Abstract

One finds throughout the history of philosophy repeated though apparently unsuccessful attempts to decide upon the nature or essence of language. This is not a trivial problem. When philosophers themselves have tried to resolve it they seem inevitably to postulate some nonovert level of linguistic form which is more basic to language than its overt grammatical forms. Now linguists have become involved in making similar claims. This is in large measure due to Noam Chomsky’s revolutionary work in transformational generative grammar, research which has lead to a new conception of the goals and nature of linguistic theory. Whatever might be the ultimate fate of Chomsky’s own proposals concerning the nature of language, his insistence on descriptive precision and on theoretically sophisticated models in linguistics will remain paradigmatic. What is in fact most revolutionary about transformational linguistics is not the construction of precise and detailed grammars per se, but the parallel claim that there exist underlying realities of language which to a large extent dictate its overt form and content. For Chomsky these realities are part of the deep structure of language. Although other linguists do not share his view that there is an exclusively syntactically based deep structure, transformationalists generally do agree that there is some linguistic level underlying surface structure which accounts for it. Disagreement exists over the nature of this underlying reality, and it is on this issue that linguistics has a significant point of contact with philosophy.