A Profile of Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7^th of 1928 in Philadelphia, PA to a Hebrew scholar. In his early days he received an education from Oak Lane Country Day School and Central High School in Philadelphia. After high school Chomsky continue on to study linguistics and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and then received a PhD from Harvard University. Currently Chomsky is employed as a professor at MIT. Chomsky is one of the best known for his work with linguistics and his political activism.

Chomsky has made many contributions to linguistics but one of the most important would be the hierarchy of language. The Chomsky Hierarchy is “a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars that generate formal languages (Open Encyclopedia).” Before the hierarchy is at all understood one must understand how a formal grammar is constructed. There are four parts to a formal grammar. The four parts are terminal symbols, non-terminal symbols, production rules, and a start symbol. The terminal symbols are words, phrases, or characters that can appear in a sentence of the language that is being described. The non-terminal symbols are symbols that can only appear in the production rules of the grammar. The production rules are rules that the grammar must follow to turn non-terminal symbols into terminal symbols. Finally the start symbol is the symbol that starts the production of the grammar.

The next step in understanding the Chomsky Hierarchy is to learn a little about formal languages. According to Wikipedia a formal language is “a set of finite-length words drawn from some finite alphabet, and the scientific theory that deals with these entities is known as formal language theory.” Now we can continue onto the Chomsky Hierarchy.

The Chomsky Hierarchy consists of four different levels, unrestricted grammar (grammar type 0), context-sensitive grammar (grammar type 1), context-free grammars (grammar type 2), and regular grammars (grammar type 3). The hierarchy can be traced from 3 to 0. This means that every type 3 grammar is a type 2 grammar, every type 2 grammar is a type 1 grammar, and every type 1 grammar is a type 0 grammar. Therefore every type 3 grammar is a type 0 grammar.

Chomsky’s political views are some of the most known to the political left. If Chomsky was asked what his political affiliation was he would say that he is a modern day anarchist. Though many believe he would consider himself an anarchist it is cited that he has in fact endorsed political candidates in the past. Chomsky has written many books on politics such as Hegemony or Survival, 9-11, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, and Class Warfare.

Chomsky has had a great impact on the cognitive science world through his work with linguistics. Chomsky’s work with linguistics doesn’t just reach the field of one aspect of cognitive science but it reaches many. It relates to both computer science and psychology. Without Chomsky’s input and research dealing with linguistics cognitive science would not be where it is today.

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