From Chomsky 1957, p. 103:"...such semantic notions as reference, significance, and synonymity played no role in the discussion." Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton, ISBN978-3-11-021832-9
Chomsky is quoted in Riemsdijk & Huybregts 1982, p. 63 saying: "It [Syntactic Structures] was course notes for an undergraduate course at MIT. Van Schooneveld [a Dutch linguist who was associated with Mouton] showed up here once and took a look at some of my course notes from the undergraduate course I was teaching and said I ought to publish it." In (Dillinger & Palácio 1997, pp. 162–163), Chomsky recounted: "At the time Mouton was publishing just about anything, so they decided they'd publish it along with a thousand other worthless things that were coming out. That's the story of Syntactic Structures: course notes for undergraduate science students published by accident in Europe." The publication of Syntactic structures is also discussed in Noordegraaf 2001 and van Schooneveld 2001. Riemsdijk, Henk C. van.; Huybregts, Riny (1982), The Generative Enterprise: A Discussion, Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications Dillinger, Mike; Palácio, Adair (1997), "Lingüística gerativa: Desenvolvimento e Perspectivas uma Entrevista com Noam Chomsky", DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (in Portuguese), 13: 199–235, doi:10.1590/S0102-44501997000300007 Noordegraaf, Jan (2001), "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures: A footnote to Murray 1999"(PDF), Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (1–2): 225–228, doi:10.1075/hl.28.1-2.18noo van Schooneveld, Cornelis H. (2001), "A brief comment re Jan Noordegraaf's "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures"", Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (3): 468, doi:10.1075/hl.28.3.19sch
From Chomsky 1957, p. 102: "In §§3-7 we outlined the development of some fundamental linguistic concepts in purely formal terms." Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton, ISBN978-3-11-021832-9
According to Steinberg, Hiroshi & Aline 2013, p. 371: "[Chomsky's generative system of rules] was more powerful that anything ... psycholinguists had heretofore had at their disposal. [It] was of special interest to these theorists. Many psychologists were quick to attribute generative systems to the minds of speakers and quick to abandon ... Behaviorism." Steinberg, Danny D.; Hiroshi, Nagata; Aline, David P. (2013), Psycholinguistics: Language, Mind and World, Routledge, ISBN9781317900566
Chomsky 1957, p. 55 writes: "Our main point is that a linguistic theory should not be identified with a manual of useful procedures, nor should it be expected to provide mechanical procedures for the discovery of grammars" Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton, ISBN978-3-11-021832-9
Chomsky 1957, p. 68 states:"a wide variety of apparently distinct phenomena [in English language] all fall into place in a very simple and natural way when we adopt the viewpoint of transformational analysis and that, consequently, the grammar of English becomes much more simple and orderly." Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton, ISBN978-3-11-021832-9
Newmeyer 1987, p. 24 wrote that “[Chomsky’s] examples of defects of phrase structure grammar were illustrated simultaneously with the demonstration that grammars containing the more powerful transformational rules can handle the same phenomena in an elegant and revealing manner.” Newmeyer, Frederick J. (1987), Linguistic Theory in America (2 ed.), San Diego, California: Academic Press, ISBN978-0125171519
In his introduction to Syntactic Structures (Chomsky 1957, p. ix), American linguist David Lightfoot wrote that "this ingenious transformation...avoided hopelessly complex phrase structure rules and yielded an elegant account... ” Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton, ISBN978-3-11-021832-9
In particular, Chomsky wrote an academic paper in 1956 titled Three Models for the Description of Language published in the technological journal IRE Transactions on Information Theory (Chomsky 1956). It foreshadows many of the concepts presented in Syntactic Structures. Chomsky, Noam (1956), "Three models for the description of language"(PDF), IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2 (3): 113–124, doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813, S2CID19519474
cogprints.org
In Chomsky 1959, Chomsky writes that he was "following a familiar technical use of the term "generate," cf. Post 1944". In Chomsky 1965, p. 9, Chomksy justifies his choice of the term "generate", writing that "the term 'generate' is familiar in the sense intended here in logic, particularly in Post's theory of combinatorial systems. Furthermore, 'generate' seems to be the most appropriate translation for Humboldt's term erzeugen, which he frequently uses, it seems, in essentially the sense here intended. Since this use of the term 'generate' is well established both in logic and in the tradition of linguistic theory." Chomsky, Noam (1959), "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior", Language, 35 (1): 26–58, doi:10.2307/411334, JSTOR411334 Post, Emil Leon (1944), "Recursively enumerable sets of positive integers and their decision problems", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 50 (5): 284–316, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08111-1 Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, ISBN978-0-262-52740-8
Chomsky is quoted in Riemsdijk & Huybregts 1982, p. 63 saying: "It [Syntactic Structures] was course notes for an undergraduate course at MIT. Van Schooneveld [a Dutch linguist who was associated with Mouton] showed up here once and took a look at some of my course notes from the undergraduate course I was teaching and said I ought to publish it." In (Dillinger & Palácio 1997, pp. 162–163), Chomsky recounted: "At the time Mouton was publishing just about anything, so they decided they'd publish it along with a thousand other worthless things that were coming out. That's the story of Syntactic Structures: course notes for undergraduate science students published by accident in Europe." The publication of Syntactic structures is also discussed in Noordegraaf 2001 and van Schooneveld 2001. Riemsdijk, Henk C. van.; Huybregts, Riny (1982), The Generative Enterprise: A Discussion, Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications Dillinger, Mike; Palácio, Adair (1997), "Lingüística gerativa: Desenvolvimento e Perspectivas uma Entrevista com Noam Chomsky", DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (in Portuguese), 13: 199–235, doi:10.1590/S0102-44501997000300007 Noordegraaf, Jan (2001), "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures: A footnote to Murray 1999"(PDF), Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (1–2): 225–228, doi:10.1075/hl.28.1-2.18noo van Schooneveld, Cornelis H. (2001), "A brief comment re Jan Noordegraaf's "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures"", Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (3): 468, doi:10.1075/hl.28.3.19sch
Tomalin 2003 writes that "It is well known that Carnap's post-Aufbau work (especially Logische Syntax der Sprache) influenced Chomsky directly to some extent." Tomalin, Marcus (2003), "Goodman, Quine, and Chomsky: from a grammatical point of view", Lingua, 113 (12): 1223–1253, CiteSeerX10.1.1.136.6985, doi:10.1016/s0024-3841(03)00017-2
Before Chomsky, Israeli mathematician and linguist Yehoshua Bar-Hillel had already shown in Bar-Hillel 1953 that formal languages and methods used in symbolic logic can be adapted to analyze human languages. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua (1953), "A Quasi-Arithmetical Notation for Syntactic Description", Language, 29 (1): 47–58, doi:10.2307/410452, JSTOR410452
In particular, Chomsky wrote an academic paper in 1956 titled Three Models for the Description of Language published in the technological journal IRE Transactions on Information Theory (Chomsky 1956). It foreshadows many of the concepts presented in Syntactic Structures. Chomsky, Noam (1956), "Three models for the description of language"(PDF), IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2 (3): 113–124, doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813, S2CID19519474
Oenbring 2009 remarks that Lees's review was "hyperbolic", his language "loaded" and Harris 1993 refers to Lees as "Chomsky's Huxley", referring to the proselytizing "bulldog" role played by Thomas Henry Huxley in defense of Charles Darwin's theories on evolution. Voegelin 1958 considers Lees to be "Chomsky's explicator". Chomsky himself considers Lees's review "provocative." (Chomsky 1975, p. 3) Oenbring, Raymond (2009), Scientific rhetoric and disciplinary identity: A critical rhetorical history of generative grammar (Ph.D. thesis), University of Washington Harris, Randy Allen (1993), The Linguistics Wars, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN9780195098341Voegelin, Charles F (1958), "Review of Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures", International Journal of American Linguistics, 24 (3): 229–231, doi:10.1086/464460 Chomsky, Noam (1975), The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, New York: Plenum, ISBN978-0-306-30760-7
Thorne 1965 remarked that "a revolution of the kind Kuhn describes has recently taken place in linguistics – dating from the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957". According to Sklar 1968: "What has happened in linguistics since Chomsky appeared on the scene almost perfectly fits Kuhn's description of how a scientific revolution works." Searle 1972 writes that "[Chomsky's] revolution followed fairly closely the general pattern described in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Thorne, James Peter (1965), "Review of P. Postal, Constituent Structure", Journal of Linguistics, 1: 73–6, doi:10.1017/s0022226700001055, S2CID144201727 Sklar, Robert (9 September 1968), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The Nation: 213–217 Searle, John R. (1972), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The New York Review of Books, 18 (12)
