Citation: Bolhuis JJ, Tattersall I, Chomsky N, Berwick RC (2014) How Could Language Have Evolved? The recent emergence of language and its stability are both consistent with the Strong Minimalist Thesis, which has at its core a single repeatable operation that takes exactly two syntactic elements a and b and assembles them to form the set {a, b}. Noam Chomsky, American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Language, Politics, and Composition Noam Chomsky interviewed by Gary A. Olson and Lester Faigley Journal of Advanced Composition, Vol. Chomsky's theory of language development is one the most studied and discussed theories in the field of linguistics.

He helped to initiate and sustain what came to be known as the ‘cognitive revolution.’ Learn more … However, Skinner's account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous linguist to date. 1. 11, No.

In the 1960s, linguist Noam Chomsky proposed a revolutionary idea: We are all born with an innate knowledge of grammar that serves as the basis for all language acquisition.In other words, for humans, language is a basic instinct. The theory, however, has long been met with widespread criticism — until now.