Chomskyan

comparative more Chomskyan · superlative most Chomskyan · alternative Chomskian

1. Relating to the linguist and activist Noam Chomsky.

   A rhizome, as Deleuze and Guattari explain in Rhizome: an Introduction (1976), is the antithesis of a root-tree structure, or ‘arborescence’, the structural model which has dominated Western thought from Porphyrian trees, to Linnaean taxonomies, to Chomskyan sentence diagrams.

   1989, Ronald Bogue, Deleuze and Guattari, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 107

2. human sciencesOf or relating to the theoretical approach introduced by Noam Chomsky, et al., especially transformational grammar.

   According to Chomskyan theory, the deep structures are innate components of the brain that enable it to carry out certain formal kinds of operations on strings of symbols.

   1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, New York: Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 276

   1 more example

   The differences between acceptable constructions like "Have you a book on modern music?" and unacceptable ones like "Read you a book on modern music?" need no Chomskyan signposts for a native speaker, and have very little to do with statistical probability but a lot to do with common sense.

   1985, Robert Burchfield, The English Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 155

plural Chomskyans · alternative Chomskian

1. human sciencesA follower or adherent of Chomsky's linguistic theories; a transformational grammarian.