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“生成语法创始人”乔姆斯基教授生日特辑

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著名语言学家、生成语法创始人、引领第二次认知革命的代表人物诺姆·乔姆斯基教授被誉为“当代认知科学之父”。作为全世界被引用最多的在世作者,他提出的众多语言学理论,使得语言同哲学、认知科学、计算机科学、心理学,乃至音乐理论相连,颠覆了人们以往对语言和思维的看法。感谢乔姆斯基教授为我们开辟了这一极具吸引力的领域,使其成为无数学者愿用一生去探索的事业。今天(12月7日)是乔姆斯基教授93岁诞辰,《理论语言学五道口站》(2021年第65期,总第199期)特编发此专辑,表达我们的敬意祝福。


值此教授诞辰之际,《理论语言学五道口站》为大家分享一则乔姆斯基教授访谈,此次访谈为2021年3月24日Curt Jaimungal(电影制片人)所做。访谈中,Curt Jaimungal代表提问方,搜集了来自多所高校师生的问题,如语言与思维的关系、复杂性衍生理论与生成语法、皮拉罕语、埃隆·马斯克的神经连接等。从语言学到人工智能,再到人生哲理,乔姆斯基的真知灼见为我们带来了许多启发,指引着我们在语言学的道路上不断前行。


01

Noam Chomsky & Curt Jaimungal





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00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:17 Iain McGilchrist: Language without thought?

00:06:54 Stuart Hameroff: X bar structure in microtubules

00:11:16 Roger Penrose's Emperor's New Mind

00:11:59 Veno Volenec: Derivational Theory of Complexity and Generative Grammar

00:20:02 Existentialism and Kierkegaard [John Clever]

00:21:00 Sam Harris and Islam [Naman Jain]

00:21:54 Terrance McKenna and Stoned Ape Theory (psychedelics aiding language development / evolution)

00:22:58 Group Selection [Slaventhefourth]

00:23:32 Cryptocurrencies and decentralizing money [ThrowingSn0w]

00:31:35 Elon Musk's Neuralink [Tarek]

00:31:56 Douglas Hofstadter strange loop and generative grammar [Ryan]

00:34:25 Peter Singer’s “Drowning Child” Thought Experiment [The_platypus_king]

00:42:31 Steven Pinker

00:43:48 Yuval Harari's Sapiens and the origin of language as introspective [Brez]

00:49:50 Piraha language and Daniel Everett [Mahendra Varma]

00:54:40 Karl Friston's free energy principle [MediocreBat2]

00:55:03 What does Chomsky get awestruck by? [Mai April]

01:03:58 Žižek / Hegel / Heidegger [Zowhat]

01:06:23 What mysteries would Chomsky want solved? [Mai April]

01:11:44 Open AI and GPT-3

01:12:22 Do you fear death? [Wil-Waal]

01:12:40 How to be more like Chomsky? [Overboi1]






02

乔姆斯基教授简介



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。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。他小学就读于一所实验小学,在那里,老师鼓励他通过自主学习来发展自己的兴趣和天赋。1945年,16岁的Chomsky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,并在此期间以《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。1961年Chomsky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”。


在他的职业生涯中,Chomsky提出了转换生成语法,这一理论冲击了传统的美国结构主义。根据他的理论,孩子们生来就有普遍语法,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。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Noam Chomsky是过去半个世纪中最伟大的科学家。因此,有人称Chomsky为“现代语言学之父”。语言学家John Lyons进一步指出,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。


Noam Chomsky, in full Avram Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and historian, was born into a middle-class Jewish family, on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US. He attended an experimental elementary school in which he was encouraged to develop his own interests and talents through self-directed learning. 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 Hebrewand especially 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". 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. 


During his career, Chomsky introduced transformational generative grammar to the linguistics field, which shakes the traditional American Structuralism. According to his theory, children are born with Universal Grammar, which consists of principles and parameters and explains why children could acquire their native languages easily. 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 Noam 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. 


03

经典著作


Syntactic Structures

《句法结构》



《句法结构》是诺姆·乔姆斯基关于句法结构的第一本书。此后,如化学家和生物学家在专业领域构建科学理论一样,语言学家开始尝试在科学理论的传统中构建一个全面的语言学理论。本书既不是将数据进行简单重组的图书馆藏书,也不是一门关于人和语言本质的哲学,而是基于公理系统对人类语言直觉所进行的严谨解释。


Noam Chomsky's first book Syntactic Structures is one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological theory is understood by experts in those fields. It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalogue, nor another specualtive philosophy about the nature of Man and Language, but rather a rigourus explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom system.


Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

《句法理论的若干问题》



1965年出版的《句法理论的若干问题》是生成语法中的一部里程碑式的著作。在首次尝试建立转换生成语法理论以及在使用这些理论对特定语言进行描述性分析的过程中,出现了很多需要思考和解决的新问题。在本书中,乔姆斯基回顾了这些发展,并重构了转换生成语法理论。本书的研究重点是句法,至于语言结构的语义和语音方面,则只讨论它们对句法理论的影响。


Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, published in 1965, was a landmark work in generative grammar. Various deficiencies were discovered in the first attempts to formulate a theory of transformational generative grammar and in the descriptive analysis of particular languages that motivated these formulations. In this book, Chomsky reviews these developments and proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes them into account. The emphasis in this study is syntax; semantic and phonological aspects of the language structure are discussed only insofar as they bear on syntactic theory.


Deep Structure, Surface Structure, 

and Semantic Interpretation

“深层结构,表层结构和语义解释”



生成语法第三阶段的大体时间为1972年到1977年,乔姆斯基的“深层结构,表层结构和语义解释”是从标准理论发展到扩充式标准理论的转折点。在本文中,乔姆斯基对标准理论做了重大修改,认为表层结构在语义解释中也起了一定作用。这样就把原来完全由深层结构决定的语义解释与表层结构联系了起来。


Chomsky's Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation is a turning point in the development from The Standard Theory to The Extended Standard Theory. In the article Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation, Chomsky made great changes to The Standard Theory, and thought that surface structure also played a certain role in semantic interpretation. In this way, the semantic interpretation originally determined by the deep structure is connected with the surface structure.


Lectures on Government 

and Binding

《管辖与约束讲演集》



《管辖与约束讲演集》的出版标志着生成语法正式进入“原则与参数模型”阶段。管辖与约束理论的核心是一系列互相联系、互相制约的基本原则。这些原则具有普遍性,适用于每种语言,同时又具有灵活性,允许不同的语言在一定范围内存在差异(差异所在之处就是参数)。这些原则称为“子系统”,包括X-bar理论、题元理论、格理论、管辖理论、约束理论、界限理论、控制理论等七个子系统。管辖与约束理论的研究中心由规则系统转到原则系统,是生成语法历史上一大转折点。“原则与参数模型”掀起了大规模跨语言对比,挖掘自然语言之间共性和差异的热潮。


The publication of Lectures on Government and Binding marks that Generative Grammar has officially entered the stage of "Principle and Parameter Model". The core of Government and Binding theory is a series of interrelated and mutually restrictive basic principles. These principles are universal, applicable to every language, and flexible, allowing different languages to have some differences within a certain range (the difference lies in parameters). These principles are called "subsystems", including seven subsystems, such as X-bar theory, Theta theory, Case theory, Government theory, Binding theory, Boundary theory and Control theory. The research core of Government and Binding theory has changed from rule system to principle system, which is a great turning point in the history of Generative Grammar. "Principle and Parameter Model" has set off a large-scale cross-language comparison, digging out similarities and differences between natural languages.


The Minimalist Program

《最简方案》



本书将语言学理论置于更广泛的认知科学中,是最简方案构建和发展的经典著作。


在原则和参数理论的基础上,特别是在衍生和表达的经济原则上,最简框架将普遍语法视为一个独特的计算系统。在这个理论框架内,接口层次是语言表达的仅有层次,语言表达式是对接口条件的最优化体现。PF和LF接口层次分别为“发音-感知”和“概念-意念”表达系统提供支持。因此,所有的句法条件都表达了这些接口的属性,既反映了语言的解释需求,又严格控制了概念的来源。


A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program.


Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources.


04

《理论语言学五道口站》

  乔姆斯基教授推文合集




乔姆斯基教授以不懈的科学精神激励着一代代的语言学人朝着真理的方向进发,值得我们所有人的尊重、感恩与敬爱。在此,《理论语言学五道口站》祝这位“当代认知科学之父”寿同山岳永,福共海天长!


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东西和物质:可数性语法之我见
学术报告 | 人类语言的大脑之源


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编辑:闫玉萌 赵欣宇 郭思源 聂简荻

排版:闫玉萌 赵欣宇 

审校:闫玉萌 田英慧 李芳芳


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