Mr Chomsky has argued that “recursion” is the key feature of all human language.

乔姆斯基已经证明“递归”是所有人类语言的关键特征。

But Merge-enabled, hierarchically structured language, according to Mr Chomsky, did not evolve for talking at all.

但是根据乔姆斯基，合并型的、纵向结构的语言并不是为会话而进化。

Mr Chomsky says those who disagree with his ever-more contentious ideas are either blind or hucksters.

乔姆斯基表示，那些不同意他曾更具争议的想法的人都是瞎子或是跳梁小丑。

But Noam Chomsky is the man who revolutionised linguistics.

而诺姆·乔姆斯基则彻底改革了语言学。

Perhaps the brain really is built for language, as Professor Chomsky says.

也许正如乔姆斯基教授所说，大脑真的是为语言而生的。

But his tour of Chomskyan linguistics is entertaining and accessible-in contrast to Mr Chomsky's own notoriously baffling prose.

但是他对乔姆斯基语言学的游历是有趣且通俗易懂的，这与乔姆斯基先生臭名昭著的令人困惑的散文形成鲜明对比。

A more controversial claim is that all human languages share what Mr Chomsky calls " universal grammar" .

更有争议的说法是，所有人类语言都有乔姆斯基所说的“通用语法”。

Over the past 60 years, Mr Chomsky has repeatedly stripped down his theory.

在过去的60年中，乔姆斯基不断地在精简自己的理论。

He maintains that it is the distinct result of a unique capacity, advancing a series of arguments whose best-known exponent is Noam Chomsky.

他坚持认为，这是一种独特能力的独特结果，提出了一系列以诺姆·乔姆斯基为代表的观点。

Professor Chomsky has frequently said a Martian visitor would conclude that all humans speak the same language, with surface variation.

乔姆斯基教授经常说，一个来自火星的访客会得出结论：所有人类都说同样的语言，只是表面上有所不同。

Although Professor Chomsky's ideas have changed considerably since he rose to prominence in the 1950s, several elements have remained fairly constant.

虽然乔姆斯基教授自20世纪50年代崭露头角以来，他的思想已经发生了很大的变化，但有几个要素仍然相当稳定。

Mr Everett has taken a shot across the innatists' bow, and an impressively modest and reasoned one given that Mr Chomsky once called him a charlatan.

埃弗里特提醒先天派，一个印象深刻的谦逊的合理的人是会考虑到乔姆斯基曾经笑话他是个骗子。

Chomsky's grammar should show patterns of language change that are independent of the family tree or the pathway tracked through it, whereas Greenbergian universality predicts strong co-dependencies between particular types of word-order relations.

乔姆斯基的语法显示出语言变化的模式，这些模式并不受语言谱系或贯穿谱系的路径的影响；而格林伯格式的普遍性则预言了特定的语法词序关系类型之间所存在的紧密互依性。

But a debate has ensued about what the machines are actually doing internally, what it is that humans, in turn, do when they speak--and, inside the academy, about the theories of the world's most famous linguist, Noam Chomsky.

但紧接着出现了一场辩论：机器内部究竟发生了什么？人类在说话时又发生了什么？在学术界，学者们也在就世界上最著名的语言学家诺姆·乔姆斯基的理论展开讨论。