ABSTRACT
Chomsky's importance lies not just in the effect he had on linguistics, but also in the more general impact of his ideas. This chapter looks at the implications of his linguistics for other fields of study. It focuses on two fields where Chomsky himself has intervened, philosophy and psychology, and two practical fields where linguistic insights have an obvious potential relevance, second language teaching and learning, and speech pathology. In the first two areas, Chomsky himself has intervened with proposals that have aroused widespread discussion and comment. His monism, individualism and rationalism all follow directly from his linguistics, with striking similarities to the views of Kant. His critique of behaviourism and his proposal that the mind is modular both stem from his view that the task of linguistics is to account for knowledge of language, rather than just describing language behaviour. The chapter shows substantial support for some of Chomsky's key in the practical fields.
