Noam Chomsky and the Soviet linguistics in the 1970s – 1980s
https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2025-12-108-134
Abstract
The author outlines the reception of Noam Chomsky’s philosophy of language and his theoretical linguistic models, in Soviet linguistics of the 1970s–1980s. Authors who in the 1960s were fascinated by Chomsky’s transformational model and used formal methods of studying language (the ‘formalists’) by that time lost interest in his works, because the generative semantics project led by George Lakoff, James McCawley and others, and later Igor Mel’čuk’s “Meaning ⇔ Text” built on similar assumptions, seemed to them more promising. The development of generative grammar from rule theory to constraint theory and the triumph of lexicalism over generative semantics in the 1970s went unnoticed by researchers in the USSR. The “orthodox” group of Soviet linguists who tried to find support in the official ideology, launched a fierce campaign against Chomsky which in spite of some theoretical interest, raised no contentful discussion and ended in failure.
Keywords
linguistic theory,
philosophy of language,
generative linguistics,
formalism,
ideology,
history of linguistics,
linguistics in the USSR
Supporting agencies: The author is indebted to Vladimir M. Alpatov and Sergej A. Krylov for their valuable comments and bibliographic clues; all errors and other shortcomings are the author’s.
About the Author
Ya. G. Testelets
Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Yakov G. Testelets, Dr. of Sci. (Philology)
1-1, Bol’shoi Kislovskii Line, Moscow, 125009
6-6, Miusskaya Sq., Moscow, 125047
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Testelets Ya.G. Noam Chomsky and the Soviet linguistics in the 1970s – 1980s. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series. 2025;1(12):108-134. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2025-12-108-134
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