A Companion to Chomsky

Nicholas Allott is Senior Lecturer in English Language at the University of Oslo. His work focuses on pragmatics, inference and rationality in communication, word meaning and lexical modulation, legal language and interpretation, and the philosophy of linguistics. His publications include Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (with Neil Smith) (2016). Terje Lohndal is Professor of English Linguistics at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Adjunct Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His main areas of research are comparative grammar, multilingualism, and the history of generative linguistics. He has published numerous papers, and several books, among them, Phrase Structure and Argument Structure (2014). Georges Rey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland at College Park. He has written extensively on the foundations of cognitive science, including more than sixty articles and two books, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (1997) and Representation of Language: Philosophical Issues in a Chomskyan Linguistics (2020).

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xv

1 Synoptic Introduction 1
Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal, and Georges Rey

2 Biographical Sketch 18
Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal, and Georges Rey

Part I Historical Development of Linguistics 23

3 From the Origins of Government and Binding to the Current State of Minimalism 25
Artemis Alexiadou and Terje Lohndal

4 The Enduring Discoveries of Generative Syntax 52
Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and James Griffiths

5 The Chomsky Hierarchy 74
Tim Hunter

6 Naturalism, Internalism, and Nativism: The Legacy of The Sound Pattern of English 96
Charles Reiss and Veno Volenec

7 Language as a Branch of Psychology: Chomsky and Cognitive Science 109
Lila Gleitman

Part II Contemporary Issues in Syntax 123

8 The Architecture of the Computation 125
David Adger

9 Merge and Features: The Engine of Syntax 140
Peter Svenonius

10 On Chomsky’s Legacy in the Study of Linguistic Diversity 158
Mark Baker

11 Parameters and Linguistic Variation 172
Michelle Sheehan

12 Constraints on Grammatical Dependencies 190
Gereon Müller

13 Chomsky’s Influence on Historical Linguistics: From Universal Grammar to Third Factors 210
Elly van Gelderen

14 Second Language Acquisition 222
Roumyana Slabakova

15 Multilingualism and Chomsky’s Generative Grammar 232
Tanja Kupisch, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares, Eloi Puig-Mayenco, and Jason Rothman

Part III Comparisons with other Frameworks 243

16 The View from Declarative Syntax 245
Peter Sells

17 How Statistical Learning Can Play Well with Universal Grammar 267
Lisa S. Pearl

18 Chomsky and Usage-Based Linguistics 287
Frederick J. Newmeyer

Part IV Processing and Acquisition 305

19 Sentence Processing and Syntactic Theory 307
Dave Kush and Brian Dillon

20 Neuroscience and Syntax 325
Emiliano Zaccarella and Patrick C. Trettenbrein

21 Universal Grammar and Language Acquisition 348
Stephen Crain and Rosalind Thornton

22 Chomsky and Signed Languages 364
Diane Lillo-Martin

23 Atypical Acquisition 377
Neil Smith and Ianthi Tsimpli

Part V Semantics, Pragmatics, and Philosophy of Language 391

24 Chomsky and the Analytical Tradition 393
John Collins

25 Chomsky on Meaning and Reference 404
Paul Pietroski

26 Chomsky on Semantics 416
Michael Glanzberg

27 Chomsky and Pragmatics 433
Nicholas Allott and Deirdre Wilson

Part VI Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind 449

28 Nativism 451
Georges Rey

29 The Deep Forces That Shape Language and the Poverty of the Stimulus 462
Stephen Crain, Iain Giblin, and Rosalind Thornton

30 Chomsky on the Evolution of the Language Faculty: Presentation and Perspectives for Further Research 476
Anne Reboul

31 Chomsky and Intentionality 488
John Collins and Georges Rey

32 The Mind–Body Relation: Problem, Mystery, or What? 503
Joseph Levine

Part VII Methodological and other Explanatory Issues 515

33 Chomsky’s “Galilean” Explanatory Style 517
Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal, and Georges Rey

34 Chomsky and Fodor on Modularity 529
Nicholas Allott and Neil Smith

35 Linguistic Judgments as Evidence 544
Steven Gross

36 Chomsky’s Problem/Mystery Distinction 557
John Collins

37 Knowledge, Morality, and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky 567
Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers

Part VIII Reflections 581

38 Reflections 583
Noam Chomsky

Author Index 595

Subject Index 599