The Complicated Legacy of Professor Noam Chomsky

In 1957, while teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he published a short book called “Syntactic Structures.” Though slim in size, it had an enormous impact on the field of linguistics. The book challenged the dominant view that language was mainly learned through habit and repetition.

Instead, he argued that humans are born with an innate ability to understand the structure of language. This idea suggested that the human mind has built-in rules for grammar. The book quickly drew attention, especially among younger scholars, and marked the beginning of what became known as a revolution in linguistics.