"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation"
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Chomsky slips a small revolution into a calm, almost engineerly sentence: language isn’t a code we merely decode, it’s an act we continually invent. The line is built on a productive tension - “laws and principles are fixed” versus “free and infinitely varied” - that mirrors his larger project. He’s staking out a middle ground between two bad stories: that speech is just habit and imitation, and that it’s pure chaos. Structure exists, he concedes, but structure is not a script.
The intent is polemical in the quiet way intellectual polemics often are. By insisting on “free creation” not once but three times, he’s trying to make a philosophical point feel like a descriptive fact. Language becomes evidence for an inner human capacity: we generate novel sentences and meanings constantly, without being explicitly trained for each one. That’s the famous Chomskyan argument against behaviorism, and it’s also an argument about dignity. If interpretation is creative, then understanding is not passive consumption; it’s participatory labor.
The subtext is political even when the subject is syntax. A mind that can produce meaning beyond its inputs is harder to treat as a programmable machine - by advertisers, states, or ideologies. Coming from an activist who spent decades criticizing propaganda, the claim reads like cognitive science with a civic spine: freedom isn’t only something you demand in the streets, it’s something your brain performs every time you speak.
Context matters here: mid-to-late 20th century debates over whether humans are basically conditioned responders or autonomous agents. Chomsky is reminding you that every ordinary conversation is already a rebuttal.
The intent is polemical in the quiet way intellectual polemics often are. By insisting on “free creation” not once but three times, he’s trying to make a philosophical point feel like a descriptive fact. Language becomes evidence for an inner human capacity: we generate novel sentences and meanings constantly, without being explicitly trained for each one. That’s the famous Chomskyan argument against behaviorism, and it’s also an argument about dignity. If interpretation is creative, then understanding is not passive consumption; it’s participatory labor.
The subtext is political even when the subject is syntax. A mind that can produce meaning beyond its inputs is harder to treat as a programmable machine - by advertisers, states, or ideologies. Coming from an activist who spent decades criticizing propaganda, the claim reads like cognitive science with a civic spine: freedom isn’t only something you demand in the streets, it’s something your brain performs every time you speak.
Context matters here: mid-to-late 20th century debates over whether humans are basically conditioned responders or autonomous agents. Chomsky is reminding you that every ordinary conversation is already a rebuttal.
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| Topic | Knowledge |
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