LINGUISTICS
Overview
A brief history of twentieth-century linguistics. An introduction to the
different ways that language can be studied, and the contributions of Saussure
and Jakobson in context.
Introduction
Linguistics is the study of language, sometimes called the science of
language. {1} The subject has become a very technical, splitting
into separate fields: sound (phonetics and phonology), sentence structure
(syntax, structuralism, deep grammar), meaning (semantics), practical psychology
(psycholinguistics) and contexts of language choice (pragmatics). {2}
But originally, as practised in the nineteenth century, linguistics was
philology: the history of words. {3} Philologists tried to
understand how words had changed and by what principle. Why had the proto-European
consonants changed in the Germanic branch: Grimm's Law? Voiceless stops
went to voiceless fricatives, voiced stops to voiceless stops, and voiced
aspirates to voiced stops. What social phenomenon was responsible? None
could be found. Worse, such changes were not general. Lines of descent could
be constructed, but words did not evolve in any Darwinian sense of simple
to elaborate. One could group languages as isolating (words had a single,
unchanging root), agglutinizing (root adds affixes but remains clear) and
inflecting (word cannot be split into recurring units), but attempts to
show how one group developed into another broke down in hopeless disagreement.
Ferdinand
de Saussure (1857-1913)
So linguistics might have ended: documenting random changes in random
directions. But that was hardly a science, only a taxonomy. When therefore
Ferdinand de Saussure tentatively suggested that language be seen as a game
of chess, where the history of past moves is irrelevant to the players,
a way though the impasse was quickly recognized. Saussure sketched some
possibilities. If the word high-handed falls out of use, then
synonyms like arrogant and presumptuous will extend
their uses. If we drop the final f or v the results
in English are not momentous (we might still recognize belie
as belief from the context), but not if the final s
is dropped (we should then have to find some new way of indicating plurals).
Saussure's suggestion was very notional: his ideas were put together by
students from lecture notes and published posthumously in 1915. But they
did prove immensely fruitful, even in such concepts as langue (the whole
language which no one speaker entirely masters) and parole (an individual's
use of language). Words are signs, and in linguistics we are studying the
science of signs: semiology. And signs took on a value depending on words
adjacent in use or meaning. English has sheep and mutton
but French has only mouton for both uses. Above all (extending
the picture of a chess game) we should understand that language was a totality
of linguistic possibilities, where the "move" of each word depended
on the possible moves of others.
Saussure had a theory of meaning. He envisaged language as a series of
contiguous subdivisions marked off on the indefinite planes of ideas and
sounds. A word (sign) was a fusion of concept (signified) and sound-image
(signifier) the two being somehow linked as meaning in the mind. Both signifieds
and signifiers independently played on their own chess board of possibilities
— i.e. they took up positions with regard to other pieces, indeed owed
their existence to them. Though championed by the Structuralists, this theory
of semantics was a disastrous one, raising the problems recognized by linguistic
philosophy. But that was not Saussure's fault. He was not a philosopher,
but a philologist, one whose simple idea, though much anticipated by Michel
Bréal and perhaps Franz Boas, largely recast linguistics in its present
form. {3}
The
Structuralists
Saussure's ideas spread first to Russia, being brought there and developed
by Ramon Jacobson (1896-1982). Strictly speaking, the product was not Structuralism,
which dates from Jakobson's acquaintance with Lévi-Strauss in
the 1960's, but formalism: study of the devices
by which literary language makes itself distinctive. Poetry was the great
love of the Russian formalists (who knew personally the revolutionary poets)
and they looked intensively and dispassionately at the structures and devices
that literature employs, whether Pushkin or seemingly artless fairy stories.
But as Marxist ideology tightened its grip, the member of the Russian school,
never a very tightly knit group, either recanted or fled abroad. Jakobson
went to Czechoslovakia and then to the USA, but took with him the very speculative
nature of Russian formalism: brilliant theories, but poor documentation
and few laboratory studies.
