Avram Noam Chomsky (1928–) is an American linguist, philosopher, and cognitive scientist widely considered the founder of modern linguistics. His revolutionary theories transformed understanding of language acquisition and helped establish cognitive science as a field, fundamentally challenging the behaviorist paradigm that dominated mid-20th century psychology.
Born in Philadelphia to Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania at 16 and earned his PhD in 1955. He joined MIT that same year, where he developed transformational grammar and published Syntactic Structures (1957)—one of the most influential linguistic works of the 20th century.
His 1959 review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior is considered a watershed moment in intellectual history. By demonstrating that behaviorist stimulus-response models could not account for the creativity and complexity of human language, Chomsky helped precipitate the "cognitive revolution" and the decline of behaviorist psychology.
Chomsky's nativist framework profoundly shaped second language acquisition research: