Biography of Noam Chomsky

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December 7, 1928
Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928. Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, communications theorist, is recognized as the founder of transformational generative grammar-often as the most important contribution to stated theoretical linguistics in the 20th century. Also called the "trasformazionalismo" theory of Chomsky was born in ' 50: Chomsky argues that the fundamental problem of structuralism has escaped the creativity of language; States that in order to understand how a language is not enough to learn its own structure. According to Chomsky grammar is a mental competence that allows to form endless sentences and is therefore based on innate knowledge of universal principles that govern the creation of language.
The influence of the thought of Chomsky goes beyond Linguistics and provides vivid insights in the field of philosophy, psychology, Neurology and evolutionary theories, information science. William Zev Chomsky's father, who immigrated to the United States from Russia was a scholar of Hebrew. The young Noam studied Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Zellig Harris, founder of the first Linguistics Department in an American University. Noam is married in 1949 with the linguist Carol Schatz. In 1955 began working at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as an Assistant Professor, Institute where he remained for over 50 years. In 1957 the volume "Syntactic structures" (syntax structures), which contains the principles of his revolutionary theory generative grammar-transformational.
Two years later published a lengthy review of B.f. Skinner's Verbal behavior ", then the best known exponent of Behaviorism: the report contains strong and articulate critique of Behaviorism. Between 1965 and 1966 the two works "Aspects of the theory of syntax" and "Cartesian linguistics", securing an important linguistic and philosophical influences positions of Chomsky. Themes continue in "Language and mind", released in 1968. In the years ' 70 Chomsky has become the most influential scholar of Linguistics of the United States, but also in the rest of the world. Won't stop anyway to deepen and strengthen his theories with numerous articles and essays ("The logical structure of linguistic theory"-1975, "Reflections on language"-1976, "Language and problems of knowledge"-1988). In the mid ' 60 Chomsky stands strongly against the war in Viet Nam: the academic activity supports therefore a political and social commitment that will last for years.
The constant and direct criticism of the foreign policy of many countries, particularly the United States, as well as the analysis of the role of the media in Western democracies, will make Chomsky one American and world intellectuals of the radical left, the most famous and popular. Among the many awards during his long career, there is also an honorary Italian, received in 2005 from the Faculty of psychology of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna.
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