by Noam Chomsky
See Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, for some further discussion of the historical importance of Whitney’s influential but (in my opinion) utterly wrong-headed and superficial critique.
49 As emphasized by H. Steinthal in his Gedächtnissrede auf Humboldt an seinem hundertjahrigen Geburtstage (Berlin, 1867).
50 R. Rocker, Nationalism and Culture, trans. R. E. Chase (London: Freedom Press 1937). This judgment is based largely on Humboldt’s early essay Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (1792). Parts of this are translated in Cowan, Humanist without Portfolio, pp. 37–64.
51 The political meaning of a “natural rights” doctrine such as Humboldt’s depends very much on the exact way in which it is phrased and the social context in which it appears, and an evaluation of these questions, in the present case, raises many problems. The terms in which Humboldt frames this doctrine suggest a comparison with Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844; trans. T. B. Bottomore, in Marx’s Concept of Man, ed. E. Fromm (New York: Ungar, 1961), with their description of the “alienation of labor when work is external to the worker, . . . not part of his nature . . . [so that] . . .he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself . . . [and is] . . . physically exhausted and mentally debased” (p. 98) and their definition of the “species-character” of human beings as “free, conscious activity” and “productive life” (p. 101), of which man is deprived by the alienated labor that “casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines” (p. 97), as well as with Marx’s well-known reference to a higher form of society in which “labor has become not only a means of life, but also the highest want in life” (Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875).
Humboldt’s remarks might be compared with Rousseau’s critique of modern social institutions in the Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755; translated in The First and Second Discourses, ed. R. D. Masters (New York: St. Martin’s, 1964). Rousseau’s goal is “to set forth the origin and progress of inequality, the establishment and abuse of political societies, insofar as these things can be deduced from the nature of man by the light of reason alone, and independently of the sacred dogmas which give to sovereign authority the sanction of divine right” (p. 180). Along strictly Cartesian lines, he characterizes an animal as “only an ingenious machine to which nature has given senses in order to revitalize itself and guarantee itself, to a certain point, from all that tends to destroy or upset it.” “Every animal has ideas, since it has senses; it even combines its ideas up to a certain point, and in this regard man differs from a beast only in degree” (cf. note 13). What distinguishes man from beast in an absolute way is that man is a “free agent” and has “the consciousness of this freedom” (a further specific difference, perhaps reducible to man’s freedom, is his “faculty of self-perfection,” as an individual and a species). Although much in man’s nature can be attributed to properties of “the human machine,” still man’s behavior is uniquely beyond the bounds of physical explanation. “For physics explains in some way the mechanism of the senses and the formation of ideas; but in the power of willing, or rather of choosing, and in the sentiment of this power are found only spiritual acts about which the laws of mechanics explain nothing” (pp. 113f.).
From this essentially Cartesian picture of human nature, Rousseau develops his theory and evaluation of modern society. Since freedom is “the most noble of man’s faculties,” one is “degrading one’s nature, putting oneself on the level of beasts enslaved by instinct” by renouncing freedom and subjecting oneself to the dictates of a “ferocious or insane master” (p. 167). The national state, modern social organization, and conventional law all originate in a kind of conspiracy by the rich and powerful to preserve and institutionalize power and property, a conspiracy that “gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, destroyed natural freedom for all time, established forever the law of property and inequality, changed a clever usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subjected the whole human race to work, servitude, and misery.” Finally, with the establishment of the national state, “the most decent men learned to consider it one of their duties to murder their fellow-men; at length men were seen to massacre each other by the thousands without knowing why” (pp. 160–161). In so far as society institutionalizes property rights, magistracy, and arbitrary power, it violates natural law (pp. 168ff.). It is contrary to natural right and against the law of nature that “a handful of men be glutted with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities” (p. 181) or that “each man finds his profit in the misfortune of others” (p. 194); “and the jurists, who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave would be born a slave, have decided in other terms that a man would not be born a man” (p. 168). Man has become mere “sociable man,” living “outside of himself” and “only in the opinion of others,” from whose judgment alone “he draws the sentiment of his existence” (p. 179). He can regain true humanity only by abolishing the status of rich and poor, powerful and weak, master and slave – by “new revolutions” that will “dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to its legitimate institution” (p. 172); “the uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and goods of his subjects” (p. 177). [Chomsky expands upon his discussion of Rousseau and Humboldt in “Language and Freedom” (originally published in 1970; an accessible reprint is found in Chomsky 1987).]
