The Architecture of Language (review)

In January 1996, Noam Chomsky delivered five public lectures in India, four of which were devoted to politics. The architecture of language records the lecture on language and mind, and the discussion following it.

In this lecture, entitled ‘Language and its design’, C touches upon generative grammar and the principles and parameters approach and focuses on the recent minimalist program, elaborating on ‘its background assumptions and motivations, some of the directions that have been pursued and the relevance of all of this to classical questions of enquiry into mind and language’ (3). For C, there exists a language faculty in the mind-brain devoted to learning and using language, and this language faculty has cognitive systems performing functions of storing and accessing information. The minimalist program aims to ‘show that the universal properties themselves are explicable on principles of optimal design, given the requirement of legibility at the interface’ (29). However, the minimalist program is faced with at least three major tasks (21–22). First, it must demonstrate that only the levels of phonetic and semantic representations are motivated by legibility conditions and that there are no other linguistic levels. Second, it must show that it is better than other previous theoretical frameworks. Third, it has to prove that ‘there are no structural relations other than those that are forced by the legibility conditions’ (22). C also explains the displacement property of language and two operations involved in the generation of expressions, viz. feature movement and merger.

The second part of this book contains the discussion that followed the lecture, where C answered questions concerning the scope of linguistics, acquisition of language, and theory of language. C reiterates the claim of the innateness of language, saying that the language acquisition device and universal grammar ‘are just two different ways of looking at the same thing’ (54) and that there is no contradiction between the genetic determinedness of language and the external stimulation it requires. Besides, the minimalist program has a therapeutic value: ‘it forces you to think about things that are easy to ignore’ (70). In this discussion section, C also answers questions regarding the formal constraints imposed on a language by legibility requirements and the latest trends in semantics, among others.

Overall, this book represents C’s current thinking on the linguistic enterprise, especially the minimalist program. Written in an accessible manner and with helpful detailed notes provided by the editors, this book will be welcomed by anyone interested in Chomskyan linguistics. Reading this book, one may have a feeling that C is a great person in that he has over the years forged a ‘Chomskyan era’ with his innovative thinking in language and mind, and that he has also continuously developed, revised, and enriched his theory of language. For instance, in minimalism, we see no further effort to distinguish deep and surface structures. This is not to say, however, that C is not without critics, and interested readers can be referred to an edited volume entitled Chomsky and his critics (ed. by Louise M. Antony and Norbert Hornstein, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).