Sassan Taghvaei Asl

This thesis examines four commitments central to Chomskyan generative linguistics: I-language, innateness, mentalism, and naturalism. I first reconstruct the rationalist and naturalist background of these commitments and then ask what follows from treating language primarily as an internal computational system. The contrast throughout is with the later Wittgenstein, whose discussions of meaning and rule-following direct attention to use, practice, and forms of life. I do not argue that language lacks a biological basis, or that formal models fail to describe important structural regularities. The narrower problem concerns normativity: an account of internal states may explain causal or structural features of linguistic competence, but what makes one application of a rule correct and another mistaken? Wittgenstein's discussions of rule-following and private language provide the main framework for pursuing this question. I use them to criticize Chomskyan internalism without identifying I-language with the private language Wittgenstein discusses. The thesis ends by asking how linguistic theory can preserve the explanatory achievements of formal analysis while still accounting for the practices in which expressions are learned, used, corrected, and understood.

Generative linguistics, the dominant school of twentieth-century linguistics, rests on four core principles: I-Language, innateness, mentalism, and naturalism. These elements constitute the foundations of the Chomskyan framework which is grounded in Cartesian mentalism that seeks to analyze language in isolation from the social context. For Chomsky, the primary locus of linguistic theory is the mind, a mentalism derived from the central role of Cartesian rationalism. Given that the Cartesian subject is essentially the mind (res cogitans), any linguistics rooted in this tradition inevitably gravitates toward mentalism and nativism. Within this paradigm, language is viewed as an innate phenomenon encoded in the human mind and can be studied through methods analogous to those of the natural sciences. This approach stands in contrast to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which emphasizes the inseparability of language from social practices and meaningful human interactions. Consequently, Chomskyan linguistics can be critiqued through the lens of the later Wittgenstein. Two fundamental concepts—“rule-following” and the “private language” argument—anchor this critique. Furthermore, by employing concepts such as “language games,” “use,” “rules of use,” and “form of life,” one can formulate an alternative to the Chomskyan paradigm; a Wittgensteinian approach to linguistics that shifts focus from mental computations to the actual use of language within social contexts and interactive practices through which linguistic meaning is constituted.