Jakobson made little impact in Prague, which had its own traditions, but
in America was able to draw on and develop the ideas of structural anthropology:
that the behaviour of societies is governed by deep, scarcely visible rules
and understandings. As such, Jakobson's views merged with those of continental
philosophy and sociology — with Althusser's
reinterpretation of Marx, that language was ideology, a hidden reality,
an alternative source of state power. Also with Barthes's
attempt to explain the multiplicity of French society from a few underlying
suppositions. And with Foucault's genealogy. Meanwhile, Emile Benaviste
had rewritten Saussure (as most Structuralists and Post-structuralists were
to do) to conceive the signified as not inside individual minds but part
of any ever-present social reality. Gradually it is not the individual,
nor the society, but language itself that becomes the defining reality:
a view that leads on to Postmodernism.
Jakobson had some novel ideas of his own. There was, he proposed, a relatively
simple, orderly and universal psychological system underlying the three
to eight thousand odd languages in the world. Despite the many ways phonemes
(basic units of sound) are produced by human mouths, all could be represented
in binary structures (open-closed, back-front, etc.) governed by 12 levels
of precedence. Binary structures are written into Lévi-Strauss's
views, and these notions fitted with information theory and sound spectrography.
But languages in fact use a good deal more than two of any"mouth settings",
phonemes do not have an independent existence, and 12 levels will not serve.
Chomsky and Halle (1968) proposed 43 such rules, often complex, before abandoning
the approach. Jakobson also defined poetic language as the projection onto
the horizon syntagmatic axis (how words fit together in a sentence) of the
vertical paradigmatic (how word are associated and can replace each other),
another audacious theory that proved largely vacuous. {4}.
Descriptionists
The besetting sin of Structuralism (as of current literary theory) is
its want of evidence: theories are dreamt up in the study rather than fashioned
to meet field observations or laboratory experiment. That criticism cannot
be laid at the door of Boas, Bloomfield and other American researchers who
in the first half of this century went out to closely observe languages
as native speakers use them. Indeed, so concerned were they to avoid the
strictures of Logical Positivism,
that they adopted a behaviourist approach, excluding mind altogether. Language
was simply inputs and outputs: how the brain handled its data was not something
one could observe, and was therefore not science. Huge dossiers of information
were built up, particularly on native American languages, but little that
resolved itself into laws or general principles. {5}
Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis
One exception was an hypothesis of Edward Sapir (1884-1934) and Benjamin
Lee Whorf (1897-1941). Man's language, they argued, moulds his perception
of reality. The Hopi Indians of Arizona plurialize clouds as though they
were animate objects, do not use spatial metaphors for time, and have no
past tense as such. Do they not view the world in these terms? And there
were more spectacular examples. The Bororó of northern Brazil believe
they are red parakeets — evidence, said anthropologists, that primitive
societies were not aware of logical contradictions. Modern Europeans have
words for the seven basic colours of the rainbow, whereas other societies
have from two to eleven.
The matter is still debated. {6} The Hopi Indians do not
seem to be poor timekeepers, and the Romance languages have a feminine gender
for objects not seen as animate: la cerveza for beer, etc. Parakeets is
no doubt used metaphorically by the Bororó.
Even the evidence of colours, subject of a massive study by Berlin and Kay,
{7} seems now not so clear-cut, since language may reflect
purpose more than perception. Lakoff, however, (see below) has indeed resurrected
Whorf's hypothesis through the concept of commensurability, adducing some
striking if limited experimental evidence. Understanding, our ability to
translate between diverse languages, is not the only factor. Equally important
are use, framing and organization {8}, and behaviour here can be governed
by different conceptual systems. Languages widely employ spatial conceptions,
for example, and these conceptions differ between cultures.
Functional
Linguistics: The Prague School
As early as 1911 in Czechoslovakia, and independently of Saussure and
Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius (1882- 1945) founded a non-historical approach
to linguistics. The Prague School looked at the structural components as
they contributed to the entire language. There was a need for a standard
language once Czechoslovakia had acquired independence, and Czech had the
curiosity of being very different in its colloquial and literary forms.
Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) investigated paradigmatic relations
between phonemes and classified functions on the purposes they served —
keeping words apart, signalling stress, etc.
