Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface to the second edition -- Acknowledgments for the first edition -- Introduction -- Chomsky's achievement -- On heroes and influences -- 1 The mirror of the mind -- Linguistics as a science -- The nature of idealization -- Common sense -- Modularity -- Double dissociation -- Modules and quasi-modules -- Intelligence and "learning" -- Competence and performance -- Competence and grammar -- Rules -- I-language and E-language -- Performance, parsing, and pragmatics -- Parsing considerations -- Pragmatic considerations -- Competence and performance versus I-language and E-language -- Evolution and innateness -- Language acquisition -- Poverty of the stimulus -- Word meaning -- Universals -- Natural language and the language of thought -- Summary -- 2 The linguistic foundation -- Introduction -- Knowledge of language -- The lexicon -- Knowledge of structure -- Knowledge of structural relations -- Levels of representation -- Constituents and rules -- Deep structure -- Description versus explanation -- From rules to principles -- The elimination of PS rules -- X-bar theory -- Government and Binding theory -- Binding theory -- Locality -- Theta theory -- Case theory and government -- Empty categories -- The status of transformations -- Principles and parameters -- Lexical and functional categories -- Minimalism -- Economy -- The elements of Minimalism -- Perfect syntax -- A historical progression -- Evolution -- 3 Psychological reality -- Causality and observability -- Psychological reality and the nature of evidence -- Intuitions -- Language processing -- The derivational theory of complexity -- Grammars and parsers -- Parsing problems -- Economy -- Language acquisition (Plato's problem) -- Teaching versus learning -- Learning versus growing -- Parameter setting.

The critical period hypothesis -- Maturation -- Language pathology -- Agenesis of the corpus callosum -- The polyglot savant -- Specific language impairment (SLI) -- Connectionism: the behaviorists strike back -- 4 Philosophical realism: commitments and controversies -- Commitments -- Realism -- I-language revisited -- Representation and computation -- Naturalism -- Mentalism -- Tacit knowledge -- The mind-body problem -- Controversies -- Language and the world -- Language and the community -- Language and the individual -- Problems of semantics -- Innateness -- Unification and reduction -- Conclusions -- 5 Language and freedom -- Explanation and dissent: the common threads -- Relentless dissent -- Common sense and theory -- Rationality, modularity, and creativity -- Rationality -- Modularity -- Malleability and plasticity -- Creativity -- The anarchist background -- The Encyclopédistes -- The critique of (American) foreign policy -- Vietnam -- East Timor -- 9-11: terrorism and the "war on terror" -- The critique of domestic policy -- Pig farming in Haiti -- Drug trafficking -- The critique of media control -- Murder -- Third world elections -- The treason of the intellectuals -- The technique of dissection -- The exposure of warped perspective -- The exposure of suppressed precursor events -- The exposure of debased language -- Moral absolutes and options for the future -- The Faurisson affair -- Islamic fundamentalism -- Authority -- The positive program -- Conclusion -- Envoi -- Notes -- INTRODUCTION -- CHAPTER 1 THE MIRROR OF THE MIND -- CHAPTER 2 THE LINGUISTIC FOUNDATION -- CHAPTER 3 PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY -- CHAPTER 4 PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM: COMMITMENTS AND CONTROVERSIES -- CHAPTER 5 LANGUAGE AND FREEDOM -- CONCLUSION -- ENVOI -- Bibliography -- Index.