W. von Humboldt and the centrality of the concepts of “creativity” and “form” for the linguistic science of the 20th century

Abstract

In order to avoid falling into the trap of a back projecting of Noam Chomsky’s thought in 20th century linguistics to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s ideas, in this article we start from a detailed analysis of the thought of the Prussian philosopher and highlight, in particular, his reflections on the notions of “creativity” and “form” that managed to draw Chomsky’s attention at an early stage. In particular, we note that the two thinkers agree in their rejection of theories (dominant in the history of linguistic thought) that conceive language primarily as a communicative system or an inventory of lexical units that represent our concepts or external world.
Keywords: Humboldt. Chomsky. Linguistic creativity. Form. Merge.