52 N. S. Troubetzkoy, “La phonologie actuelle,” Psychologie de langage (Paris, 1933), p. 245.
53 This notion seems to have developed in connection with the controversy over use of the vernacular to replace Latin. Cf. F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue française (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1924), vol. IV, pp. 1104f., and G. Sahlin, César Chesneau du Marsais et son rôle dans l’évolution de la Grammaire générale (Paris: Presses-Universitaires, 1928), pp. 88–89, for some early references, including one to a 1669 source that goes so far in defense of the naturalness of French as to claim that “the Romans think in French before speaking in Latin.” Diderot is so convinced of the “naturalness” of French that he regards it as more suitable for science than for literature, the other European languages, “unnatural” in their word order, being more suited for literary expression (Lettre sur les sourds et muets, 1751). Englishmen tended to have a different view of the matter. Bentham, for example, held that “of all known languages, English is . . . that in which, in the highest degree, taken in the aggregate, the most important of the properties desirable in every language are to be found” (Works, ed. J. Bowring (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), vol. VIII, p. 342). Huarte, writing in the late sixteenth century, took for granted “the Analogy and Correspondence between the Latin Tongue, and the Rational Soul”: “Latin words, and the manner of speaking this Tongue, are so Rational, and so agreeably strike the Ear, that the Rational Soul meeting with the Temperament necessary to invent a very eloquent Language, immediately stumbles on the Latin” (Examen de Ingenios, op. cit., p. 122).
From the seventeenth century, there was much discussion of the possibility of inventing a “philosophical language” that would reflect “la vraie philosophie” and the principles of thought better than any actual human language. An interest in this problem is apparently at the roots of Leibniz’s interest in comparative grammar, which might reveal the “excellencies of language.” For discussion of these developments, see Couturat and Leau, Histoire de la langue universelle (Paris, 1903); Margaret M. C. Mclntosh, “The Phonetic and Linguistic Theory of the Royal Society School, from Wallis to Cooper,” unpublished B.Litt. thesis, Oxford University (1956); Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
54 B. Lamy, De L’art de parler (1676). There are, however, stylistic reasons that may lead one to invert the “ordre naturel” in many languages; not, however, in French, whi
ch does not, he maintains, make use of such “figures de Grammaire,” since “it relishes cleanliness and simplicity; that is why it expresses things as much as it can in the simplest and most natural order” (p. 23). Cf. also pp. 26–27.
55 J. Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668).
56 The assumption of a “natural order,” however, has the advantage that it does not fly in the face of the facts quite so obviously as the belief that language can be described in terms of “habits” or “dispositions to respond” or that the syntactic structure of a language is some sort of list of patterns. It is, therefore, not excluded that the notion of “natural order” can be clarified and developed as a hypothesis of some significance regarding language structure.
57 Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendment humain, book III, chap. VII; trans. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. G. Langley (La Salle: Open Court, 1949). He goes on to maintain that “an exact analysis of the signification of words would show us better than anything else the workings of the understanding” (p. 368 of the 1949 edition). For further discussion of Leibniz’s concern with language, see H. Aarslef, “Leibniz on Locke on Language,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1964), pp. 1–24.
58 F. Schlegel, Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (1812); cited by Fiesel, Die Sprachphilosophie der deutschen Romantik, p. 8. See also A. W. Schlegel, “De l’étymologieen général,” in Oeuvres écrites en français, ed. E. Böcking (Leipzig, 1846), p. 133: “It was often said that grammar is logic at work; but there is more: it constitutes a profound analysis, a subtle metaphysics of thought.”
59 Occasionally, from quite unexpected sources. For example, Proudhon’s scholarship application to the Besancon Academy, in 1837, announced his intention of developing a general grammar in which he hoped to “search for the psychology of new regions, the philosophy of new paths; study the nature and mechanism of the human mind with respect to the most striking and recognizable of its faculties, speech; determine, on the basis of the origin and working of language, the source and organization of human beliefs; apply, in one word, grammar to metaphysics and ethic, and achieve a thought over which profound geniuses fret. . . .” (Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon, ed. J.-A. Langlois (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1875), vol. I, p. 31).