Like the Russian Formalists, members of the Prague School were keenly
concerned with literature, but they were not hermetic in their approach
— i.e. did not see literature as a self-enclosed, stand-alone entity,
but something reflecting social and cultural usage. That was also a view
developed by the American anthropologist William Labor in investigating
the colloquial language of New York. He found that listeners to tape recordings
could very accurately place speakers by geography and social stratum. As
both reflected social movement in the recent past — i.e. history: this
was one rare exception to Saussure's assertion that language speakers do
not take past usage into consideration. {9}
The
London School
The London School of Harry Sweet (1845-1912) and David Jones (1881-1967)
stressed the practical side of phonetics, and trained its students to perceive,
transcribe and reproduce each minute sound distinction very precisely —
far more than the American behaviourists, for example, and of course the
Chomskians, who are extending models rather than testing them. And this
phonetic competence was much needed when J.R. Firth (1891-1960) and others
at the School of Oriental and African Studies helped to plan the national
languages and their writing systems for the new Commonwealth countries.
Overall, the School has been very far ranging — noting, for example
how stress and tone co-occur with whole syllables, and developing a terminology
to cope: a basis for poetic metre. Firthian analysis also finds a place
for aesthetic considerations and develops a system of mutually exclusive
options, somewhat like Saussure but more socially and purposively orientated.
Firth himself tried to base a theory of meaning on such choice-systems,
but the approach has not been generally accepted. Not only was it rather
simplistic, but confused the scientific invariance of linguistic rules with
the unregimented and creative way that human beings get their meaning across.
{10}
Noam
Chomsky and Generative Grammar
Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ) and
his followers have transformed linguistics. Indeed, despite many difficulties
and large claims later retracted, the school of deep or generative grammar
still holds centre stage. Chomsky came to prominence in a 1972 criticism
of the behavourist's B.F. Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour. Linguistic
output was not simply related to input. Far from it, and a science which
ignored what the brain did to create its novel outputs was no science at
all. Chomsky was concerned to explain two striking features of language
— the speed with which children acquire a language, and its astonishing
fecundity, our ability to create a endless supply of grammatically correct
sentences without apparently knowing the rules. How was that possible? Only
by having a) an underlying syntax and b) rules to convert syntax to what
we speak. The syntax was universal and simple. A great diversity of sentences
can be constructed with six symbols. Take a cats sits on the mat.
Older readers will remember their parsing exercises at school: indefinite
article, noun, verb, preposition, definite article, noun. Chomsky uses a
similar approach but his "parsing" applies to all languages. But
how we convert to the mat was sat on by a cat? The answer, argued
Chomsky, were innate transformation rules by which a fundamental deep structure
is converted to the surface sentence. Matters are not usually so straightforward,
of course, and the rules can be very complex indeed, but Chomsky and his
coworkers have now provided them.
If many languages are now classified along Chomsky lines, why hasn't the
approach entirely swept the board, bringing all linguists into the fold
of orthodoxy? First there are procedural problems. The American behaviourists,
and more so the London school, had a very thorough training in gathering
field evidence. Speech was what native speakers actually spoke, not what
the anthropologist thought they might accept as correct usage. The Chomskians
use introspection (i.e. the linguists themselves decide whether a sentence
is good grammar), an approach which can allow "facts" to be fitted
to theory and which has somewhat restricted application to the European
languages that Chomskians regard themselves as familiar with. Then there
is the matter of laboratory testing. Surface sentences that are generated
by the more convoluted transformation rules should take speakers longer
to produce. The evidence is somewhat contradictory.
But more important than these are the theoretical issues. What are these
deep structures and transformation rules — i.e. are they something
"hardwired" into the brain or simply a propensity to perform in
ways we can view along Chomskian lines? Chomsky is undecided. And, if the
structures are real, is this the philosopher's goal: we can base semantics
on deep grammar? Some have done so, though Chomsky himself has now abandoned
these hopes. Chomsky is not a Structuralist, and there is more to understanding
than the ability to recast sentences — an appreciation of the world
outside, for example, which we perceive and judge on past experience. {11}
Relational
Grammar
One interesting development from the London School was that of Sydney
Lamb and Peter Reich. Lamb charted language as networks of relationships.
By using a very simple set of "nodes" he was able to represent
phonology, syntax and semantics, and to explain linguistic patterning at
various levels. Reich used computer modelling
to simulate this approach and explain the difficulties we experience with
multiply embedded sentences — I spoke to the girl whose mother's
cat which I didn't know was run over when she wasn't looking sort of
thing. But neither approach coped properly with the prevailing Chomskian
structural picture, and wasn't pursued. {12}
The
Contemporary Scene
What's the scene today? A very lively but confused picture of new dimensions,
difficulties and antagonisms. One comparatively new approach is that of
brain physiology. Much, perhaps the
greater part, remains to be understood of precisely how the brain functions.
