Von Humboldt on Language, Contemporary Linguistics, and the Mission of a Linguist

Abstract

This article examines the ideas of W. von Humboldt on language and their simi­larities and differences with the fundamental ideas about the nature of natural languages within the generative framework founded by N. Chomsky. Chomsky famously argued that von Humboldt expressed and defended some of the key ideas of the generative approach. This paper relates Chomsky’s idea of the innate universal grammar and idea of generative rules as the underlying basis of the lan­guage creativity to the similar ideas of W. von Humboldt. The paper also dis­cusses Humboldt’s problematic from the generative perspective view that natural languages can have a primitive or an advance grammar. The paper considers a possible explanation for the fact that this idea seemed consistent to Humboldt with the idea of the innate universal grammar. The contemporary linguistics views all grammars of all languages as equal because a natural language is con­sidered to be a biological feature of our species developed in the process of evo­lution. This idea was not present in Humboldt’s philosophy, which made it possi­ble for him to think that some natural languages have not fully developed a potential hidden in its speakers. In this regard, the author considers the ques­tion of the social mission of the linguist; emphasizes that this is a fight against prejudices based on unscientific understanding of languages and dialects.