Noam Chomsky’s revolutionary approach to language has influenced not only the thinking of linguists. Related disciplines too have undergone a shock as a consequence of the Chomskian revolution in linguistics.

This book surveys the main ideas of modern linguistic theory, the basic phenomena this theory explains, and the mutual relations between linguistics, psychology, and neurology. Its four chapters present the principles of engagement with human linguistic knowledge, the development of this knowledge in children as they grow, the way in which this knowledge is manifested in speech and understanding, and the relation between linguistic mechanisms and brain tissue.

The dramatic change that these disciplines have undergone is explained through intriguing linguistic, psychological, and neurological phenomena, and through the development of the thought of linguists, psycholinguists, and neurolinguists over the past thirty years.