In his work '' Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'' (1965),

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 ...

introduces a hierarchy of levels of adequacy for evaluating grammars (theories of specific languages) and metagrammars (theories of grammars). These levels constitute a

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

of theories (a grammar of a natural language being an example of such a theory) according to validation. This taxonomy might be extended to scientific theories in general, and from there even stretched into the field of the

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

of art. This present article's use of the phrase as a '' terminus technicus'' should not be confused with its everyday language uses.

Motivation

The "potency" criterion alluded to in the preceding section is somewhat ill-defined, but may include "exhaustiveness", "effectiveness', and an affective component as well. (Arguably, the taxonomy is also motivated by considerations of "

elegance Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity. Elegance is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness, particularly in visual design, decorative arts, literature, science, and the aesthetics of mathematics. Elegant ...

". This should not be confused with the application of the taxonomy in the field of

). As a

metatheory A metatheory or meta-theory is a theory whose subject matter is theory itself, aiming to describe existing theory in a systematic way. In mathematics and mathematical logic, a metatheory is a mathematical theory about another mathematical theory. ...

, or "theory of theories", it becomes a concept of

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epis ...

in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...

, rather than a mere tool or

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for br ...

of scientific linguistics. As Chomsky put it in an earlier work:

The theory of linguistic structure must be distinguished clearly from a manual of helpful procedures for the discovery of grammars.

The levels

#Observational adequacy #*The theory achieves an exhaustive and discrete enumeration of the data points. #*There is a pigeonhole for each observation. #Descriptive adequacy #*The theory formally specifies rules accounting for all observed arrangements of the data. #*The rules produce all and only the well-formed constructs (relations) of the protocol space. #:

...the grammar gives a correct account of the linguistic intuition of the native speaker, and specifies the observed data (in particular) in terms of significant generalizations that express underlying regularities in the language.

#Explanatory adequacy #*The theory provides a principled choice between competing descriptions. #*It deals with the uttermost underlying structure. #*It has predictive power. #:

A linguistic theory that aims for explanatory adequacy is concerned with the internal structure of the device .e. grammar that is, it aims to provide a principled basis, independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language.

Theories which do not achieve the third level of adequacy are said to "account for the observations", rather than to "explain the observations." The second and third levels include the assumption of Ockhamist parsimony. This is related to the ''

Minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

'' requirement,Chomsky, 1995. which is elaborated as a corollary of the levels, but which is actually employed as an axiom.

Precursors in the philosophy of science

It is suggested that the system of levels proposed by Chomsky in ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'' has its antecedents in the works of Descartes,

Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...

Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...

, Quine, and others. Certainly the criterion of adequacy found in

rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...

, specifically, rational empiricism, bear some resemblance to Chomsky's formulation. Since one of the key issues which Chomsky treats in ''Aspects'' is a supposition of a congenital endowment of the language faculty in humans, the topic ramifies into questions of innateness and ''

a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...

'' knowledge, since it is by reference to those questions that the third level of adequacy is to be sought.

Note

This concept should not to be confused with the " causal adequacy principle," which refers to Descartes' version of the ontological argument for the existence of God in his ''

Meditations on First Philosophy ''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' ( la, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur) is a philosophical treatise ...

''.

Bibliography

*Chomsky, Noam. 1957. ''Syntactic Structures''. The Hague: Mouton. *Chomsky, Noam. 1964. "Current Issues in Linguistic Theory", in Fodor, J. A. and J. J. Katz (eds.), ''The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language'', Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall: 50-118. *Chomsky, Noam. 1965. ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT Press. *Chomsky, Noam. 1995. ''The Minimalist Program.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. *Chomsky, Noam. 2000. ''New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

External links

*Boeckx, Cedric, and Norbert Hornstein.''The Varying Aims of Linguistic Theory.'' Online version a

accessed 2006-04-19. Epistemology Grammar Noam Chomsky Theories of language