Cartesian linguistics

Chomsky traces the development of linguistic theory from Descartes to Wilhelm von Humboldt, that is, from the period of the Enlightenment directly up to Romanticism.

According to Chomsky, the central doctrine of Cartesian Linguistics is that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind.

Chomsky writes, "one fundamental contribution of what we have been calling 'Cartesian linguistics' is the observation that human language, in its normal use, is free from the control of independently identifiable external stimuli or internal states and is not restricted to any practical communicative function, in contrast, for example, to the pseudo-language of animals".

In other words, "the 'poetical' quality of ordinary language derives from its independence of immediate stimulation and its freedom from practical ends", essentially subject matter that correlates with Cartesian philosophy.

Chomsky parallels theories of Enlightenment thinkers Humboldt, Goethe, and Herder, holding them up as researchers who were seeking a universal order and to show the tendency of Cartesian thinking to diffuse into different areas of academia.

For instance, the transformational operations yielding surface forms of Latin and French may obscure common features of their deep structures.

Another aspect of Cartesian linguistics is the "necessity for supplementing descriptive statements with a rational explanation", in order to qualify as a true science.

Chomsky claims that an excessive rationality and priorism were common to the Enlightenment period and that a great, underlying hypothesis as to the general nature of language is missing in the Cartesian analysis of deep structure.

"Thus prior knowledge and set play a large role in determining what we see" (Cudworth [Treatise on Morality] 423-424) A common idea/perception was that an object/idea could be stamped upon the soul upon the occasion of an idea excited from the comprehensive power of the intellect itself.

Chomsky accomplished his research for Cartesian Linguistics while he was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies; thereafter a great deal of subject matter was presented at the Christian Gauss seminars at Princeton University in 1965.

Since the publication of Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky's history has been criticized as an artificial predecessor to his own ideas, mainly formulated in the context of 1950s psychological behaviorism.

[5] The book was "widely and rightly judged to be a radical failure" which failed to claim a place for Chomsky among the classics of philosophy.

[4] One of the main objections to the book's argument bears on the point that, for his "Cartesian linguistics", Chomsky relies mostly on the Port-Royal grammar and not on Descartes' writings.