Chris Collins | A Conversation with Noam Chomsky

理论语言学五道口站 2022-06-09

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《理论语言学五道口站》（2021年第48期，总第182期）转载分享一篇Noam Chomsky教授和Chris Collins教授的对话。该对话通过电子邮件进行，持续时间近4个月（ 2021年2月13月至2021年6月25日）。对话主要聚焦于形式语义学，对相关语言学问题进行了更深层次的讨论。

本次分享已由Chris Collins教授授权转载。

人物简介

诺姆·乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky）教授全名Avram Noam Chomsky，是享誉世界的美国语言学家、哲学家、认知科学家、政治批评家和历史学家。乔姆斯基1928年12月7日出生于美国宾夕法尼亚州费城的一个中产阶级犹太家庭。1945年，16岁的乔姆斯基进入宾夕法尼亚大学学习哲学、逻辑学与语言，后来在Harris的指导下学习研究生课程，并在Harris的推荐下，向Nelson Goodman和Nathan Salmon学习哲学，向Nathan Fine学习数学。1951年，他完成硕士论文《现代希伯来语语素音位学》，1951年至1955年，他在哈佛大学以学术协会会员的身份从事语言学研究工作，在此期间以《语言理论的逻辑结构》(LSLT)中的部分章节作为其博士论文，取得博士学位。乔姆斯基在该论文中采用了Harris的语言研究方法以及Nelson Goodman对形式系统和科学哲学的观点。但在研究过程中发现了结构主义语言学的局限性，转而探索新的方法，逐步建立起“转换生成语法”。1957年，他在其博士论文的基础上做出了新的发展，完成了《句法结构》，成为“乔姆斯基革命”开始的标志。他的开创性著作包括《句法结构》、《语言与心智》、《句法理论的若干问题》以及《最简方案》等。

乔姆斯基提出了“转换生成语法”，其理论在美国被称为理论语言学领域主流的学问。他倡导生物语言学理论，认为人生来就有与普遍语法相关的语言官能，普遍语法由原则和参数组成。这一观点解释了为什么儿童可以很容易地习得母语。乔姆斯基针对行为主义的批判性研究开创了语言学和心理学的“认知革命”，他在很大程度上将语言学建立成一门正式的自然科学。他建立了数理科学和计算机科学领域的“乔姆斯基等级”，根据方法生成力的不同对形式语言进行了分类，这一理论目前仍是计算机科学中的有机组成部分。

1961年乔姆斯基获聘MIT语言学系教授，1976年被聘为MIT“校聘教授”，2002年作为“荣休教授”从MIT退休，但是他并没有因为退休而停止研究的脚步。2017年秋，他又加入亚利桑那大学，受聘为社会和行为科学学院语言学系“桂冠教授”。他曾获京都奖——“基础科学”类、亥姆霍兹奖和本杰明·富兰克林计算机与认知科学奖。McGilvray认为乔姆斯基开创了语言学的“认知革命”，他在很大程度上将语言学建立成一门正式的自然科学。Micheal Egnor认为乔姆斯基是过去半个世纪中最伟大的科学家。也有人称乔姆斯基为“现代语言学之父”。语言学家John Lyons曾指出，在几十年的出版中，乔姆斯基语言学已经成为该领域“最具活力和影响力的”学派。他出版有150多部专著，根据艺术和人文引文索引，在1980年到1992年，乔姆斯基是被文献引用数最多的健在学者，并是有史以来被引用数排名第八多的学者。

Noam Chomsky, in full Avram Noam Chomsky, is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and historian. He was born into a middle-class Jewish family, on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US. In 1945, at the age of 16, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania to study philosophy, logic and language. He took graduate courses with Harris and, at Harris’s recommendation, studied philosophy with Nelson Goodman and Nathan Salmon and mathematics with Nathan Fine. In his 1951 master’s thesis, The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew. In The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (LSLT), written while he was a member of Academic Association at Harvard (1951–55), Chomsky adopted aspects of Harris’s approach to the study of language and of Goodman’s views on formal systems and the philosophy of science. However, during the research, he found the limitations of structural linguistics. In this way, he explored something novel and gradually established "Transformational-Generative Grammar". In 1957, he made a new development on the basis of his doctoral thesis and completed Syntactic Structures, which marked the beginning of "Chomskyan Revolution". Among his groundbreaking books are Syntactic Structures , Language and Mind, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and The Minimalist Program.

Chomsky introduced "Transformational-Generative Grammar" to the linguistics field, whose theory is considered as the mainstream knowledge in theoretical linguistics in the United States. According to the biolinguistic theory he advocated, children are born with language functions related to universal grammar, which consists of principles and parameters and explains why children could acquire their native languages easily. Based on his critical analysis on Behaviorism, Chomsky inaugurated the "cognitive revolution" in linguistics and psychology, and that he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science. He established the "Chomsky hierarchy" in the fields of mathematical science and computer science, and classified formal languages according to the different generative power of methods. This theory is still an integral part of computer science.

He was appointed full professor at MIT in 1961, Institute Professor in 1976 and retired as professor emeritus in 2002, but his researches are still continuing. He joined the UA faculty in fall 2017, is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He has received the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal and the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. McGilvray observes that Chomsky inaugurated the "cognitive revolution" in linguistics, and that he is largely responsible for establishing the field as a formal, natural science. Micheal Egnor believes that Chomsky is the best scientist of the past half-century. As such, some have called Chomsky "the father of modern linguistics". Linguist John Lyons further remarked that within a few decades of publication, Chomskyan linguistics had become "the most dynamic and influential" school of thought in the field. He has published more than 150 monographs. According to the Art and Humanities Citation Index, from 1980 to 1992, Chomsky was the most cited living scholar in the literature and the eighth most cited scholar in history.

Chris Collins，纽约大学语言学教授，句法学家。对包括鄂温克语和科斯语等语言在内的非洲语言有着浓厚的研究兴趣。其研究领域主要为回指、论元结构、否定以及省略。

Chris Collins is Professor of Linguistics at New York University. He is a syntactician with an interest in African languages, including Ewe (West Africa) and the Khosian languages (southern Africa). His research focuses on anaphora, argument structure, negation, and ellipsis.