5 Noam Chomsky and Grammar
The Chomsky Revolution
Academics hate theoretical vacuums. Clearly, one existed with respect to
phrase-structure grammar, which, although effective at describing languages,
did not have a theoretical component. Structuralists were interested primarily
in application, not theory. In the mid-1950s, a young linguist named Noam
Chomsky set out to fill the theoretical vacuum by challenging most of the domi-
nant assumptions underlying phrase-structure grammar.
Examining Chomsky’s approach to grammar and its influence requires that
we step away somewhat from the pragmatic. In the decade between the
mid-1960s and mid-1970s, Chomsky’s ideas about language and grammar had
a significant influence on composition pedagogy, providing the basis for sen-
tence combining and studies of style and writing maturity in children and
promising to give teachers valuable insight into composing, reading, and lan-
guage errors and growth. This influence faded, however. Sentence combining
did not survive the shift to process, which focuses on entire papers rather than
individual sentences, and the promised insight never materialized (see Wil-
liams, 2003a, for a more complete discussion). Also, there is no denying that
Chomsky’s views on grammar and language are complex and abstract. This
chapter and the next explore the principles and theories, as well as some of the
linguistic influences, of his work. They necessarily are demanding.
Although trained as a structuralist, Chomsky was intrigued by the idea that
grammar could reflect atheory of languageand, in turn, atheory of mind.He
explored this idea around 1955 in a mimeographed paper titled “The Logical
Structure of Linguistic Theory,” which formed the foundation for his first book,
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