Noam Chomsky

From Citizendium
Revision as of 23:06, 2 June 2007 by imported>John Stephenson (Punctuation)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky (born December 27th, 1928) is an American linguist and political theorist as well as a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His most famous accomplishment in linguistics is the theory of generative grammar, which he established in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures. His theory formed the basis of the school of generative linguistics.

In politics, he is known for his libertarian socialist ideology and his opposition to United States foreign policy and big corporations.

Controversies

Chomsky is a staunch supporter of the Shia Islamic terrorist organization Hezbollah (Arabic for 'Party of God'), stating in May 2006 during a visit to their headquarters in Beirut that arms "should be in the hands of Hezbollah as a deterrent to potential (Israeli) aggression." Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Australia. Its three stated goals are to end Western imperialism in Lebanon, replace Lebanon's current government with an Islamic theocracy, and the complete destruction of the state of Israel.[1]

Footnotes


External links

Criticism of Noam Chomsky