Psycholinguistics: Chomsky and Psychology by Judith Greene examines how Noam Chomsky’s revolutionary theories on language reshaped the study of the human mind.
Greene explores Chomsky’s idea that humans are born with an innate “language faculty” — a mental structure that makes language acquisition natural and universal — and how this challenged the dominant behaviorist psychology of the 1950s and 60s. The book explains Chomsky’s key concepts like transformational grammar, deep and surface structures, and the generative nature of language, then contrasts them with experimental psychology’s focus on observable behavior.
Written with clarity and balance, Greene situates Chomsky within the broader field of cognitive science, showing how his theories pushed psychology toward a new understanding of thought, creativity, and human uniqueness. It’s both an introduction to Chomsky’s linguistic revolution and a critique of how far psychology can (or can’t) explain the mysteries of language.
