PRESS RELEASE
Release: Immediate (September 15, 2005)
Contact: Elisabeth O. Selkirk, Head
Chomsky to give Annual Freeman lecture:
Biolinguistic explorations: design, development, evolution
AMHERST, Mass. – What is the biological basis for human language? How did it evolve? And how do children learn language? For its Fifth Annual Donald C. and Margaret H. Freeman lecture, the Linguistics Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites the public to a free lecture on the biology and evolution of human language by Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Noam Chomsky is the founder of modern linguistics and the original shaper of current thinking on the biological bases for the human language capacity. Professor Chomsky’s talk, “Biolinguistic explorations: design, development, evolution,” will be held Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 3:30 p.m. in the Student Union Ballroom.
"We are very honored to have Professor Chomsky visit UMass Amherst," says Thomas Roeper, Professor of Linguistics at UMass Amherst. "He is regarded by many as one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. His work in linguistics initiated the major cognitive revolution of our times: the shift from empiricist approaches to human nature that focus on behavior alone, to a rationalist theory, originating in Plato, where the logical processes of the human mind are the core of human nature, and the basis for language acquisition. It will be fascinating to see how he applies the rationalist perspective to evolution."
Noam Chomsky received his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1955, and during his forty-year teaching career at MIT, he has become well-known not only for his contributions to theoretical linguistics, but also to such areas as philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Within theoretical linguistics, he is considered one of the foremost 20th century contributors to the field, and is credited with the establishment of the theory of generative grammar and the transformation of linguistics from the study of grammar to the study of the faculty of language.
Some of his recent works on language include New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind and The Architecture of Language (Mukherji, et al, eds.), both published in 2000, and On Nature and Language (Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi, ed.), published in 2002. A detailed description of Noam Chomsky’s research and a list of publications can be found at http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html. Additional information about Chomsky is at http://www.chomsky.info/.
The Freeman lectures honor department founder Donald C. Freeman and his wife Margaret H. Freeman and their contributions to Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
For more information about the Linguistics Department and the Freeman lecture, please visit www.umass.edu/linguist/ or call 545-0889.