Cf. also J. S. Mill: “Grammar . . .is the beginning of the analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made to correspond with the universal forms of thought. The distinctions between the various parts of speech, between the cases of nouns, the moods and tenses of verbs, the functions of particles, are distinctions in thought, not merely in words. . . The structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic” (Rectorial Address at St. Andrews, 1867, cited with characteristic modern disapproval by Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924), p. 47).
Another and rather different development of the view that language (in its deeper structure) mirrors thought can be found in the work of Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein. This is well known, and I will not discuss it further here. [For a discussion of some aspects of Chomsky s view of Frege, see the second chapter of Chomsky 1996.]
60 N. Beauzée, Grammaire générale, ou exposition raisonnée des éléments nécessaires du langage (1767). Page references here and below are to the revised and corrected edition of 1819.
61 This of course leaves quite open the question of how creative thought is possible, and the discussion of this matter was no more satisfactory than any account that can be given today – that is, it is left as a complete mystery. Cordemoy, for example, attributes “new thoughts that come to us, without being able to find their cause in ourselves, or to attribute them to others” to “inspiration,” that is, to communication from disembodied spirits (op. cit., pp. 185–186). Many others of the period would agree that, in some way or other, “man possesses some analogy to the Divine attributes in his intellectual faculties” (Herbert of Cherbury, De Veritate (1624), p. 167; page references here and below are to the translation by M. H. Carré, University of Bristol Studies No. 6 (1937)). This invocation of the supernatural should be considered against the background of the revived neo-Platonism, with its interpretation of human creativity as an analogue of divine “emanation,” in aesthetic theory from the sixteenth century through romanticism. For discussion, see Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, and Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, and further references given there. [It is apparent from the examples that Chomsky is speaking here of causes or sources of creative thought. Later work (e.g., Chomsky 1972) seems to allow that one could give an account of how creative thought is possible: one could speak to the nature of the mind that would allow it. See the editor’s introduction and also McGilvray 2005.]
62 Recall that for La Mettrie the soul is not a separate substance; rather, “since all the soul’s faculties depend so much on the specific organization of the brain and of the whole body, that they are clearly nothing but that very organization itself: the machine is perfectly explained!. . . Thus the soul is merely a vain term of which we have no idea and which a good mind should use only to refer to that part of us which thinks” (p. 26; MaM, p. 128). He admits forthrightly, regarding the “imaginative faculty” of the brain, that we know “as little about its nature as we do about its method of working” and that its products are “the wonderful and incomprehensible result of the organisation of the brain” (p. 15; MaM, p. 107). Later writers are much less diffident and describe the brain as secreting thought much as the liver secretes bile (Cabanis), and so on.
63 The Cartesians characteristically assumed that mental processes are common to all normal humans and that languages may therefore differ in the manner of expression but not in the thoughts expressed. Cordemoy, for example, in discussing language learning (Discours, pp. 40ff.; cf. p. 101 below), describes the acquisition of a second language as merely a matter of assigning new linguistic expressions to the ideas that are already associated with expressions of the first language. It follows, then, that there should be no fundamental difficulty in translating from one language to another. This claim, of course, would be vigorously denied by the romantics, who think of language not just as a “mirror of the mind” but as a constitutive element in mental processes and as a reflection of cultural individuality (cf. Herder: “The best account of the history and the diverse characteristics of human understanding and sentiment would thus be a philosophical comparison of languages, for the understanding and character of a people are in every case stamped in their language.” Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784–1785, in Heintel, op. cit., p. 176).
