Language and Mind

I am not generally sympathetic to Chomsky's view of language as an emergent property of the architecture of the mind (I think that is true but largely trivial at best and pernicious in terms of diverting attention from the social aspects at worst), but this series of lectures presents him in a flattering light. The first one, "Past," is about his view of the history of linguistics as largely a tug-of-war between rationalist and structuralist approaches that does not get into the excesses of misrepresentation of his fuller treatment in Cartesian Linguistics; the second, "Present," is a primer of various issues in generative syntax circa 1968 that you can absolutely skip, and the third, "Future," forecasts his move from a rule-based show more conception of language acquisition to an "abductive" one of principles and parameters, hypotheses and testing, to which I am relatively sympathetic (as I think are the facts)--certainly language is more a matter of childlike exploration (and collective evolution, the piece he disesteems) than emanation from the wetware (the classic nativist conception) or simple conditioning, per a naive empiricism. show less

I studied Linguistic and it was a must-read and I really loved it.
I need to buy it and reread it again.

es un excelente autor americano actividad que elevó definitivamente a la categoría de ciencia moderna. contribuyo en el ambito de las ciencias cognitivas