SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
Signed first edition of Chomsky's first book, a landmark of linguistics and cognitive science, containing the first appearance of his famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
Very good.
Price: $6,000.00
Signed first edition of Chomsky's first book, a landmark of linguistics and cognitive science, containing the first appearance of his famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
Very good.
Price: $6,000.00
Chomsky's SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES is no less than a "Copernican revolution" (Voegelin, 229) in the field of linguistics and cognitive science. In it, he puts forth his theory of transformational generative grammar, disproving B. F. Skinner's "beads on a string" theory of sentence construction, and in the process giving us one of the most iconic sentences in the English language: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." The work of Zellig Harris, Chomsky's teacher and mentor, formed the foundation of many of the points Chomsky makes in SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES, which he has further clarified and refined over the course of his long career. This copy, signed by Chomsky, represents in physical form a seismic shift in our understanding of language.
Read more: C. F. Voegelin, "Syntactic Structures. Noam Chomsky," International Journal of American Linguistics, Volume 24, Number 3 July, 1958.
First edition. 'S-Gravenhage [The Hague]: Mouton & Co, 1957. 9'' x 5.75''. Original grey-blue wrappers. 116 pages, including bibliography. Signed by Chomsky to title page. In custom black clamshell box with black goatskin spine. Wrapper with mild toning to edges, a bit of rubbing to spine. Binding a little tender, but sound.
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