Proposal: Noam Chomsky Award (rough draft)

Noam Chomsky Award for the Scientific Study of Human Language

Purpose:

The Noam Chomsky Award recognizes individuals or groups who have made outstanding contributions to the scientific understanding of the human capacity for language. The award honors groundbreaking research that advances theoretical or empirical insight into the nature of human language. 

The award is named in honor of Professor Noam Chomsky, whose pioneering work initiated the cognitive revolution and laid the foundations of modern linguistics.

Awarding Body / Sponsor:

Presented by the Linguistic Society of America, with financial support from Google and other institutions.

Frequency:

Awarded annually. 

Monetary Prize:

US $1,000,000.

Eligibility:

There are no restrictions on the age or nationality of the awardee. The award may be conferred upon up to three recipients in cases of closely related or collaborative work. The prize is granted only to living individuals at the time of the award. There is no specific time frame for when the work was done.

Explanatory Note:

The award is intended to promote formal work in the core areas of linguistics. However, it is not restricted to these fields. Contributions from related domains—such as neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, or cognitive science—are also eligible, provided they align with the purpose of the award.

Linguistic Subfields and Genetics

I am not a natural born lexicographer. Far from it. 

I have written one small dictionary for Sasi, a Khoisan language of Botswana. Now, I find myself starting another dictionary, for the Kpele dialect of Ewe. So I have some idea of what it takes to write a dictionary of a certain sort. But I am forcing myself to do it, and it does not come naturally. 

I believe that every linguist is basically born into the field that they adopted. Their innate disposition, including various skills, lead them to the field that they choose: syntax, phonology, semantics, lexicography, sociolinguistics. There would only be only a correlation between genetics and final behavioral outcome, but my hypothesis is that a correlation exists. 

To be more concrete: My hypothesis is that within the set of professional linguists, it will be possible to discover a correlation between genetic traits and career choice (defined broadly into one of several categories: syntax, phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics, lexicography). This is an example of a polygenic index, as described in Dalton Conley’s recent book ‘The Social Genome’. For a summary of the concept, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygenic_score

My prediction is that if there were a study of identical twins born apart, both of whom became linguists, then they would choose the same field in linguistics (with a greater than random probability). For example, they would both be syntacticians. Since linguistics is a relatively small field, I doubt any actual cases exist, but the prediction is clear.

It is not a question of IQ, because there are absolutely brilliant linguists (genius level linguists) in all subfields. IQ seems to be a different notion. Rather, it is question of propensity to do certain kinds of analysis. If anything, I am a natural born syntactician. I love to manipulate sentences, and witness the effect on acceptability and meaning. I could play with sentences all day long, and never tire of it. It is a source of endless fascination. 

But keeping track of all the intricacies of lexical items and making sure to create uniform lexical entries becomes tiring for me. It does not inspire me in the same was as syntax. For me, lexicography is an obligation as a field linguist, not an adventure. It is something I need to do, because the information is important. For the languages I work with, nobody else is in a position to do the work. So I am obliged.