An Exploration Of Chomsky's Linguistic Ideas

As a pioneer linguist, Noam Chomsky enjoys a position within linguistics probably unprecedented in the whole history of the subject.From his first book Syntactic Structures, published in 1957, he has been engaged in the linguistic study and brought many innovative ideas to linguistics, especially in the aspects of grammatical theory. His theory of grammar is undoubtedly the most dynamic and influential.This thesis reviews the development of Chomsky's linguistic theories, including his major contributions, like the theory of transformational-generative grammar that revolutionalized the scientific study of language, language acquisition device (LAD), I-language and E-language, innateness and Universal Grammar.This systematic and historical overview of his linguistic studies will surely help to get a deeper understanding of Chomsky's academic contributions and give a mathematically precise description of some of the most striking features of language.It is also a relatively macro evaluation of Chomsky's theories.