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Chomsky Publishes "Syntactic Structures"
This seminal publication by Chomsky, then a recently appointed professor of linguistics at MIT, laid out the foundations of his theory of universal grammar and transformational grammar. -
Chomsky's Criticism of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior".
Chomsky famously criticized B.F. Skinner's 1958 book on behaviorism in his 1967 "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" Chomsky showed forcefully how behaviorisms stimulus and operant conditioning was inadequate to explain the uniquely complex and infinitely novel system of human language. -
Chomsky publishes "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax"
This book expanded on transformational generative grammar. -
Government and Binding Theory
This theory was an extension and significant revision of Chomsky's initial transformational grammar. It is where Chomsky first proposed the concept of Principles and Parameters, and in fact this installment of UG is now referred to commonly as P&P and not G&B. GB itself is an approach to syntax that describes the grammaticality of sentences in terms of government - the hierarchical relationships of sentences, and binding - the relationships between nouns and related anaphora such as pronouns. -
Minimalist Program
Chomsky introduced his Minimalist Program in 1993, which was a further revision of his larger theory of transformational grammar, which tries to explain the underlying innate competence that an ideal speaker of a language holds. The theory is "minimalist" because it strives to explain the underlying structure of language in the most economical terms possible. It does away with the concept of government (1981) for example.
