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Noam Chomsky is born in Philadelphia, PA to Jewish immigrants Ze'ev Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky
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Noam wrote his first article on the spread of fascism after the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War
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At 16, Noam Chomsky began a general study program at the University of Philadelphia. He studied philosophy, logic, and languages. He made money on the side by teaching Hebrew.
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In 1949, after a 2-year courtship, Chomsky married Carol Doris Schatz.
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Chomsky began researching his doctoral dissertation. In 1952 he published his first academic article, 'Systems of Syntactic Analysis'. Chomsky. (1953). Systems of syntactic analysis. The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12(3), 242–255. https://doi.org/10.2307/2267409
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In 1953, the couple traveled from the UK through France, Switzerland, Italy and Israel. Chomsky enjoyed Israel, but disagreed with the country's Jewish nationalism, anti-Arab racism and pro-Stalinism.
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Chomsky is given an assistant professor position at MIT. Chomsky described MIT as, "a pretty free and open place, open to experimentation without rigid requirements. It was just perfect for someone of my idiosyncratic interests and work." He worked on a mechanical translation project and taught a course on linguistics and philosophy.
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Chomsky submitted his thesis on transformational grammar and is awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree
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Chomsky's theory becomes the dominant syntactic theory in linguistics for two decades Harlow, S. J. (2010). "Transformational Grammar: Evolution". In Barber, Alex; Stainton, Robert J. (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. pp. 752–770.
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Noam published his first book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, which radically opposed the Harris-Bloomfield trend in the field. Responses to his ideas ranged from indifference to hostility. Linguist John Lyons said that Syntactic Structures "revolutionized the scientific study of language"
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Noam is named a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ
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Noam and Carole welcome their first child, a daughter named Aviva
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Noam published a review of B.F. Skinner's book, Verbal Behavior, where he argued against Skinner's view of language as a learned behavior. He argued that Skinner ignored the role of human creativity in linguistics. MacCorquodale, Kenneth (January 1970). "On Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 13 (1): 83–99. doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.13-83
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Chomsky and Morris Halle founded MIT's graduate program in linguistics.
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Chomsky had an intellectual falling-out with previous colleagues and doctoral students that triggered a series of debates that became known as the "Linguistics Wars"
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Chomsky is awarded tenure at MIT and became a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02418-1.
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Chomsky is appointed plenary speaker at the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics in Cambridge, MA, which established him as the de facto spokesperson of American Linguistics. Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02418-1.
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Chomsky joined protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
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Chomsky consults on a military-sponsored project "to establish natural language as an operational language for command and control". Barbara Partee was a student of Chomsky's and said the research was justified to the military on the basis that "in the event of a nuclear war, the generals would be underground with some computers trying to manage things, and that it would probably be easier to teach computers to understand English than to teach generals to program." (Still so true)
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A book written by Chomsky
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Chomsky's critique of U.S. involvement in the article, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" and other contributions to The New York Review of Books debuted him as a public dissident. Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02418-1
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Chomsky became involved in left-wing activism. He refused to pay half his taxes, publicly supported students who refused the draft, and was arrested while participating in an anti-war teach-in outside the Pentagon. He also co-founded the anti-war collective RESIST.
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Chomsky published his first political book Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (2006). Noam Chomsky. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-269-0 – via Internet Archive.
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The debate with French continental philosopher Michael Foucault positioned Chomsky as a symbolic figurehead of analytic philosophy. Greif, Mark (2015). The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14639-3.
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Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote and published Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda, a book that criticized U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia and the mainstream media's failure to cover it, but Warner Modular's parent company disapproved of the book's contents and ordered all copies destroyed. Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (2006). Noam Chomsky. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-86189-269-0 – via Internet Archive.
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Chomsky was named a corresponding fellow of the British Academy
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Chomsky's dedication to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial (it was absolutely Holocaust denial). Chomsky's plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as a preface to his book 'Memoire en defense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire (Brief in defense against those who accuse me of falsifying history)
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Universal grammar, in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty. The basic postulate is that a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory experience.
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Sociologist Werner Cohn published an analysis of the Chomsky Faurisson affair. Chomsky's defnse of Faurissons right to freedom of speech had a lasting, and damaging effect on his career. (I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on Faurisson and he is a terrible person. I can understand Chomsky's dedication to freedom of speech, but I don't understand why, as a Jewish person, he chose to defend someone like Faurisson)
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Actor Viggo Mortenson and avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2003 album Pandemoniumfromamerica to Chomsky. "Viggo Mortensen's Spoken Word & Music CDs". Archived from the original on December 15, 2010
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The US Peace Memorial Foundation awarded Chomsky the US Peace Prize for anti-war activities over five decades "Noam Chomsky Awarded 2011 US Peace Prize". US Memorial Peace Foundation. Archived from the original on March 9, 2021.
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Chomsky was awarded the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship and was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligence systems" "Author, activist Noam Chomsky to receive award". University of Wisconsin–Madison. March 29, 2010 "IEEE Computer Society Magazine Honors Artificial Intelligence Leaders". Digital Journal. August 24, 2011.
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Author James McGilvray observes that Chomsky inaugurated the "cognitive revolution" in linguistics and that he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science. McGilvray, James (2014). Chomsky: Language, Mind, Politics (second ed.). Cambridge: Polity.