This paper reviews the article Language and Nature written by Noam Chomsky published in 1995. The major arguments of
the original work are related and explained, together with some personal comments tentatively made. In the article, Chomsky argues that human language should be regarded as a natural object which is the state of the cognitive system of the language faculty in the mind/brain. The naturalistic approach to
linguistics seeks to construct intelligible explanatory theories. It is hoped that the study of language and mind be eventually unified with the “core" nature sciences: unification, not necessarily reduction. Language and mind is the state of the brain; however, the state of the language faculty cannot be simply reduced to that of the neural system. Chomsky maintains that the language faculty of the brain consists of two components: a cognitive system and a performance system. The former generates an infinite set of linguistic expressions including sound and meaning, while the latter makes use of the expressions produced. The computation of the human language faculty is internally determined beyond any human consciousness. The phenomenon “poverty of stimulus" is even true of the acquisition of lexical items. The meaning of words evolves the linguistic agent's perspectives on the world, and the study of meaning has to do with some other cognitive systems of the brain. The philosophical semantics has caused some confusion in the study of the meaning of natural language. There is no such a thing like the “shared public language" in the world, nor is there a reference based semantics. The “methodological dualism" resulting from various kinds of behaviorism and some trends of philosophy should not be allowed to hamper efforts to gain
understanding into what kind of creatures we are. We assume that to know the definition of language given by Chomsky is fundamental to a true understanding of the Chomskyan linguistics. However, people may still have different ideas about language and different ways of doing linguistics. The view of holism should be held on the relationship between mind and brain. The mental states cannot be simply reduced to the states of the physical substance; however, the study of the physical basis of the mental activities is all the same necessary. It is also assumed that the internalist linguistic theory should not be confused with the externalist linguistic theories of any kind. And a distinction is made in the present paper between Chomsky's philosophy of language and that of the modern analytic philosophers of the western countries. We hoped that our explanations and comments could help the readers have a better understanding of the Chomskyan philosophy of language and the theories of linguistics.