Extract

The reprint of this immensely important work, with a very helpful wide-ranging foreword by Norbert Hornstein, is very welcome. It is a fundamental presentation of the concepts so crucial to a part of our understanding of the phenomenon of language which, it should go without saying, is so central to everything human. This study of human cognitive capacities, arguing for Universal Grammar, a genetically determined capacity shared by all humans, brings together linguistics, biology and philosophy, to mention only the most obvious areas of exploration. It is based on a revision of the 1978 Woodbridge Lectures and on two new essays (both also originally lectures). In Part I (the four Woodbridge Lectures), we have chapters on “Mind and Body”, “Structures, Capacities, and Conventions”, “Knowledge of Grammar” and “Some Elements of Grammar”; in Part II, we have “On the Biological Basis of Language” and “Language and Unconscious Knowledge”. There are extremely full Notes (pp. 255–90) and an Index (pp. 291–9). One might suggest that Chomsky's Linguistics (whatever “Chomsky's Linguistics” might mean) is less “in fashion” now than it used to be. But that is a superficial and flawed position – we are simply more aware that Languages matter, in all sorts of ways.

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