ABSTRACT
What are the fundamental language abilities of speakers and how can we explain those abilities? This was the problem Chomsky raised in the 1950s (Chomsky 1957, 1959), his answers to which brought a host of elite converts to his theory of language. Although there are many issues, we will deal with six of these, four now and two later. The first four are: (1) Ability to Produce and Comprehend Sentences with No Limit as to Length, (2) Ability to Produce and Comprehend an Unlimited Number of Sentences, (3) Ability to Produce and Comprehend Novel Sentences, and (4) Ability to Produce and Comprehend Grammatical Sentences. The latter two are: (1) Ability to Deal with Sentence Synonymy, and (2) Ability to Deal with Structurally Ambiguous Sentences.
