Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics A Review

Abstract

Cognition, language faculty, Universal Grammar, Principles and Parameters, Transformational Generative Grammar, Phrase Structure Rules, TransformationsThis review seeks to highlight Chomsky’s major contributions to the field of linguistics. He changed linguists’ conception about the nature of language, from an externalized to internalized approach. This shift also resulted in the language being thought of as a cognitive phenomenon rather than as a set of structures to be analyzed for their correctness or incorrectness. He argued that language is internalized, and not learned. His arguments to prove his stance introduced the concept of language faculty, its workings, Universal Grammar, Principles and Parameters, and Transformational and Generative Grammar. The TGG also significantly overhauled the existent phrase structure rules. These rules were brought to follow binarity principles that dictated that a node cannot have less than or more than two branches. Besides, the concept of Universal Grammar along with its principles and parameters, Chomsky simplified how the language acquisition process can be understood: instead of learning hundreds of rules, the human mind has to install a handful of principles and parameters.