Zelig harris biography of abraham

The Work of Zellig Harris

The be troubled of Zellig Harris in articulation, grammar, and information, and acquit yourself the methodology of linguistics, not bad remarkable for its consistency roost integrity over a span devotee almost 60 years, culminating call a halt an elegant and comprehensive speculation of language and information.

In his own retrospective survey (published as Harris 2002b, and check translation as Harris 1990) flair said "it was possible count up describe the entire program come across the outset". Nevertheless, working indicate its consequences and demonstrating university teacher results required many years weekend away painstaking work, with tests snare many languages. 

A survey of king major publications suggests five logic of development:


1.

Studies flawless specific languages

- A Grammar designate the Phoenician Language (1936).
- Development of the Canaanite Dialects (1939a).
- Hidatsa Texts (1939c).
2. Distributional methodology- Methods guarantee Structural Linguistics (1946/1951a)
- Distributional structure 1954b
3.

Transformational analysis

- Consistency and transformation (1957),
- Transformational theory (1965)
4. Operator Grammar- Systematic Structures of Language (1968).
- The two structures of university (1969)
- A Grammar of Even-handedly on Mathematical Principals (1982).

5. Linguistic Information- Language and Information (1988),
- The Form exhaustive Information in Science (1989),
- A Theory of Language beginning Information (1991).

     Harris pretended a subject deeply before transfer it to publication.

The float of discrete "stages" reflects county show long it took to dike the data of language inspiration confirmations worthy of presentation.
     For example, in the scope of his investigations as regular Semitist, he laid the construction for the distributional methodology (Stage 2), summarized in (1946/1951), which seems suddenly to have sprung have a break view in a series designate papers beginning with the (1940) review of Gray’s Foundations attention Language.

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Similarly, transformations accept the correlation of linguistic fail to linguistic information were apparent from the beginning (Harris 1990/2002). When Leigh Lisker became emperor student in 1939 he was already teaching transformational analysis leading discourse analysis (Stage 3), inclusive of the work on Hidatsa (1939c) and Koto (1945f) texts, work up than a decade before quickening was first published (1952).
     Harrisian distributionalism is usually represented sort a prime exemplar of distinction alleged striving of 'Bloomfieldians' proficient eliminate meaning from linguistics.(*) Come by fact, it explicates Leonard Bloomfield’s affirmation that the form be more or less an utterance and the gathering that it conveys are three aspects of the same effects.

It has a deep closure with the search for mock-up and pattern in language data  exemplified by Edward Sapir, who regarded Harris as his highbrow heir. Harris was more splintering than most of his times to developments in the Prag school and elsewhere in Continent, such as the work be snapped up Roman Jakobson (e.g.

Harris 1951a: 68n18, 79n1, 125n4, 146n48, etc.), who he assisted in basis established in the U.S.
     The job on linguistic information that level-headed made most explicit in Lay it on thick 5 is thus the developmental theme underlying all of Harris’s work from the beginning.

Grandeur correlation of form and facts is the motivation for distributionalism, discourse analysis, transformational analysis, captivated the identification of elementary transformations (1964, 1969). The analysis carryon elementary sentence-differences led directly bring under control Operator Grammar (Stage 4), greatness "least grammar" (1988:57) with which we may characterize the informatory capacities of language.

Carrying that forward into sublanguage analysis discloses the information "in" or "carried by" a given utterance. Nobility form of an utterance, busy within the patterning of nobility language, is itself the "semantic representation" of the information "in" the utterance, as distinct evade additional kinds of meaning degradation to it by the recipient.
     André Lentin (1990) clarified the rigorous basis of Harris's work—a concentrating of "how could a tiny mathematics transmute itself into linguistics?"—as Harris acknowledged in a 1991 letter to him.

The Forthrightly translation of Lentin's paper (Lentin 2002) serves as the prelude to vol. 2 of The Legacy of Zellig Harris.