Noam Chomsky Biography

Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential linguists of the 21st century. He has published over seventy books in his lifetime and written over a thousand articles in many different fields of work, including linguistics. (Barsky 3). Chomsky’s successes have brought him much criticism, although the work he produced shaped the idea of language forever. First, his upbringing and crucial people involved in his life help others to understand his ideas. Secondly, his book, Syntactic Structures, was critically important because of his advances with grammar and sentence structure. Lastly, Chomsky reflects on the missing pieces of language and comments on language as a whole. All of these things help give an understanding as to why Chomsky is one of the better linguists of his time.

On December 7, 1928 Avram Noam Chomsky was born. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the oldest of the family. His parents were both born in Russia but fled to the United States to avoid the army draft in 1913. Chomsky began school at just two years old. He went to Oak Lane Country Day School until he was twelve (Barsky 15). Oak Lane Country Day School was run by Temple University, a very prestigious college. These ten years began to shape his thinking. Oak Lane believed in more focused on creativity rather than grades. The administration focused on competition of the self rather than with others. They believed in challenging the students to push themselves further. Chomsky said, “[This was] very different from what I notice with my own children, who as far back as the second grade knew who was ‘smart’ and who was ‘dumb’, and who was high-tracked and who was low-tracked. This was a big issue.” (Barsky 16). In high school, Chomsky began to realize...

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...f Chomsky’s life will forever be important to development of language in society. His early childhood development helped shape his thought of language. Dr. Chomsky and Elsie were influential in the sense that they also had a deeper sense of thinking for language and politics that helped shape their son’s views. Eventually, Chomsky took his education into his own hands at the University of Pennsylvania where his mentor, Zellig Sabbetai Harris, encouraged his study of language. Then, Chomsky wrote Syntactic Structures in which he provides insight into his ideas of sentence structures and grammatical formats. Lastly, Chomsky ties all of his work together by commenting on language as a whole. He connects some of the missing pieces of language together. All of these events and ideas helped shape Noam Chomsky into one of the most influential linguist of the 21st century.