Yes, thank you. That's sort of what I meant by "with attention to language". Should have said it differently. It's not so much what terms I want to talk in ;-), but the terms that might help differentiate Chomsky's work (as I see it) from what might have been traditional linguistics before him -- this difference is also the reason that Zellberger (as I had noted earlier) calls him a founder of Computer Science, and why he has such great influence (AFAICT) on fields such as cognitive science/psychology, philosophy of mind, etc., including being a major influence for folks like Fodor and Pinker.
With this understanding in hand, I think it will be easier to understand why his research programme was not centred around studying this or that real world language and analysing it. This also addresses, I think, Miles' "snarky" question.
--ravi