According to Heitner 2005: "[Carnap's sentence] actually does the double duty of demonstrating the "autonomy" of syntactic and phonological structure, an indication that not only can sentences be recognized as syntactically well-formed, but individual words can also be recognized as phonologically well-formed independent of semantics." Heitner, R. M. (2005), "An odd couple: Chomsky and Quine on the phoneme", Language Sciences, 27: 1–30, doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2003.11.006
In Chomsky 1959, Chomsky writes that he was "following a familiar technical use of the term "generate," cf. Post 1944". In Chomsky 1965, p. 9, Chomksy justifies his choice of the term "generate", writing that "the term 'generate' is familiar in the sense intended here in logic, particularly in Post's theory of combinatorial systems. Furthermore, 'generate' seems to be the most appropriate translation for Humboldt's term erzeugen, which he frequently uses, it seems, in essentially the sense here intended. Since this use of the term 'generate' is well established both in logic and in the tradition of linguistic theory." Chomsky, Noam (1959), "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior", Language, 35 (1): 26–58, doi:10.2307/411334, JSTOR411334 Post, Emil Leon (1944), "Recursively enumerable sets of positive integers and their decision problems", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 50 (5): 284–316, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08111-1 Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, ISBN978-0-262-52740-8
Davidson 1967 writes: "Recent work by Chomsky and others is doing much to bring the complexities of natural languages within the scope of serious semantic theory". Davidson, Donald (1967), "Truth and Meaning", Synthese, 17: 304–23, doi:10.1007/bf00485035, S2CID14720789
Garvin, Paul J. (1954). "Review of Prolegomena to a Theory of Language by Louis Hjelmslev, translated by Francis J. Whitfield". Language. 30 (1): 69–66. doi:10.2307/410221. JSTOR410221.
Post 1943, Post 1944 and Pullum & Scholz 2001Post, Emil Leon (1943), "Formal Reductions of the General Combinatorial Decision Problem", American Journal of Mathematics, 65 (2): 197–215, doi:10.2307/2371809, JSTOR2371809 Post, Emil Leon (1944), "Recursively enumerable sets of positive integers and their decision problems", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 50 (5): 284–316, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08111-1 Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Scholz, Barbara C. (2001), "On the distinction between model-theoretic and generative-enumerative syntactic frameworks", in Philippe de Groote; Glyn Morrill; Christian Retore (eds.), Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics: 4th International Conference, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 17–43
Harris 1989 Harris, Randy Allen (1989), "Argumentation in Chomsky's syntactic structures: An exercise in rhetoric of science", Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 19 (2): 105–130, doi:10.1080/02773948909390840
Before Chomsky, Israeli mathematician and linguist Yehoshua Bar-Hillel had already shown in Bar-Hillel 1953 that formal languages and methods used in symbolic logic can be adapted to analyze human languages. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua (1953), "A Quasi-Arithmetical Notation for Syntactic Description", Language, 29 (1): 47–58, doi:10.2307/410452, JSTOR410452
In Chomsky 1959, Chomsky writes that he was "following a familiar technical use of the term "generate," cf. Post 1944". In Chomsky 1965, p. 9, Chomksy justifies his choice of the term "generate", writing that "the term 'generate' is familiar in the sense intended here in logic, particularly in Post's theory of combinatorial systems. Furthermore, 'generate' seems to be the most appropriate translation for Humboldt's term erzeugen, which he frequently uses, it seems, in essentially the sense here intended. Since this use of the term 'generate' is well established both in logic and in the tradition of linguistic theory." Chomsky, Noam (1959), "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior", Language, 35 (1): 26–58, doi:10.2307/411334, JSTOR411334 Post, Emil Leon (1944), "Recursively enumerable sets of positive integers and their decision problems", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 50 (5): 284–316, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08111-1 Chomsky, Noam (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, ISBN978-0-262-52740-8
Garvin, Paul J. (1954). "Review of Prolegomena to a Theory of Language by Louis Hjelmslev, translated by Francis J. Whitfield". Language. 30 (1): 69–66. doi:10.2307/410221. JSTOR410221.
