” system of grammar, which provides the representations of sound and meaning that permit a rich range of expressive potential, is distinct from a conceptual system with its own properties; knowledge of language must be distinguished from knowledge of how to use a language; and the various systems that enter into the knowledge and use of language must be further analyzed into their specific subcomponents. (shrink)

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along (...) an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we offer a retooling of some traditional concepts, namely icons and symbols, which allows us to describe an evolutionary continuum of communication systems. The second section consists of an argument from theoretical biology. In it we explore the advantages and disadvantages of phenotypic plasticity. We argue that a range of the conditions that selectively favor phenotypic plasticity also favor a nongenetic transmission system that would allow for the inheritance of (...) acquired characters. The first two sections are independent, the third depends on both of them. In it we offer an argument that human natural languages have just the features required of an ideal transmission mechanism under the conditions described in section 2. (shrink)

Within the context of the study of the genetics of language, Chomskian laws of grammar, such as theStructure-dependence Condition and theA over A Condition, may be usefully regarded to have a status similar to that of Mendelian Laws in classical genetics. In both the case of Chomsky's Laws and Mendel's Laws, formal genetic principles are postulated which abstract away from the physical mechanisms involved and in both cases certain apparent counterexamples mirror a more complex underlying genetic organisation.

The essays turn about a single theme, the loss of the capacity to deal constructively with ambiguity in the modern era. Levine offers a head-on critique of the modern compulsion to flee ambiguity. He centers his analysis on the question of what responses social scientists should adopt in the face of the inexorably ambiguous character of all natural languages. In the course of his argument, Levine presents a fresh reading of works by the classic figures of modern European and American (...) social theory—Durkheim, Freud, Simmel and Weber, and Park, Parsons, and Merton. (shrink)

This collection of articles and associated discussion papers focuses on a problem that has attracted increasing attention from linguists and psychologists throughout the world during the past several years. Reduced to essentials, the problem is that of discovering the character of the mental capacities that make it possible for human beings to attain knowledge of their language on the basis of fragmentary and haphazard early linguistic experience. A fundamental assumption running through all of these contributions is that people possess strong (...) innate predispositions that are critical for success in this task. (shrink)

First published in 1977, this book draws together various contributions on the area of speech used by parents with their children. Numerous perspectives on the topic include the comparison of baby talk with other simplified registers by linguists, the analysis of cross-cultural differences in mother and child interaction by anthropologists, and the relation of language development to differences in styles of childcare and the child's social environment in general by psychologists. The text had its origins in a conference sponsored by (...) the Sociolinguistics Committee of the Social Science Research Council. It will be of value to anyone with an interest in language acquisition and development. (shrink)

A more extensive discussion of certain of the more technical notions appears in my paper "On Binding" (Chomsky,; henceforth, OB). ...

Language and Problems of Knowledge is sixteenth in the series Current Studies in Linguistics, edited by Jay Keyser.

Barriers is Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 13.

Examines the findings of scientific research into the thought processes of animals and argues that animals are capable of conscious thought.