The term Cartesian linguistics was coined by Noam Chomsky in his book Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966). The adjective "Cartesian" pertains to René Descartes, a prominent 17th-century philosopher. As well as Descartes, Chomsky surveys other examples of rationalist thought in 17th-century linguistics, in particular the Port-Royal Grammar (1660), which foreshadows some of his own ideas concerning universal grammar.
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. The book was written with the purpose of deepening "our understanding of the nature of language and the mental processes and structures that underlie its use and acquisition". Chomsky wished to shed light on these underlying structures of the human language, and subsequently whether one can infer the nature of an organism from its language.
Chomsky's book received mostly unfavorable reviews. Critics argued that "Cartesian linguistics" fails both as a methodological conception[1] and as a historical phenomenon.[2] These argue that Chomsky makes false interpretations of classical philosophy, and that, despite his claims, his idea does not represent the tradition of rationalist philosophy.[3][4]
- ^ Percival K.,On the Non-Existence of Cartesian Linguistics, in Cartesian Studies, edited by R. J. Butler (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 137–145. ISBN 0 631 13750 5
- ^ Aarsleff, H. (1969). "The History of Linguistics and Professor Chomsky". Language. 46 (3): 570–585. doi:10.2307/412308. JSTOR 412308. S2CID 170907038.
- ^ Hamans, Camiel; Seuren, Pieter A. M. (2010). "Chomsky in search of a pedigree". In Kibbee, Douglas A. (ed.). Chomskyan (R)evolutions. John Benjamins. pp. 377–394. ISBN 9789027211699. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
- ^ Markie, Peter (2017). "Rationalism vs. Empiricism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. ISSN 1095-5054. Retrieved 2020-12-25.