But it is clear that consciousness (being aware of the world, having mental
images, and feelings and intentions) proceeds by a complex system of neural
loops and feedbacks. Speech comes with the development of the mouth and
larynx, concomitantly with the growth of the cortex and its networks through
to the hippocampus, amygdala and brainstem. Sounds are linked by learning
with concepts and gestures to give meaning. Syntax emerges to connect conceptual
learning with lexical learning. Language allows us to elaborate, refine,
connect, create and remember. All this happens together. {13}
Animals learn as they need to. Dogs, for example, reared in total isolation,
have no understanding of pain and will sniff repeatedly at a lighted match.
And for human beings the sense of self comes through the joint development
of social and linguistic behaviour, each operating on the other, so that
attempts to study speech in narrow disciplines — physiology, psychology,
linguistics, information theory, structuralism , etc. — are doomed
to failure. {14}
What is to be done, given the mountain of complex and technical data each
discipline brings to the total picture? One promising start is the hypothesis
of Lakoff and Johnson, sometime students of
Chomsky's but working more from their studies of metaphor. Human beings,
they suppose, create models of cognition that reflect concepts developed
in the interaction between brain, body and environment. These models, which
they call schemas, operate through bodily activities prior to speech development,
and are very various, if not amorphous. Very tentatively, they suggest that
the schema may operate so as to provide our five different conceptual approaches
— through images, metaphors, part for whole, propositional and symbolic.
Linguistic functions are propositional and symbolic. Grammatical constructions
are idealized schemas. And so on. The approach is technical and preliminary,
but overcomes some of the difficulties noted above. {15}
Is this optimism widely shared? Not at present. Scientists and academics
have invested too much in chosen disciplines to lightly abandon their positions.
Nor perhaps should they. But what is emerging is the folly of believing
that any one approach provides all the answers. Or that any simplistic,
navel-gazing theory like Structuralism will serve. As with linguistic philosophy,
more problems emerge the deeper we look, which is perhaps not surprising
given the creative, ad-hoc way language develops and our use necessarily
of one small part of it to investigate the whole.
References
1. William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky and Francis Katamba's Contemporary
Linguistics: An Introduction (1987) and R.H. Robins's A Short History
of Linguistics (1994). Also Geoffrey Sampson's Schools of Linguistics:
Competition and Evolution (1980) — on which this account is broadly
modelled — and Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny's An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Language (1987).
2. F.R. Palmer's Semantics (1976, 1981), Simon Blackburn's Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (1984), Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994), Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983), and Andrew Ellis and Geoffrey Beattie's The Psychology of Language and Communication (1986, 1992).
3. See, in addition to the above, Raymond Tallis's Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory (1988, 1995), Chapter 1 of J.G. Merquior's From Prague to Paris (1986), and Hans Arslef's From Locke to Saussure (1982). A contrary view is argued by Paul Thibault's Rereading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (1997).
4. David Lodge's The Modes of Modern Writing (1977), Richard Harland's Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (1987) and Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983). Also Sampson 1980.
5. Chapter 3 in Sampson 1980.
6. Chapter 4 of Sampson 1980, and Dale Pesmen's Reasonable and Unreasonable World: Some Expectation of Coherence in Culture Implied in the Prohibition of Mixed Metaphor in James Fernandez's Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology (1991).
7: pp. 95-102 in Sampson.
8. pp.304-337 in George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (1987).
9. Chapter 5 of Sampson 1980.
10. Chapter 9 of Sampson 1980.
11. Chapter 6 of Sampson 1980.
12. Chapter 7 of Sampson 1980.
13. Edelman 1992.
14. pp 53- 54 in Ellis and Beattie 1988, 1992, and Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (1992).
15. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980), G. Lakoff's Woman, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (1987), and M. Johnson's The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Bias of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (1987).
2. F.R. Palmer's Semantics (1976, 1981), Simon Blackburn's Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (1984), Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994), Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983), and Andrew Ellis and Geoffrey Beattie's The Psychology of Language and Communication (1986, 1992).
