Noam Chomsky, William Stokoe and Their Linguistic Theories from the 1950s to the 1970s: The Parallel Revolution?

The paper delineates the parallel history of the linguistic theories both of Noam Chomsky on syntactic analysis and language structures, and of William C. Stokoe on sign language and its linguistics. It is argued that, although in the early second half of the 20ᵗʰ century the two linguistic theories had their own developments, they are not such parallel as seemed at first sight. Book titles of both authors, timings of publications and their paths of investigations are clues of some mutual knowledge and thought, albeit mutual skepticism and indifference. In particular, Stokoe is aware of Chomsky’s scripts and seems to retrace the latter’s path for a revolution in sign language studies.