Sao Paulo (AFP)
American thinker and linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential intellectuals in recent decades, was discharged from a hospital in Sao Paulo on Tuesday, and will continue his “treatment” at home, according to what the hospital announced, denying rumors circulating on the Internet that claimed his death.
The newspaper “La Beneficencia Portuguesa de Sao Paulo” indicated in a medical bulletin that “the patient, Noam Chomsky, was discharged from the hospital to continue his treatment at home,” without providing further details.
The hospital statement was issued after unsourced information spread on social media claiming that the 95-year-old intellectual had died.
His wife, Valeria Chomsky, also said that the rumors circulating “are not true, he is fine.”
The newspaper “Folia de São Paulo” reported that Chomsky was transferred to hospital in the Brazilian city after suffering a stroke in June of last year that affected the right side of his body.
The Chomsky couple has resided in Brazil, Valeria Chomsky’s country, since 2015.
Noam Chomsky is considered the founder of modern linguistics. He emphasized in his book “Syntactic Structures” (1957) that language is an innate ability, and he spoke about “generative grammar,” which is a set of universal linguistic rules that exist in the human brain.
But he became a central figure in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially for his role as a committed intellectual, due to his radical criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and Israel, as well as of the media.
Also, this opponent of the Vietnam War and the US invasion of Iraq became close to leftist leaders in Latin America, such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Chomsky was for many years a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is currently professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Arizona.