3. See, in addition to the above, Raymond Tallis's Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory (1988, 1995), Chapter 1 of J.G. Merquior's From Prague to Paris (1986), and Hans Arslef's From Locke to Saussure (1982). A contrary view is argued by Paul Thibault's Rereading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (1997).
4. David Lodge's The Modes of Modern Writing (1977), Richard Harland's Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (1987) and Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983). Also Sampson 1980.
5. Chapter 3 in Sampson 1980.
6. Chapter 4 of Sampson 1980, and Dale Pesmen's Reasonable and Unreasonable World: Some Expectation of Coherence in Culture Implied in the Prohibition of Mixed Metaphor in James Fernandez's Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology (1991).
7: pp. 95-102 in Sampson.
8. pp.304-337 in George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (1987).
9. Chapter 5 of Sampson 1980.
10. Chapter 9 of Sampson 1980.
11. Chapter 6 of Sampson 1980.
12. Chapter 7 of Sampson 1980.
13. Edelman 1992.
14. pp 53- 54 in Ellis and Beattie 1988, 1992, and Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (1992).
15. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980), G. Lakoff's Woman, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (1987), and M. Johnson's The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Bias of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (1987).
Internet
Resources
1. Linguistics. 2001. http://www.bartleby.com/65/li/linguist.html.
Brief introduction in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.
2. On history and historicity in modern linguistics: Formalism versus functionalism revisited. Robert de Beaugrande. 1997. http://www.beaugrande.bizland.com/History.htm. General but still somewhat technical paper in Functions of Language, 4/2, 1997, 169-213.
3. Boas, Franz. http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/B/Boas-F1ra.asp. Encyclopedia.com entry with brief listings.
4. Franz Boas. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
5. Leonard Bloomfield, Language And Linguistics, Biographies. http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/
B/BloomfldL.html. Brief AllRefer Encyclopedia entry.
6. Structuralism and Saussure. Mary Klages. 2001. http://www.colorado.edu/English/
ENGL2012Klages/saussure.html. Simple introduction.
7. Ferdinand de Saussure. Dec. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
8. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/ferdinand_de_saussure.html. Johns Hopkins Guide entry with links and bibliography.
9. Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure. Oct.1910. http://www.marxists.org/reference/
subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm. Excerpt from Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910-1911) Pergamon Press. 1993.
10. Russian Formalism. Dec. 2003. http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Formalism. Brief Wikipedia entry, with many links.
11. Russian Formalism. Karen A. McCauley. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/russian_formalism.html. Detailed account and bibliography.
12. Russian Formalism. http://martin.cnidc.net/russian.ppt. An extended slide show summarising salient features and terminology.
13. Prague School Structuralism. Lubomír Dolezel. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/prague_school_structuralism.html. History of the school and its main ideas.
14. The Prague Linguistic Circle. http://www.bohemica.com/plk/plchome.htm. Society homepage, with links.
15. Jakobson, Roman. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth. 1997.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/roman_jakobson.html. Brief account, with bibliography.
16. Semiotics for Beginners. Daniel Chandler. Jun. 2002. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html. A glossary of key terms, including note on Prague School.
17. Reminiscences by Pike on Early American Anthropological Linguistics. Ken Pike. May 2001. http://www.sil.org/silewp/2001/001/
SILEWP2001-001.html. Survey of key figures.
18. Bloomfield's "Meaningless" Science of Sounds. Spring 1998. http://kalin.jeffer.org/ba_thesis/korz2.html. Part of Univ. of Alberta PhD. thesis.
19. Noam Chomsky. Jan. 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky. Wikipedia entry: importance for linguistics, his criticism of Postmodernism, and his political activities, includes references and listings.
20. Universal Grammar in Prolog. Ray C. Dougherty. http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/ling.html. Computer modelling of Chomsky's concepts: has helpful diagrams.
21. Could Chomsky be Wrong? Timothy Mason. Feb. 2002. http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/LangTeach/CounterChomsky.htm. Summaries of alternative views and good listings.
22. The Anatomy of a Revolution in the Social Sciences: Chomsky in 1962. E. F. Konrad Koerner. Winter. 1994. http://www.tlg.uci.edu/%7Eopoudjis/Work/KK.html. The politics of linguistics.
