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Columbia School
The Columbia School of Linguistics is a group of linguists with a radically functional and empirical conception of language. According to their school of thought, the main function of language is communication, and it is this fact that guides the formulation of grammatical hypotheses and constrains the form these hypotheses can take. Columbia School linguistic analyses typically are based on observable data, such as corpora (texts or recorded speech), not on introspective ad hoc sentence examples. Rather than a single theory of language, the Columbia School is a set of orientations in which scholars analyze actual speech acts in an attempt to explain why they take the forms they do. This was the methodology of its founder, the late William Diver, who taught linguistics at Columbia University until his retirement in 1989. Orientations On the one hand, this methodology is more modest in its goals than most other schools. On the other hand, the results produced are more reliabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Diver
William Diver (July 20, 1921 – August 31, 1995) was an American linguist. He was the founder of the Columbia School of Linguistics, which is named after Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in comparative Indo-European linguistics. Although his background lay mainly in the linguistics of ancient languages, his approach to linguistics was uniquely modern and scientific. His lectures were sprinkled with references to the history and the methodology of science. He believed that science is explanation, not description or prediction, and he compared the explanatory power of the Copernican astronomical system with the explanatory weakness of the epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, both of which had equal descriptive and predictive power. He also believed that the purpose of language was chiefly communication, and his linguistic analyses reflected that orientation, along with that of human psychology and physiology. In other words, those orientations helped him to explain wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It is a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world. Columbia was established by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mentalism (psychology)
In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes, for example: mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, as in cognitive psychology. The term ''mentalism'' has been used primarily by behaviorists who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal relationships to reflexes and operant responses or on the functions of behavior. Neither mentalism nor behaviorism are mutually exclusive fields; elements of one can be seen in the other, perhaps more so in modern times compared to the advent of psychology over a century ago. Classical mentalism Psychologist Allan Paivio used the term ''classical mentalism'' to refer to the introspective psychologies of Edward Titchener and William James. Despite Titchener being concerned with structure and James with function, both agreed that consciousness was the subject matter of psychology, making psychology an inherently subjective field. The rise of behav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Sign
In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when a symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Two major theories describe the way signs acquire the ability to transfer information. Both theories understand the defining property of the sign as a relation between a number of elements. In the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (referred to as semiology) the sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary (the principle of semiotic arbitrariness), motivated only by social convention. Saussure's theory has been particularly influential in the study o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gesamtbedeutung
''Gesamtbedeutung'' (German for "general meaning", {{IPA-de, ɡəˈzamtbəˌdɔʏtʊŋ), in linguistics, is the general meaning of the various uses of a morphological element. The Gesamtbedeutung of a language's past tense, for instance, might be conceived as "distance from the present". This meaning might later be generalized to refer to events both temporally distant (e.g. ''the box was empty'') as well as separated in terms of reality or likelihood (e.g. ''the box might be empty'', ''if the box were empty...'', ''the box could be empty'', etc.) In Japanese, for example, the tense system has been reduced to a system of "past", "non-past", and "probable", where the latter two tenses share the Gesamtbedeutung of abstraction from the real. The past tense refers to events which are complete and definite, whereas the non-past refers to virtually everything else, including present and future events. The probable tense functions in much the same way as the non-past, but with a stronge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Articulatory Phonology
Articulatory phonology is a linguistic theory originally proposed in 1986 by Catherine Browman of Haskins Laboratories and Louis Goldstein of University of Southern California and Haskins. The theory identifies theoretical discrepancies between phonetics and phonology and aims to unify the two by treating them as low- and high-dimensional descriptions of a single system. Unification can be achieved by incorporating into a single model the idea that the physical system (identified with phonetics) constrains the underlying abstract system (identified with phonology), making the units of control at the abstract planning level the same as those at the physical level. The plan of an utterance is formatted as a gestural score, which provides the input to a physically based model of speech production – the task dynamic model of Elliot Saltzman. The gestural score graphs locations within the vocal tract where constriction can occur, indicating the planned or target degree of constriction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Articulatory Gestures
Articulatory gestures are the actions necessary to enunciate language. Examples of articulatory gestures are the hand movements necessary to enunciate sign language and the mouth movements of speech. In semiotic terms, these are the physical embodiment (signifiers) of speech signs, which are gestural by nature (see below). The definition of ''gesture'' varies greatly, but here it will be taken in its widest sense, namely, any meaningful action. An intentional action is meaningful if it is not strictly utilitarian: for example, sending flowers to a friend is a gesture, because this action is performed not only for the purpose of moving flowers from one place to another, but also to express some sentiment or even a conventional message in the language of flowers. Use of the broadest definition of gesture (not restricted to hand movements) allows Hockett’s “rapid fading” design feature of human language to be accommodated as a type of sign in semiotic theory. But if an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Martinet
André Martinet (; Saint-Alban-des-Villards, 12 April 1908 – Châtenay-Malabry, 16 July 1999) was a French linguist, influential due to his work on structural linguistics. Life and work Martinet passed his ''agrégation'' in English and received his doctorate after submitting, as is traditional in France, two theses: ''La gémination consonantique d'origine expressive dans les langues germaniques'' and ''La phonologie du mot en danois''. From 1938 to 1946 he served as a director of studies of the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). After World War II he moved to New York City, where he would remain until 1955. In New York, he directed the International Auxiliary Language Association up to the end of 1948 and taught at Columbia University, where he served as chair of the department from 1947 to 1955. Also, he became editor of ''Word'', a linguistics journal. In 1955 he returned to his position at EPHE and took up a chair in general linguistics at the Sorbonne, and then ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinand De Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics and one of two major founders (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics, or ''semiology'', as Saussure called it. One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of "the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology and anthropology." Although they have undergone extension and critique over time, the dimensions of organization introduced by Saussure continue to inform contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of language. As Leonard Bloomfield stated after reviewing the ''Cours'': "he has given us the theoretical basis for a science of human s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Research Institutes
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences); semantics (meaning); morphology (structure of words); phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages); phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language); and pragmatics (how social contex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The building blocks of signs are specifications for movement, location, and handshape. At first, a separate terminology was used for the study of sign phonology ('chereme' instead of 'phoneme', etc.), but the concepts are now considered to apply universally to all human languages. Terminology The word 'phonology' (as in 'phonology of English') can refer either to the field of study or to the phonological system of a given language. This is one of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
