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Avram Noam Chomsky December 7, 1928 (age 92 years)

By A Man of Culture

  • Birth and Early Life

    Birth and Early Life
    Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 7 December in 1928 into a middle-class Jewish family where both his parents were prominent Hebrew scholars. Chomsky attended an "Experimental elementary school where he was encouraged to develop his own interests and talents through self-directed learning". At the age of 10 Chomsky wrote a particular editorial for his school newspaper in which decades later became the basis of “Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship” (1969).

  • University

    University
    In 1945, at age 16, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania where he found his passion in structural linguistics under his mentor Zellig S. Harris, one of the founders of structural linguistics. Chomsky took courses with Harris and was recommended he studied philosophy with Nelson Goodman and Nathan Salmon and mathematics with Nathan Fine.

  • "Master’s thesis"

    "Master’s thesis"
    In his 1951, Chomsky wrote "The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", and "The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory", while he was at Harvard (1951–55) they were published in 1975. Chomsky soon integrated aspects of Harris’s approach to the study of language and of Goodman’s views on the philosophy of science, in which Chomsky transformed these ideologies into books.

  • Chomsky's View

    Chomsky's View
    Chomsky's overall belief is that humans are born with the innate traits and ability to realize the generative grammars that constitute every human language. Whereas the publication "Verbal Behavior" by psychologist B. F. Skinner suggested that "children acquired language by means of learning and mimicry". Chomsky highly opposed of this belief and later wrote his linguistic theory in 1965 and 1975 with the "Theory of Syntax" and "LSLT" which later supported his claims.

  • Work Life

    Work Life
    After Chomsky received his Ph.D. in linguistics from his University of Pennsylvania in 1955. In 1956 he was appointed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to a teaching position. Chomsky job was to work on a machine translation project, which he was also skeptical of its success, due to his personal beliefs.

  • "Syntactic Structures"

    "Syntactic Structures"
    In 1957, Chomsky book "Syntactic Structures" revolutionized the field of theoretical linguistics with its publications, based on his thesis from "The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory" book he wrote. Scholars were so impressed by his book "Syntactic Structures" that his university asked Chomsky to establish a new graduate program in linguistics.

  • Review of "Verbal Behavior"

    Review of "Verbal Behavior"
    In 1959, Chomsky reviewed "Verbal Behavior", by B.F. Skinner, a notable figure of American behaviourism. This soon came to be regarded as "The definitive refutation of behaviourist accounts of language learning". In the later 1960's after the publications of the "Theory of Syntax" (1965) and "Cartesian Linguistics" (1966), Chomsky's outlook was broaden but with several variations within the paradigm.

  • Later Life and Retirement

    Later Life and Retirement
    Chomsky was appointed as a fulltime professor at MIT in 1961, a "Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics" in 1966, and later an Institute Professor in 1976 up until 2002 when Chomsky officially retired. Since then Chomsky, won several awards and honorary degrees from several institutions in 2005, 2007, and in 2008. Currently Chomsky has been serving as an honorary member of "The International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters" (IAPTI) since 2009.

  • Noam Chomsky's Short Videos

    Below are two videos, starting with #1 is a two minute video summarizing Noam Chomsky's argument on language acquisition.
    BBC Radio 4. "Noam Chomsky on Language Acquisition" Youtube.com, 22 Jan. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cgpfw4z8cw Next, #2 is also a two minute video summarizing Noam Chomsky's connection with science and philosophy.
    Chomsky's Philosophy. "Noam Chomsky - Science and Philosophy" Youtube.com, 29 Jun. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2i9WPzRbPo

  • References

    Attached are the following references used to aid in the development of this timeline. These references were chosen to provide and ensure accurate information.
    “Noam Chomsky.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 Dec. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Noam-Chomsky
    “Noam Chomsky.” Famous Scientists, www.famousscientists.org/noam-chomsky/