title: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Volume II: Descriptive Application
author: Ronald  W. Langacker
description: "The amount of data and the wealth of analyses presented is impressive. . . . Langacker has again succeeded in producing a very stimulating and coherent piece of work. And the material analyses offered deserve much more careful attention and reflection than is possible within the limits of a review." (<I>Canadian Journal of Linguistics</I>)
zlib_text: **Philosophy of Cognitive Science** **Chomsky’s Linguistics**
  
   **I. BACKGROUND**
  
   **Noam Chomsky**
  
  • Born, 1928
  
  • Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under Zellig Harris
  
  • Hired at MIT in 1955
  
  • In 1957 publishes _Syntactic Structures_ , which builds on transformational
  grammar and develops "generative" grammar.
  
  • A generative grammar is a (unconscious) mechanism comprised of a finite set
  of rules for generating all the grammatical sentences of language.
  
  • Generative grammar ultimately revolutionizes the field of linguistics:
  
  • • _Inner States._ Argues for contribution of inner rules and
  representations.
  
  • • _Universals over Differences_. Differences between languages are only
  important because they reveal the range of possible settings for universal
  rules.
  
  • • _Mechanisms over Taxonomy_. Tries to formally describe the mechanisms of
  language production rather than making taxonomy of sentences in a particular
  language.
  
  • Chomsky has also been an influential cri