23. Published Papers & Articles on Linguistics, Including Machine Translation, NLP, AI, TGG, etc. Alexander Gross. http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex.htm#tggchom. Articles critical of simplifications in Chomsky, etc.
24. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Daniel Chandler. 1994. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html. Introduction in terms of mould and cloak theories.
25. Regarding Benjamin Lee Whorf. Danny Alford. 1980. http://www.enformy.com/alford.htm#papers. Argues for a reexamination.
26. Schools of Linguistics by Geoffrey Sampson. Aug. 2001. http://www.mlc-wels.edu/czer/Sampson_review.htm. Review/summary of Sampson's 1980 book by Larry Czer.
27. There is No Language Instinct. Geoffrey Sampson. 2000. http://www.grsampson.net/ATin.html. Critique of Steven Pinker's arguments in 'The Language Instinct'.
28. We speak prosodies and we listen to them (J R Firth 1948). Nov. 2001. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rao1/Uppsala.script.pdf. Firthian application presented as Uppsala conference paper.
29. Sidney Lamb. Dec. 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_M._Lamb. Brief Wikipedia article.
30. Language and the Brain: Neurocognitive Linguistics. Rice University. Apr. 2002. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lngbrain/main.htm. Includes an interview with Sidney Lamb.
31. Sydney M. Lamb. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lamb/sketch.htm. Biography, bibliography and a few links.
32. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Janice E. Patten. 2003. http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html. Review/summary of first four chapters of the book.
33. Metaphors of Terror. George Lakoff. Sep. 2001. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911lakoff.html. President Bush and the framing of US response to September 11th attack.
34. Cognitive Linguistics and the Marxist approach to ideology. Peter E Jones. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/Jones/JonesAbs.html. Cognitive linguistics and a Marxist critique of ideologies.
35. Does Cognitive Linguistics live up to its name? Bert Peeters. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/
Peeters/Peeters.html. Review of current work in cognitive linguistics.
36. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy: Challenging Cognitive Semantics. Verena Haser.
http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/
lskortmann/abstract_haser.htm. Synopsis of thesis critically examining Lakoff and Johnson's ideas.
37. Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online. Tim Rohrer. May 2002. http://zakros.ucsd.edu/~trohrer/metaphor/metaphor.htm. Detailed articles and links.
38. George Lakoff: The Theory of Cognitive Models. Francis F. Steen. Apr. 1997. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Lakoff.html. Critical review of Lakoff's work.
39. Semantics Web Resources. Kai von Fintel. http://web.mit.edu/fintel/resources.html. Technical nature of current research.
40. Sounds of English. Sharon Widmayer and Holly Gray. Jul. 2002. http://www.soundsofenglish.org/. Useful handouts, illustrations and links for linguistics in action.
2. On history and historicity in modern linguistics: Formalism versus functionalism revisited. Robert de Beaugrande. 1997. http://www.beaugrande.bizland.com/History.htm. General but still somewhat technical paper in Functions of Language, 4/2, 1997, 169-213.
3. Boas, Franz. http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/B/Boas-F1ra.asp. Encyclopedia.com entry with brief listings.
4. Franz Boas. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
5. Leonard Bloomfield, Language And Linguistics, Biographies. http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/
B/BloomfldL.html. Brief AllRefer Encyclopedia entry.
6. Structuralism and Saussure. Mary Klages. 2001. http://www.colorado.edu/English/
ENGL2012Klages/saussure.html. Simple introduction.
7. Ferdinand de Saussure. Dec. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
8. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/ferdinand_de_saussure.html. Johns Hopkins Guide entry with links and bibliography.
9. Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure. Oct.1910. http://www.marxists.org/reference/
subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm. Excerpt from Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910-1911) Pergamon Press. 1993.
10. Russian Formalism. Dec. 2003. http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Formalism. Brief Wikipedia entry, with many links.
11. Russian Formalism. Karen A. McCauley. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/russian_formalism.html. Detailed account and bibliography.
12. Russian Formalism. http://martin.cnidc.net/russian.ppt. An extended slide show summarising salient features and terminology.
13. Prague School Structuralism. Lubomír Dolezel. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/prague_school_structuralism.html. History of the school and its main ideas.
