Linguistics is the science of language. General linguistics typically involves a study of the structure and development of one language and its relationship to other languages. A linguist is an individual who specializes in linguistics, and both Noam Chomsky and Edward Sapir may be called linguists. Both Chomsky and Sapir developed philosophical linguistic theories. Language has achieved an unprecedented significance to philosophy in the past century. In fact, linguistic philosophy as proposed by Wittgenstein and Russell is a competitive philosophy to analytic philosophy.
Linguistic philosophy argues that the traditional problems of philosophy are not real issues at all. To linguistic philosophers, they are merely confusions that are manifested by misunderstandings regarding the use and misuse of language. While Chomsky and Sapir are both linguists, their respective theories are in contrast to one another. Chomsky believes that Chomsky did not believe that language was merely a matter of stimulus generalization. Instead, he believe human beings possess and inherent faculty for acquiring languages. Sapir argued that language was relative and that linguistic relativity explained the relationship between language and thought. The following analysis will discuss the linguistics theories of Chomsky and Sapir while drawing comparisons and contrasts between the two.
The theories of Noam Chomsky revolutionized linguistics because they directed the science away from empiricism and towards rationalism. Chomsky was also instrumental in the demise of behaviorism in psychology in favor of cognitive theory. He viewed linguistics as no more than a branch of cognitive psychology that tried to uncover the basics mental structures that give an individual linguistic competence. However, at best, Chomsky thought a knowledge of these competence structures and linguistic performance were only capable of giving the linguist a difficult ...