As everyone knows, Noam Chomsky is both one of the world’s reigning experts on the nature of language and the brain’s acquisition thereof. He is also widely known for his views on various socio-political issues around the globe. I have attended several conferences where his views on language acquisition was the main topic, and at one of these Chomsky himself was actually a participant. I will not pretend that I understand all of the views and issues involved in this very complex topic, but here I shall attempt to track the development of his thought.
As I understand it Chomsky’s initially very influential theory was that the brain arrives already programed to perform certain operations on the verbal input it receives from the surrounding human linguistic world. Thus, barring various defects, all humans come equipped with the innate ability to participate in human linguistic interchange. The human brain is structured in advance to be able to receive and make sense out of the human noises it receives no matter what linguistic input they initially receive. Thus any child born anywhere can learn its mother tongue naturally.
Over the years Chomsky received, and successfully answered, many challenging questions and objections. However, at the conference I attended at MIT in Boston in 1984 he openly admitted that he had found it necessary to alter his initial views. Chomsky now claimed, in a paper entitled “Changing Perspectives on Knowledge and Use of Language,” that although all humans are born with the same cranial apparatus that governs how we in general deal with the various linguistic inputs we receive, these inputs are so varied that they need to be and are sorted out by some intermediary processes which initially respond to the respective inputs. Thus, the innate structural apparatus is not sufficient to fully explain how the brain processes the linguistic input.
Chomsky suggested that it would be helpful to posit an additional cognitive apparatus that functions in between the initial receptors and the linguistic output itself which accounts for the immense diversity thereof. He imaged this additional apparatus as a set of switches which would be set by the interaction between the basic structure of the brain and the empirical input received through linguistic and social interaction. Thus Chomsky admitted that his initial, somewhat rationalistic, views were insufficient to cover the huge variety of subtle differences which are part and parcel of regular human discourse but differ from language to language.
Thus there was now a more “empirical” or experiential dimension to Chomsky’s approach than he had at first acknowledged. Although no young speaker of a language is now seen as already programmed at birth openly receptive to any and all languages, he or she does come with a brain capable of acquiring any language. In addition, each would-be speaker of any language also comes equipped with a set of adjustable switches which can be set in accordance with daily experiential input. These switches are perhaps put in place by virtue of the concrete experience of each speaker through on-going encounters with one’s environment, both physical and social.
So the question of language acquisition is addressed with a more complex model than Chomsky originally proposed. Language acquisition is now seen as a two-step phenomenon involving both preset categories and ongoing experience. This approach seems to me to be more inline, for instance, with that of the later Wittgenstein for whom linguistic is immensely flexible and to a large degree open-ended. Incidentally, Professor Chomsky seems now to have taken up a semi-permanent position at the University of Arizona in Tucson where he is a frequent speaker on both linguistic and political issues.

Years back Tim was a student of mine at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY. He went with my student groups to Greece more than once and took many courses from me dealing with philosophy as well. He became a double major in philosophy and art. Then he went on to the State University of NY in Albany for his Doctor of Humanities degree. Later on Tim did some teaching at St. Rose and spent a year working and studying in Greece. Still later on Tim came to Tucson where we worked together for the BorderLinks program which sought to educate United States people, especially college students, about the history of the Border and its surrounding issues.
After Mari and I spent a year teaching English in China Tim thought it sounded like something worth doing so he signed up to do a year teaching also, so he went to China for a year and travelled a good deal while there. All through these years Tim and Mari and I became really close friends. Then Tim returned to his hometown of Albany and began to develop the neighborhood around his Grandparents’ former home, which he had inherited, as a refuge for the many refugees that were coming to Albany to find a new life. In a way this is where Tim’s adult life really began.
His efforts on behalf of the refugees in Albany, who were mostly from Islamic countries, began to take hold and before long he had purchased a number of houses in the area around where his Grandparents had lived and fixed them up as inexpensive rentals for refugees. This was not an easy task because various drug dealers and other high crime operators had pretty much taken over the neighborhood. But slowly, and with some help from certain Albany city leaders, Tim was able to transform his neighborhood into an increasingly meaningful and strong and growing community.
Indeed, certain City leaders and the local newspapers began to realize what a solid transformation was taking place right there before their eyes. Tim’s work slowly became well-known in the area and he began to get an increasing amount of support from various quarters in the area. Before long the neighborhood which Tim had helped to transform became something of a model about which the City of Albany was proud. The community has received several large grants and increasing financial supporters, not the least of which came from a close friend here in Tucson, one Kay Bauman.
I am so proud of Tim for his continuing concern, along with practical know-how, in building this project into a genuinely successful reality. He has exhibited a large amount of savvy and stick-to-itiveness over the years and is greatly admired by the refugees who live and work in his community, as well as by the citizens of Albany. He has helped create a meaningful enclave where foreign newcomers to America can actually begin their lives anew. It’s enough to make a former teacher and continuing friend extremely proud!! Well done, Tim Doherty.