In his speech, Noam Chomsky, recipient of the 2018 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences, expresses his regret at not being able to attend the ceremony in person and conveys his gratitude for an award that recognizes decades of work in the so-called “generative enterprise.” He revisits the origins of his theory, developed in the 1950s from a long-neglected tradition that sought to explain how a finite system (human language) can generate an infinite diversity of thoughts.
He recalls the influence of figures such as Galileo, Humboldt, and Turing, and highlights how generative linguistics revitalized the study of language, spurred the development of cognitive science, and opened new avenues for understanding human creativity. He concludes by emphasizing that these advances make it possible to investigate—more than ever before—the intellectual cap
In his speech, Noam Chomsky, recipient of the 2018 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences, expresses his regret at not being able to attend the ceremony in person and conveys his gratitude for an award that recognizes decades of work in the so-called “generative enterprise.” He revisits the origins of his theory, developed in the 1950s from a long-neglected tradition that sought to explain how a finite system (human language) can generate an infinite diversity of thoughts.
He recalls the influence of figures such as Galileo, Humboldt, and Turing, and highlights how generative linguistics revitalized the study of language, spurred the development of cognitive science, and opened new avenues for understanding human creativity. He concludes by emphasizing that these advances make it possible to investigate—more than ever before—the intellectual capacities that define our species.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Humanities and Social Sciences was granted to Noam Chomsky “for his unparalleled contributions to the study of human language,” according to the jury’s citation.