64 We return to some of its concrete proposals directly.
65 Page references are to Works, vol. I (cf. note 28).
66 It follows, then, that the interrogative and indicative (in which the response is made) are closely related. “So near indeed is this Affinity, that in these two Modes alone the Verb retains the same Form, nor are they otherwise distinguished, than either by the Addition or Absence of some small particle, or by some minute change in the collocation of the words, or sometimes only by a change in the Tone, or Accent” (p. 299). More precisely, in the case of a “simple interrogative” (i.e., a simple yes-or-no question), the response is (except for possible ellipsis) made in almost the same words as the interrogative; “indefinite interrogatives,” however, “may be answered by infinite affirmatives, and infinite negatives. For instance – Whose are these Verses? We may answer affirmatively – They are Virgil’s, They are Horace’s, They are Ovid’s, etc. – or negatively – They are not Virgil’s, They are not Horaces, They are not Ovid’s, and so one, either way, to infinity” (p. 300, footnote).
67 Apart from its Cartesian origins, the Port-Royal theory of language, with its distinction between deep and surface structure, can be traced to scholastic and renaissance grammar; in particular, to the theory of ellipsis and “ideal types” that reached
its fullest development in Sanctius’s Minerva (1587). For some discussion, see Sahlin, op. cit., chap. I and pp. 89f. [As noted earlier, quotations from the Port-Royal Grammar – Lancelot and Arnauld’s Grammaire générale et raisonnée – use the translation in Arnauld and Lancelot 1975 (which is occasionally modified). Page references are given to both the first French edition (1660) and to Arnauld and Lancelot 1975 (abbreviated PRG).]
68 This transformation is not mentioned, but it is implicit in the examples that are given.
69 Arnauld, La logique, ou l’art de penser (1662). Translated by J. Dickoff and P. James as The Art of Thinking: Port-Royal Logic (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964). Page references are to this translation. [Also translated by J. V. Buroker in Arnauld and Nicole 1996 (abbreviated PRL), to which page references are also given.] For some recent discussion of the linguistic significance of this work, see H. E. Brekle, “Semiotik und linguistische Semantik in Port-Royal,” Indogermanische Forschungen 69 (1964), pp. 103–121.
70 The notion “idea” in Cartesian thought is crucial but difficult. Several terms are used (e.g., “idea,” “notion”) apparently without a systematic distinction in sense, and the concept itself is not clearly characterized. In the Meditations, III, Descartes relates the term “idea” to “image,” stating that “some of my thoughts are as it were the images of things, and it is only in these cases that the term ‘idea’ [Latin: idea] is strictly appropriate” (CSM II, 25; of course, these “images” may be derived by imagination or reflection, rather than received through sense). In his reply to Hobbes’s Objection to this passage, Descartes clarifies his intentions (modifying his formulation in the process, so it appears) stating that “I am taking the word ‘idea’ to refer to whatever is immediately perceived by the mind. For example, when I want something, or am afraid of something, I simultaneously perceive that I want, or am afraid; and this is why I count volition and fear among my ideas” (CSM II, 127). The latter use of “idea” as, essentially, an object of thought, is the one that seems consistent with his general usage. For example, in the Discourse on the Method he speaks of “certain laws which God has so established in nature, and of which he has imprinted such notions in our minds” (CSM I, 131). Similarly, in the Principles of Philosophy (pt. I, art.13), no fundamental distinction is made between “the ideas of numbers and shapes” and “such common notions as: If you add equals to equals the results will be equal” (CSM I, 197). The latter usage of the term “idea,” as anything that can be “conceived” (not merely “imagined”), is the one carried over to the Port-Royal Logic. In this sense, concepts of varied types, even propositions are ideas. This usage is widespread. Lamy (op. cit., p. 7), who makes no pretense to originality, describes ideas as “the objects of our perceptions” and asserts that “besides these ideas, which are excited by things that touch our body, we find others deep in our nature, which do not come into our mind through the senses – for example, those which respresent primary truths like: You must return to someone what belongs to him; It is impossible for something to be and not to be at one and the same time, etc.” In general, the discussion of simple and complex propositions throughout the Port-Royal Grammar and Logic suggests this concept of “idea,” since propositions are described as formed by combining ideas, and complex ideas are described as based on underlying constituent propositions. In this sense, “idea” is a theoretical term of the theory of mental processes; the comprehension (i.e., intension or meaning) of an idea is the fundamental notion in semantic interpretation, and in so far as the deep structure of language is regarded as a direct reflection of mental processes, it is the fundamental notion in the analysis of thought.