SOURCE: “Aboard Noam's Ark,” in New Statesman, January 2, 1981, p. 68.

In the following review, Richardson discusses Chomsky's elaboration of his linguistic concepts in Rules and Representations and the publication of two critical commentaries related to Chomsky's work.

Even the proverbial person-in-the-street must be aware that something exciting is going on in the scientific investigation of language. For the academic, however, the subject is boiling and the name of the prime instigator of all the excitement, Noam Chomsky, looms very large. Indeed his name is very rarely absent from any philosophical debate today, and probably comes top of a 20th-century citations league table in the human sciences.

The term revolution is regularly used to describe Chomsky's achievements in linguistics. On the other hand there is a barrage of criticism testifying to the fact that it's a very odd revolution indeed. What is strange about it is the way in which...