Icon Books, 2011. — 358 pages. — (Introducing Graphic Guides). — ISBN: 978-1-84831-294-4.Linguist Noam Chomsky maintains that the human brain has an innate language faculty, and that part of this biological endowment is a 'universal grammar', a theory of principles common to all languages. Thus, all human languages and the ways in which children learn them are remarkably similar. Chomsky's book Syntactic Structures was a turning-point in 20th-century linguistics, challenging assumptions in many areas such as philosophy, psychology and intellectual history. Heir to the Enlightenment tradition, Chomsky has introduced new perspectives on language, the creative individual and the nature of human freedom in society. Introducing Chomsky traces Chomsky's understanding of the cognitive realities involved in the use of language, and the technical apparatus needed to represent it. The book also describes Chomsky's radical critique of the institutions of power and the pathways of oppression, and his commitment to freedom and justice.Introducing Chomsky
Being and Language
The Language Bell
Language Use
How Do We Know Language?
The Diversity Diversion
Getting to the Core of Language
How Do We Explain Language?
Language and Communication
Two Common Uses of Language
Structure Dependence
The Knowledge of Language
E-Language and I-Language
Grammar or Politics?
American Structuralism
What About Saussure?
Galileo’s Method
Abstraction
Idealization
Ideal-Type
Violating the Rose
The Idealized Model
Language as a Mental Organ
Descartes’ Theory of Body
A New Theory of Body
Skinner’s Behaviourist Theory
The Refutation of Behaviourism
Plato’s Problem
Language Is Not Learned, It Grows
Innateness
Growth and Constraints on Learning
Language is Not Imitation
What is Knowledge of Language?
Non-Inductive Ability
“Motherese”
The Attack From the Social
The Reply
So What is Linguistics?
Creative vs. Recursive
The Tale of Two Grammars
Traditional Grammar vs. Generative Grammar
The Break with Structuralism
I’m Okay, *You’re Okay But Not
Deep Structure, Surface Structure
Universal Grammar
Can We “Map” a Universal Grammar?
How Does it Sound?
Empiricist Critics
The Rule for Making Questions
The Rule for Reciprocal Expression
A Theory of Scientific Theories?
Other Competing Models
Chomsky’s Reply to Piaget
Other Linguistic Schools
1980s Minimalism
Principles and Parameters
The UG Principles and Parameters
Principles, Parameters and Language-Learning
Limited Variation
Objection
Accounting for Language
Dispensable Technology
A Fairy Tale
The Simplest Possible System?
The Perfect Design
The Origins of a Social Conscience
A Chomsky File
Chomsky the Social Critic
“Is What You Say True?”
The Tower of Babel
Chomsky’s Libertarian Inheritance
Adam Smith’s “Vile Maxim”
Enlightenment Values
Anarchism
And Liberalism?
Action Intellectuals
The American Paradox
The Manufacture of Consent
Smash the Unions!
Class and Poverty
Who Do You Blame?
The Fall of the Soviet Empire
Who Should Apologize?
Remembering Vietnam
Overcoming the “Vietnam Syndrome”
The Indonesia-East Timor File
East Timor
The Nicaragua File
The Rotten Apple Theory
Who’s the Criminal?
Commissars and the Speciality Game
