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The full version finally came to light in about 2014 when Robert Berwick, with Chomsky a fellow MIT professor and co-author of their book on language evolution,⁶¹ posted to his blog a 919-page PDF copy made from hazy microfiche.⁶² (The link to the page where we found the PDF now generates an error message.) Computational linguist and lapsed follower of Chomskyan linguistics, George Ramsay, says of the 1975 published version that it is, in retrospect, “full of algebraic notation which may look impressive to the mathematically naïve, but when carefully examined turns out to be mathematically semi-literate.”⁶³

In Logical Structure, Chomsky announces some principles from which he never deviates. “[N]o reliance is placed on the meaning of linguistic expressions in this study … because semantic notions, if taken seriously, appear to be quite irrelevant to the problems being investigated here.” Having abandoned meaning, “I think there is hope of developing … linguistic theory … on the basis of a small number of operational primitives.”⁶⁴

Here for the first time we find the oft to-be-repeated, made-up examples, including the perfectly grammatical “colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”⁶⁵ It doesn’t matter this would normally be considered meaningless, because it illustrates the correct application of the operational primitives that are in play. With these, an infinity of sentences can be generated, and it is irrelevant to the grammar whether they are meaningful or not.

Eventually, 247 pages into the manuscript, we get to some of the specifics of these primitives, starting with phrase structure, “the next larger unit after the word.” After these we more toward sentences with their recursive rules. So, “a sentence … [is] a sequence of operations … derived from a kernel. Each such sequence of operations, is interpreted as a string in a concatenation algebra and originating ultimately from a fixed sequence of kernel sentences.” For instance, a sentence combining a noun phrase and verb phrase may take the form “NP VP” – say, “The person runs fast.” Even in these most elemental of formulations, the page is covered in Chomsky’s scratchings-out.⁶⁶ Things that came to sound clear and definitive on the printed page were fraught in their formulation.

In 1955, linguist and friend Roman Jakobson^§AS1.4.1a arranged for Chomsky to get a job at MIT, in the Research Laboratory of Electronics where Bar-Hillel had been working on machine translation.⁶⁷

Chomsky’s work did not gain widespread attention until a paper he presented at an MIT symposium on information theory in 1956, “Three Models for the Description of Language*.” The asterisked reference at the foot of the page acknowledged, “*This work is supported by the army (Signal Corps), the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development Command), [and] the Navy (Office of Naval Research).”⁶⁸

“We have, on the one hand, a kernel of basic sentences that are derived from the terminal strings of the phrase structure grammar by application of only obligatory transformations,” Chomsky said in the “Three Models” paper. “We then have a set of derived sentences that are generated by applying optional transformations to the strings underlying kernel sentences.”⁶⁹

People got excited about the paper, and not just because it promised to reveal an elementary structure of language across the infinite variability of actual sentences. Crucially, this structure promised to be computable. In funding the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the military was focusing its investment on one aspect of computability, machine translation, and Chomsky had promised “a cross-cultural valid account.”⁷⁰

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⁵⁷ Chris Knight, 2016, Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 30.

⁵⁸ Ian Robinson, 1975, The New Grammarian’s Funeral: A Critique of Noam Chomsky’s Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, 1984, Language, Sense and Nonsense: A Critical Investigation of Modern Theories of Language, Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Rudolf P. Botha, 1989, Challenging Chomsky: The Generative Garden Game, Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Geoffrey Sampson, 2005, The “Language Instinct” Debate, London: Continuum.

⁵⁹ Robert F. Barsky, 1997, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 83.

⁶⁰ Chris Knight, 2016, Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 60.

⁶¹ Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky, 2016, Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

⁶² Noam Chomsky, 1955, “Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory,” Cambridge, MA: MIT.

⁶³ Chris Knight, 2016, Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 58.

⁶⁴ Noam Chomsky, 1955, “Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory,” Cambridge, MA: MIT, pp. 6, 24–25.

⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 41, 60, 171, 889.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 247, 906–07, 247.

⁶⁷ Robert F. Barsky, 1997, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 86.

⁶⁸ Noam Chomsky, 1956, “Three Models for the Description of Language,” IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2(3):113–24.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 123.

⁷⁰ Noam Chomsky, 1955, “Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory,” Cambridge, MA: MIT, p. 881.

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Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. 2020. Adding Sense: Context and Interest in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 209–211. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108862059

Noam Chomsky’s “Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory” §AS2.2a