我们误解了乔姆斯基吗?——《乔姆斯基》评述  

Did We Misunderstand Chomsky?——A Review of Neil Smith’s Chomsky

作　　者：顾钢[1] 

机构地区：[1]天津师范大学外国语学院,天津300074

出　　处：《现代外语》2001年第1期96-110,共15页Modern Foreign Languages

摘　　要：乔姆斯基的学说对语言学、心理学、哲学等众多学科的发展有重要影响。《乔姆斯基》一书全面扫描了乔姆斯基各阶段研究的主要观点,探讨了围绕乔姆斯基学说的是非之争。作者力图澄清人们长期以来对乔姆斯基及其学说的许多误解。本文对《乔姆斯基》的重要内容做了较为详尽的评述,对书中某些不易理解的地方做了补充说明,对该书的优缺点也做了总结。Chomsky's linguistic theory has a profound influence on the development of the academic fields such as linguistics, psychology, philosophy, computer science, anthropology, education and so on. However, it is very difficult to summarize Chomsky's thoughts because of their great depth and extremely wide scope. Neil Smith has made a great attempt to accomplish this challenging task. In this book, he has provided us with abundant references and his insightful analyses. The five chapters of the book have covered most important issues relating to Chomsky's ideas and ideals. The author shows it to us that Chomsky, a 'hero' of our times, has (1) pointed it out that there is only one human language, which is genetically determined and from which thousands of our daily languages are derived; (2) shown that our subconscious knowledge of language is mainly innate by nature; (3) revived rationalism; (4) overturned the dominant school of behaviorism and returned mind to its qualified position in the study of language; (5) been actively involved in decent activities to fight for the equality of human beings. The first chapter shows that linguistics should belong to natural science, so idealization in linguistics, as a common practice in natural science, is nothing strange. It is shown that modularity accounts for the distinction between our knowledge of language and performance, as well as the double dissociation between the linguistic system and the general cognitive system. This chapter could be further improved if the author had given a better clarification of the difference between data and evidence, which is crucial to the arguments of Chomsky's 'sophisticated falsification' to the negative data. The second chapter demonstrates how the components of Chomsky's linguistic framework have developed from rules to principles. In particular, the author has mentioned that 'deep' and 'shallow' are mere labels, which should be by no means equated to philosophical or psychological entities. The third chapter argues that Chomsky'

关 键 词：《乔姆斯基》 普遍语法 尼尔·史密斯 行为主义 唯理主义 

分 类 号：H0[语言文字—语言学] G236[文化科学]