Abstract

During the past decade a great deal of excitement and interest has been generated by the work of Noam Chomsky and his followers in linguistics and related fields such as psychology. Typically when there is a breakthrough in a science, there are prophets who follow who make exaggerated claims and counterclaims. But while there has been much talk about generative grammars, depth and surface structure, transformations, etc., there has also been a great deal of ignorance about what these concepts precisely mean. This short book based on three lectures delivered at Berkeley is now perhaps the best introduction to Chomsky's work. It combines and reflects a variety of his interests and is written with a lucidity that marks the ease of a master. The first lecture develops Chomsky's thesis that it is rationalist models of the mind and language that provide a much more fruitful orientation for the study of language and the mind than empiricist models. In this respect he continues his attack on what he takes to be the misguided dogmatic narrowness of prevailing empiricist and behaviorist presuppositions. The second lecture deals explicitly with some of the basic issues and techniques in the "new" linguistics showing us what it does and does not contribute to our understanding of language. The third lecture looks to the future and suggests possible directions that may be taken in psychology, linguistics, and other social sciences in light of the new orientation being developed in linguistics. But the present succinct volume is much more than an introduction to Chomsky's work and the new linguistics. It is also an evaluation of what has and has not been achieved in the past decade of intensive work. It reflects both Chomsky's modesty about what has really been accomplished and his optimism about what probably will be accomplished in the future. There appears to be a striking disparity between some of Chomsky's more exciting and provocative claims about innate capacities, universal grammar, the modified Cartesian-Kantian orientation, and the actual achievements of linguistics and psycholinguistics concerning our understanding of language and mind.--R. J. B.