Noam
Chomsky is commonly known as the father of modern linguistics. He has heavily
influenced what we understand linguistics to be and he has made contributions
as a philosopher and cognitive scientist. Noam Chomsky is one of the most
influential scientists of modern and has given us a much better understanding
of the human condition. His main contributions as a linguistic have been his
theories of generative grammar and Chomsky hierarchy. With all of these
contributions to language, his theory on the evolution of language is quite
limited.
With regards to
the evolution of language, Chomsky has not given much importance to the
development of language. Mostly because he cannot imagine how the evolution of
language came about. An example of Chomsky’s belief can be seen in the
following quote:
Perhaps at some time hundreds of thousands of years ago,
some small change took place; some mutation took place in the cells of pre-human
organisms. And for reasons of physics, which are not yet understood, that led
to the representation in the mind/brain of the mechanisms of discrete infinity,
the basic concept of language and also of the number system. Perhaps that was
the origin of human language. (Chomsky 1988, 183)
This is
the common belief of Chomsky when it comes to the evolution of language. For
the most part he is indifferent to the various theories presented on the
evolution of language and to the importance of understanding it. His ending sentence, “Perhaps that was
the origin of human language” is a clear example of his apathy to the subject. For
a man who has theories on almost everything (not just language) it is
interesting that he is yet to formulate a strong theory for the evolution of
language. His claim is that if language came to us by some random small
mutation in our cells then that would not do much for understanding of language
in the first place. Chomsky cannot see where the Darwinism component of natural
selection would have occurred to give humans this common form of language.
We must take Chomsky’s point of view with a grain of
salt, just because he does not have a strong theory about the evolution of
language does not mean that learning it is not important. The difficulty of
understanding the evolution of language should not be an indictment on its’
important rather it could be more of an indictment of our own intelligence. The
evolution of language is complicated and still one of the great mysteries of
the world. It may have been a random mutation without any clear advantages, but
we still do not know. To better understand ourselves we must continue develop
theories and research the evolution of language, because language is what separates
us from other animals.
Sources:
Chomsky, Noam 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge: The
Managua Lectures. Cambridge, Mass. / London, England: MIT Press (Current
Studies in Linguistics Series 16).
No comments:
Post a Comment