tailieunhanh - The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 17

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 17. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 140 Chomsky Noam speaker-hearers conform to complex generalizations that go beyond what could be picked up from the available linguistic evidence. The philosopher Quine has criticized Chomsky s position claiming that all we have to go on is behavioural dispositions of speakers and that these do not discriminate between different descriptively adequate grammars speakers could be using to assign structure to sentences they recognize as belonging to their language. But although the evidence is behavioural the theoretical constructs posited to explain it do not have to be. By postulating the grammars that underlie linguistic behaviour Chomsky can formulate generalizations which explain speakers linguistic judgements and use including the gaps we find in the data. Another task is to explain how children with such different cultural backgrounds intelligence and experience learn without explicit training and at much the same age to speak their native language. How do speakers acquire knowledge of language In Chomsky s view a large part of this knowledge is innate a matter of a biological endowment specific to humans. Speakers move from an initial state ofthe language faculty which they share to an attained state which they develop on exposure to the primary linguistic data. The initial state is characterized by the principles of universal grammar a finite set of interactive principles which allow for parametric variation within a certain range. The variety of human languages is explained by the different vocabularies and parameter settings of the universal principles which characterize the attained states of the language faculty in different speakers. Chomsky distinguishes E-language the common notion of languages like Dutch English German which is hopelessly vague and I-language the internal language of an individual speaker-hearer which is the proper object of scientific study. In addition to his work in linguistics Chomsky has been an active critic on the left of the .