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To question one, the answer is descriptive, so to pursue it we must "attempt to construct a grammar, a theory of a particular language that describes how this language assigns specific mental representations to each linguistic expression, determine its form and meaning." Next, we have to explain it by constructing "a theory of universal grammar, a theory of the fixed and invariant principles that constitute the human language faculty and the parameters of variation associated with them" (Language and Problems 133). If we are able to construct a universal grammar, we can then approach the second question, because "language learning . . . is the process of determining the values of the parameters left unspecified by universal grammar, of setting the switches that make the network function. . . ." The third question involves the study of "how people who have acquired a language put their knowledge to use in understanding what they hear and in expressing their thoughts" (Language and Problems 134). What remains for the future is a fouth question: "What are the physical mechanisms involved in the representation, acquisition, and the use of this knowledge?" (Language and Problems 133).

This question concerns the limits of human understanding. Even as he is making breakthroughs in his field, Chomsky is also becoming more and more concerned with the biological limits of the human being as they pertain to the fundamental questions of existence. Although the physical sciences have afforded us great insight into the workings of matter, studies of the mind have not yielded anywhere near as much useful and scientifically proven information about the basics of human nature. Questions posed by the Greeks, and repeated with variations by generation upon generation of thinkers ever since, remain unanswered. Humankind will perhaps never be able to unravel these mysteries, but this does not mean that they cannot motivate research or generate other questions that might bring researchers closer to their goals.

In pursuit of answers to the overarching fourth question, Chomsky has asked, in the lectures he has given at MIT since the late 1980s:

(1) What are the general conditions that the human language faculty should be expected to satisfy? (2) to what extent is the language faculty determined by these conditions, without special structure that lies beyond them? The first question in turn has two aspects: what conditions are imposed on the language faculty by virtue of (A) its place within the array of cognitive systems of the mind/brain, and (B) general considerations of conceptual naturalness that have some independent plausibility, namely: simplicity, economy, symmetry, non-redundancy, and the like? (The Minimalist Program 1).

Chomsky's own scientific work is dependent upon new empirical and theoretical ideas; the minimalist program, for example, owes its successes to the bold speculation that characterized the principles-and-parameters approach coupled with massive empirical data. This is not to say that Chomsky's most recent linguistic efforts represent a total break from his earlier work. Indeed, "the minimalist program shares several underlying factual assumptions with its predecessors back to the early 1950s, though these have taken somewhat different forms as inquiry has proceeded," and it borrows "from earlier work the assumption that the cognitive system interacts with the performance systems by means of levels of linguistic representation, in the technical sense of this notion" (The Minimalist Program 2).