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Current Issues in Linguistic Theory

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Current Issues in Linguistic Theory is a book by American linguist Noam Chomsky. It was published in 1964. It was a revised and expanded version of a paper titled The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory that Chomsky had presented in the ninth International Congress of Linguists held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1962. It is a short monograph of about a hundred pages, similar to Chomsky's earlier Syntactic Structures (1957). It foreshadows Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), which describes many of its ideas in a more elaborate manner.

In Current Issues, Chomsky places emphasis on the capacity of human languages to create new sentences in an infinite manner. To him, this creativity is an essential characteristic of languages in general. Chomsky boldly proclaimed that this creativity is the "central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself".[1] He added that any "theory of language that neglects this 'creative' aspect is of only marginal interest".[2] Chomsky then called the existing structuralist linguistic theory of his time a "taxonomic" enterprise which limited itself within a narrow scope to become an "inventory of elements", not an inventory of underlying rules. In doing so, this "far too oversimplified" linguistic model "seriously underestimates the richness of structure of language and the generative processes that underlie it".[3] After dismissing the existing theories, Chomsky attempts to show that his newly invented "tranformational generative grammar" model is "much closer to the truth".[4]

According to British linguist John Earl Joseph, this paper "secured [Chomsky's] international reputation in linguistics". [5]

References

  1. ^ Chomsky 1964, p. 7
  2. ^ Chomsky 1964, p. 8
  3. ^ Chomsky 1964, p. 27
  4. ^ Chomsky 1964, p. 27
  5. ^ Joseph 2003

Bibliography

  • Chomsky, Noam (1964), Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, The Hague: Mouton
  • Joseph, John Earl (2003), "Rethinking Linguistic Creativity", in Hayley G. Davis, Talbot J. Taylor (ed.), Rethinking Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 121–150
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