Post 1943, Post 1944 and Pullum & Scholz 2001Post, Emil Leon (1943), "Formal Reductions of the General Combinatorial Decision Problem", American Journal of Mathematics, 65 (2): 197–215, doi:10.2307/2371809, JSTOR2371809 Post, Emil Leon (1944), "Recursively enumerable sets of positive integers and their decision problems", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 50 (5): 284–316, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1944-08111-1 Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Scholz, Barbara C. (2001), "On the distinction between model-theoretic and generative-enumerative syntactic frameworks", in Philippe de Groote; Glyn Morrill; Christian Retore (eds.), Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics: 4th International Conference, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 17–43
Thorne 1965 remarked that "a revolution of the kind Kuhn describes has recently taken place in linguistics – dating from the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957". According to Sklar 1968: "What has happened in linguistics since Chomsky appeared on the scene almost perfectly fits Kuhn's description of how a scientific revolution works." Searle 1972 writes that "[Chomsky's] revolution followed fairly closely the general pattern described in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Thorne, James Peter (1965), "Review of P. Postal, Constituent Structure", Journal of Linguistics, 1: 73–6, doi:10.1017/s0022226700001055, S2CID144201727 Sklar, Robert (9 September 1968), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The Nation: 213–217 Searle, John R. (1972), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The New York Review of Books, 18 (12)
Oenbring 2009 remarks that Lees's review was "hyperbolic", his language "loaded" and Harris 1993 refers to Lees as "Chomsky's Huxley", referring to the proselytizing "bulldog" role played by Thomas Henry Huxley in defense of Charles Darwin's theories on evolution. Voegelin 1958 considers Lees to be "Chomsky's explicator". Chomsky himself considers Lees's review "provocative." (Chomsky 1975, p. 3) Oenbring, Raymond (2009), Scientific rhetoric and disciplinary identity: A critical rhetorical history of generative grammar (Ph.D. thesis), University of Washington Harris, Randy Allen (1993), The Linguistics Wars, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN9780195098341Voegelin, Charles F (1958), "Review of Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures", International Journal of American Linguistics, 24 (3): 229–231, doi:10.1086/464460 Chomsky, Noam (1975), The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, New York: Plenum, ISBN978-0-306-30760-7
Tomalin 2003 writes that "It is well known that Carnap's post-Aufbau work (especially Logische Syntax der Sprache) influenced Chomsky directly to some extent." Tomalin, Marcus (2003), "Goodman, Quine, and Chomsky: from a grammatical point of view", Lingua, 113 (12): 1223–1253, CiteSeerX10.1.1.136.6985, doi:10.1016/s0024-3841(03)00017-2
Stokhof 2012, p. 548 writes: "That natural languages are indeed not systematic enough to allow formal treatment ... is ... a complaint that has been leveled against natural languages by philosophers for centuries. The work of Chomsky in generative linguistics apparently inspired much more confidence in philosophers and logicians to assert that perhaps natural languages weren't as unsystematic and misleading as their philosophical predecessors had made them out to be ... at the end of 1960s formal semantics began to flourish." Stokhof, Martin (2012), "The Role of Artificial Languages in the Philosophy of Language", in Gillian Russell and Delia Graff Fara (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, Routledge Philosophy Companions, Routledge
In particular, Chomsky wrote an academic paper in 1956 titled Three Models for the Description of Language published in the technological journal IRE Transactions on Information Theory (Chomsky 1956). It foreshadows many of the concepts presented in Syntactic Structures. Chomsky, Noam (1956), "Three models for the description of language"(PDF), IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2 (3): 113–124, doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813, S2CID19519474
Thorne 1965 remarked that "a revolution of the kind Kuhn describes has recently taken place in linguistics – dating from the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957". According to Sklar 1968: "What has happened in linguistics since Chomsky appeared on the scene almost perfectly fits Kuhn's description of how a scientific revolution works." Searle 1972 writes that "[Chomsky's] revolution followed fairly closely the general pattern described in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Thorne, James Peter (1965), "Review of P. Postal, Constituent Structure", Journal of Linguistics, 1: 73–6, doi:10.1017/s0022226700001055, S2CID144201727 Sklar, Robert (9 September 1968), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The Nation: 213–217 Searle, John R. (1972), "Chomsky's Revolution in Linguistics", The New York Review of Books, 18 (12)