14. The Prague Linguistic Circle. http://www.bohemica.com/plk/plchome.htm. Society homepage, with links.
15. Jakobson, Roman. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth. 1997.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/roman_jakobson.html. Brief account, with bibliography.
16. Semiotics for Beginners. Daniel Chandler. Jun. 2002. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html. A glossary of key terms, including note on Prague School.
17. Reminiscences by Pike on Early American Anthropological Linguistics. Ken Pike. May 2001. http://www.sil.org/silewp/2001/001/
SILEWP2001-001.html. Survey of key figures.
18. Bloomfield's "Meaningless" Science of Sounds. Spring 1998. http://kalin.jeffer.org/ba_thesis/korz2.html. Part of Univ. of Alberta PhD. thesis.
19. Noam Chomsky. Jan. 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky. Wikipedia entry: importance for linguistics, his criticism of Postmodernism, and his political activities, includes references and listings.
20. Universal Grammar in Prolog. Ray C. Dougherty. http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/ling.html. Computer modelling of Chomsky's concepts: has helpful diagrams.
21. Could Chomsky be Wrong? Timothy Mason. Feb. 2002. http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/LangTeach/CounterChomsky.htm. Summaries of alternative views and good listings.
22. The Anatomy of a Revolution in the Social Sciences: Chomsky in 1962. E. F. Konrad Koerner. Winter. 1994. http://www.tlg.uci.edu/%7Eopoudjis/Work/KK.html. The politics of linguistics.
23. Published Papers & Articles on Linguistics, Including Machine Translation, NLP, AI, TGG, etc. Alexander Gross. http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex.htm#tggchom. Articles critical of simplifications in Chomsky, etc.
24. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Daniel Chandler. 1994. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html. Introduction in terms of mould and cloak theories.
25. Regarding Benjamin Lee Whorf. Danny Alford. 1980. http://www.enformy.com/alford.htm#papers. Argues for a reexamination.
26. Schools of Linguistics by Geoffrey Sampson. Aug. 2001. http://www.mlc-wels.edu/czer/Sampson_review.htm. Review/summary of Sampson's 1980 book by Larry Czer.
27. There is No Language Instinct. Geoffrey Sampson. 2000. http://www.grsampson.net/ATin.html. Critique of Steven Pinker's arguments in 'The Language Instinct'.
28. We speak prosodies and we listen to them (J R Firth 1948). Nov. 2001. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rao1/Uppsala.script.pdf. Firthian application presented as Uppsala conference paper.
29. Sidney Lamb. Dec. 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_M._Lamb. Brief Wikipedia article.
30. Language and the Brain: Neurocognitive Linguistics. Rice University. Apr. 2002. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lngbrain/main.htm. Includes an interview with Sidney Lamb.
31. Sydney M. Lamb. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lamb/sketch.htm. Biography, bibliography and a few links.
32. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Janice E. Patten. 2003. http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html. Review/summary of first four chapters of the book.
33. Metaphors of Terror. George Lakoff. Sep. 2001. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911lakoff.html. President Bush and the framing of US response to September 11th attack.
34. Cognitive Linguistics and the Marxist approach to ideology. Peter E Jones. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/Jones/JonesAbs.html. Cognitive linguistics and a Marxist critique of ideologies.
35. Does Cognitive Linguistics live up to its name? Bert Peeters. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/
Peeters/Peeters.html. Review of current work in cognitive linguistics.
36. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy: Challenging Cognitive Semantics. Verena Haser.
http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/
lskortmann/abstract_haser.htm. Synopsis of thesis critically examining Lakoff and Johnson's ideas.
37. Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online. Tim Rohrer. May 2002. http://zakros.ucsd.edu/~trohrer/metaphor/metaphor.htm. Detailed articles and links.
38. George Lakoff: The Theory of Cognitive Models. Francis F. Steen. Apr. 1997. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Lakoff.html. Critical review of Lakoff's work.
39. Semantics Web Resources. Kai von Fintel. http://web.mit.edu/fintel/resources.html. Technical nature of current research.
40. Sounds of English. Sharon Widmayer and Holly Gray. Jul. 2002. http://www.soundsofenglish.org/. Useful handouts, illustrations and links for linguistics in action.
