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The Secrets of Words
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Noam ChomskyNumber Of Downloads:
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English
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59
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excellent
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Book Description
Two distinguished linguists on language, the history of science, misplaced euphoria, surprising facts, and potentially permanent mysteries.
In The Secrets of Words, influential linguist Noam Chomsky and his longtime colleague Andrea Moro have a wide-ranging conversation, touching on such topics as language and linguistics, the history of science, and the relation between language and the brain. Moro draws Chomsky out on today’s misplaced euphoria about artificial intelligence (Chomsky sees “lots of hype and propaganda” coming from Silicon Valley), the study of the brain (Chomsky points out that findings from brain studies in the 1950s never made it into that era’s psychology), and language acquisition by children. Chomsky in turn invites Moro to describe his own experiments, which proved that there exist impossible languages for the brain, languages that show surprising properties and reveal unexpected secrets of the human mind.
Chomsky once said, “It is important to learn to be surprised by simple facts”—“an expression of yours that has represented a fundamental turning point in my own personal life,” says Moro—and this is something of a theme in their conversation. Another theme is that not everything can be known; there may be permanent mysteries, about language and other matters. Not all words will give up their secrets.
Noam Chomsky
Fram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American professor of linguist and philosopher, as well as cognitive scientist, logician, historian, critic, and political activist. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for more than 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, Chomsky has written on war, politics, and the media and is the author of more than 100 books. According to the 1992 Art and Human Sciences Reference List, Chomsky was cited more than any living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and ranked as the eighth most cited reference ever in a list that includes the Bible, Karl Marx, and others. Chomsky has been described as a cultural preeminent, having been voted as the "world's leading intellectual" in a 2005 poll. Chomsky is also described as the "father of modern linguistics" and is considered a major figure in analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology. . He is also credited with establishing the theory of generative grammar, which is often considered the most important contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics in the twentieth century. He is also credited with establishing what became known as the Chomsky hierarchy, the theory of universal grammar, and the Chomsky-Schützenberger theory. After the publication of his first book on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish his critical books on politics. He is best known for his criticism of US foreign policy, state capitalism, and the general news media. His criticism of the media, which he co-wrote with Edward Hermann, is included in The Deference Industry: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988) is an analysis that crystallizes a theory of the propaganda model for the study of media. Chomsky describes his views as "fairly anarcho-traditionalism with its origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism" sometimes identified with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He is also considered a key theoretician of the left wing of American politics. He is also credited with establishing what became known as Chomsky's hierarchy, a classification of formal languages according to their generative capacity. In addition to his work in linguistics, Chomsky is widely known as a political activist, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist, a sympathetic anarchist who is a member of the world's industrial workers' union and is often considered a key theorist of the left wing of American politics. According to the Arts and Humanities Reference Index, between 1980 and 1992 Chomsky was cited as a reference more than any other living person, and as the eighth person ever.
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