Davidson 1967 writes: "Recent work by Chomsky and others is doing much to bring the complexities of natural languages within the scope of serious semantic theory". Davidson, Donald (1967), "Truth and Meaning", Synthese, 17: 304–23, doi:10.1007/bf00485035, S2CID14720789
From the preface of Knuth 2003: "... researchers in linguistics were beginning to formulate rules of grammar that were considerably more mathematical than before. And people began to realize that such methods are highly relevant to the artificial languages that were becoming popular for computer programming, even though natural languages like English remained intractable. I found the mathematical approach to grammar immediately appealing—so much so, in fact, that I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961. During odd moments, while crossing the Atlantic in an ocean liner and while camping in Europe, I read that book rather thoroughly and tried to answer some basic theoretical questions. Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition! The mathematical, linguistic, and algorithmic parts of my life had previously been totally separate. During the ensuing years those three aspects became steadily more intertwined; and by the end of the 1960s I found myself a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, primarily because of work that I had done with respect to languages for computer programming." Knuth, Donald (2003), Selected Papers on Computer Languages, CSLI Lecture Notes, Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information, archived from the original on 2018-08-20, retrieved 2009-09-17
A scan of Chomsky's own typewritten letter dated 5 August 1956 to Mouton editor Cornelis van Schooneveld can be found in Hamans 2014. This letter accompanied the final version of the manuscript. Hamans, Camiel (2014), "The coming about of Syntactic Structures", Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 24 (1): 133–156
Chomsky is quoted in Riemsdijk & Huybregts 1982, p. 63 saying: "It [Syntactic Structures] was course notes for an undergraduate course at MIT. Van Schooneveld [a Dutch linguist who was associated with Mouton] showed up here once and took a look at some of my course notes from the undergraduate course I was teaching and said I ought to publish it." In (Dillinger & Palácio 1997, pp. 162–163), Chomsky recounted: "At the time Mouton was publishing just about anything, so they decided they'd publish it along with a thousand other worthless things that were coming out. That's the story of Syntactic Structures: course notes for undergraduate science students published by accident in Europe." The publication of Syntactic structures is also discussed in Noordegraaf 2001 and van Schooneveld 2001. Riemsdijk, Henk C. van.; Huybregts, Riny (1982), The Generative Enterprise: A Discussion, Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications Dillinger, Mike; Palácio, Adair (1997), "Lingüística gerativa: Desenvolvimento e Perspectivas uma Entrevista com Noam Chomsky", DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (in Portuguese), 13: 199–235, doi:10.1590/S0102-44501997000300007 Noordegraaf, Jan (2001), "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures: A footnote to Murray 1999"(PDF), Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (1–2): 225–228, doi:10.1075/hl.28.1-2.18noo van Schooneveld, Cornelis H. (2001), "A brief comment re Jan Noordegraaf's "On the publication date of Syntactic Structures"", Historiographia Linguistica, 28 (3): 468, doi:10.1075/hl.28.3.19sch
From the preface of Knuth 2003: "... researchers in linguistics were beginning to formulate rules of grammar that were considerably more mathematical than before. And people began to realize that such methods are highly relevant to the artificial languages that were becoming popular for computer programming, even though natural languages like English remained intractable. I found the mathematical approach to grammar immediately appealing—so much so, in fact, that I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961. During odd moments, while crossing the Atlantic in an ocean liner and while camping in Europe, I read that book rather thoroughly and tried to answer some basic theoretical questions. Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition! The mathematical, linguistic, and algorithmic parts of my life had previously been totally separate. During the ensuing years those three aspects became steadily more intertwined; and by the end of the 1960s I found myself a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, primarily because of work that I had done with respect to languages for computer programming." Knuth, Donald (2003), Selected Papers on Computer Languages, CSLI Lecture Notes, Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information, archived from the original on 2018-08-20, retrieved 2009-09-17
Seymour-Smith 1998 Seymour-Smith, Martin (1998), The 100 most influential books ever written : the history of thought from ancient times to today, Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publ. Group, ISBN978-0-8065-2000-1, OCLC38258131
