50 Years Later: A Conversation about the Biological Study of Language with Noam Chomsky

Abstract

Figure 1: Noam Chomsky portrayed by Jean-Baptiste Labrune (Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0). At first, the work of Chomsky and Lenneberg as well as their respective seminal books may seem only vaguely related—after all, Biological Foundations of Language surveyed the biological literature while Syntactic Structures provided a formal analysis of natural language syntax. However, nothing could be further from the truth: Lenneberg and Chomsky cofounded what today is known as biolinguistics during their time as graduate students at Harvard. Even a quick look at Biological Foundations of Language gives this away: Chomsky contributed an appendix on “The formal nature of language” to the book. A closer look reveals that Lenneberg himself heavily relied on formal analysis (of language) just like that provided by Chomsky in order to advance his argument (in this context, see Piattelli-Palmarini, this issue, Becker, this issue). Consequently, talking to Noam Chomsky as a co-founder of the field, contemporary, and friend of Eric Lenneberg was the obvious thing to do. Luckily, Professor Chomsky took the time to answer some questions about the early days of the field, his work and relation with Lenneberg, and a number of other questions and scientific issues that (still) captivate us 50 years later.