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Birth
Noam Chomsky was born on the 7th of December, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. -
Attended University of Pennsylvania
At the age of 16, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania -
Wrote The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
Although written in 1955, it was published 1975. This book laid out in great detail the formal foundations for a rigorous new way of looking at language scientifically, transformational generative grammar. This awesome accomplishment was announced to the world in Chomsky (1957), Syntactic Structures, a publication that revolutionized the field, or really, created a new field. Lasnik, Howard. “Syntactic Structures: Formal Considerations 60 Years Later.” Lingüística 13.2 (2017): 35–50. Web. -
Joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In 1955, the professorial staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) invited Chomsky to join their ranks. Now a professor emeritus, he worked in the school's Department of Linguistics & Philosophy for half a century. “Noam Chomsky.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 24 Apr. 2020, www.biography.com/scholar/noam-chomsky. VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cgpfw4z8cw -
Published "Syntactic Structures"
What makes Syntactic Structures revolutionary is its conception of a grammar as a theory of language. Prior to 1957, it was widely regarded throughout the humanities and social sciences that a formal yet non-empiricist theory of a human attribute was possible. Newmeyer, Frederick J. “Has There Been a 'Chomskyan Revolution' in Linguistics?” Language, vol. 62, no. 1, 1986, pp. 1–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/415597. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020. -
Published Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Chomsky seems to have had three chief objects writing Aspects: (1) to bring a wide audience up to date on the basic architecture of the M.I.T. grammar (2) to introduce that audience to an important structural change, the introduction of "complex symbols" into the syntax; and (3) to show how "syntactic features" fit into the lexicon. Watt, W. C. College Composition and Communication, vol. 21, no. 1, 1970, pp. 75–81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/354598. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.
