Carol Doris Chomsky (; July 1, 1930 – December 19, 2008) was an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

and education specialist who studied

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

in children.

Biography

Carol Doris Schatz was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

on July 1, 1930. She married

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

in 1949, the two having known each other since she was five years old and he was seven. Her mother had been a teacher at a Hebrew school where his father was the principal.Marquard, Bryan
"Carol Chomsky; at 78; Harvard language professor was wife of MIT linguist"
''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', December 20, 2008. Accessed December 20, 2008. She was awarded a bachelor's degree in French from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

in 1951. The couple spent time living in

HaZore'a HaZore'a ( he, הַזּוֹרֵעַ, ''lit.'' The Sower, named after the neighbouring Tel Zariq, ) is a kibbutz in northern Israel established in 1936 by German Jews. It is the only kibbutz that was established by members of the movement. Loca ...

, a

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

. Although enjoying themselves, Noam Chomsky was appalled by the Jewish nationalism and

anti-Arab racism Anti-Arabism, Anti-Arab sentiment, or Arabophobia includes opposition to, dislike, fear, or hatred of Arab people. Historically, anti-Arab prejudice has been an issue in such events as the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the condemnatio ...

that he encountered in the country, as well as the pro-Stalinist trend that he thought pervaded the kibbutz's leftist community. "It also was way before there were even words about women's rights" according to Judith Chomsky, wife of Noam Chomsky's younger brother. Despite Carol's interest in becoming a mechanic or driving a tractor at the time of the young couple's stay in 1953, they returned to the United States. She earned a doctoral degree in linguistics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1968, having attended the school in order to ensure that she would be able to make a living in the event that her husband would be sent to jail for his active opposition to the Vietnam War.Fox, Margalit
"Carol Chomsky, 78, Linguist and Educator"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', December 20, 2008. Accessed December 20, 2008. Chomsky's best-known book is ''The Acquisition of Syntax in Children From 5 to 10'' (1969). The book investigated how children develop an understanding of the underlying grammatical structure of their native language, as well as how they use this skill to interpret sentences of increasing complexity as they get older. Despite earlier scientific beliefs that children complete their acquisition of

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

by the age of five, Chomsky's research showed that children continue to develop the skills needed to understand complex constructions beyond that age. As part of her research to understand how children develop the ability to read, she developed a method in the late 1970s called repeated reading, in which children would read a text silently while a recording of the text was played. The child would repeat the process until the text could be read fluently without the tape. Research showed that four readings accompanied by a recording could be enough to provide added reading fluency for most children. More than 100 studies have been performed on the technique, with most finding statistically significant improvements in reading speed and word recognition.Farstrup, Alan E.; and Samuels, S. Jay
"What Research Has to Say about Reading Instruction"
via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

, p. 177 ff. International Reading Associates, 2002. . Accessed December 20, 2008. She served on the faculty of the

Harvard Graduate School of Education The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is the education school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1920, it was the first school to grant the EdD degree and the first Harvard scho ...

from 1972 until 1997. Chomsky died of cancer on December 19, 2008, at her home in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was fir ...

. She was 78 years old.

Publications

* ''The acquisition of syntax in children from 5 to 10'', 1968 * ''Imparare la sintassi : uno studio con bambini di scuola elementare'', 1978 * ''M-ss-ng l-nks : young people's literature'', 1982 * ''M-ss-ng l-nks : a game of letters and language'', 1983 * ''M-ss-ng l-nks : classics old and new'', 1983 * ''M-ss-ng l-nks : microencyclopedia'', 1984

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chomsky, Carol 1930 births 2008 deaths American educational theorists American expatriates in Israel Linguists from the United States Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty Jewish American social scientists People from Lexington, Massachusetts Scientists from Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania alumni Carol Women linguists Writers from Philadelphia American women non-fiction writers 20th-century linguists 21st-century American women