Tista Bagchi (born ), Professor of
Linguistics
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. Linguis ...
in the
University of Delhi
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...
, is a distinguished Indian
linguist
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. Linguis ...
and
ethicist An ethicist is one whose judgment on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific community, and (importantly) is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgment. Following the advice of ...
. Bagchi trained in
Sanskrit College
The Sanskrit College and University (erstwhile Sanskrit College) is a state university located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It focuses on liberal arts, offering both UG and PG degrees in Ancient Indian and world history, Bengali, English, Sa ...
,
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...
, the
University of Delhi
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...
, and the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, from where she obtained her PhD in
Linguistics
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. Linguis ...
, her work spans issues of
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
and
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
in
languages
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
in general and
South Asian languages
South Asia is home to several hundred languages, spanning the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. It is home to the third most spoken language in the world, Hindi–Urdu; and the sixth mo ...
in particular, questions of ethics in the application of
medical technology
Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of liv ...
and
social interaction
A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
, and
translations
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
of
iconic texts in
Bangla literature and
comparative philology
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Genetic relatedness i ...
. Bagchi has also been active in the area of
cognitive sciences with special interests in the relationships amongst
sentence structure
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
,
computation
Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm).
Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An es ...
,
linguistic
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. Linguis ...
meaning, and human
cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
. Bagchi was the Robert F. & Margaret S. Goheen Fellow for the academic year 2001–2002 at the
National Humanities Center The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency. The center was planned under the auspi ...
, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and a scientist under the
CSIR Mobility Scheme at the
National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies, New Delhi, for two years during 2010–2012.
Bagchi is the eldest daughter of economist
Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Amiya Kumar Bagchi (born 1936) is an Indian political economist.
Biography
His academic career began when he started teaching in Presidency College, Kolkata. In the 1960s, he taught in the Faculty of Economics in Cambridge (where he was Fello ...
and
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
critic and activist
Jasodhara Bagchi.
Books
*''Languages of India'': Annotated translation of Gopal Haldar, Bharater Bhasha
n Bengali
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''.
History
...
New Delhi: National Book Trust. (2000)
*''English Syntax'': Introductory textbook-cum-manual for the M. A. English course (Language Stream) of the Indira Gandhi National Open University. New Delhi: School of Humanities, IGNOU. (2000)
*''Proceedings of the International Seminar on Construction of Knowledge held at Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur, 16–18 April 2004'', jointly edited with R. K. Agnihotri, Vidya Bhavan Society, Udaipur (2005)
*''Jnaan ka Nirmaan'' (in Hindi: ''Construction of Knowledge'': translation of co-edited 2005 volume with R. K. Agnihotri, tr. Sushila Joshi), Vidya Bhavan Society, Udaipur. (2007)
*''The Sentence in Language and Cognition'', Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. (2007)
*''Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar: In Honor of Jerry Sadock'', jointly edited with Etsuyo Yuasa, and Katharine P. Beals. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (2011)
Journal articles and articles published in edited volumes
*Control, reflexives, and automodularity in Bangla imperfective participial complements. In Katharine P. Beals et al., eds. (1993) CLS 29, vol. 1: The Main Session, 17–32. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
*Bangla correlative pronouns, relative clause order, and D-linking. In
Miriam Butt
Miriam Butt is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics (Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft) at the University of Konstanz. She is best known for her theoretical linguistic work on complex predicates and on grammatical case, and fo ...
,
Tracy Holloway King, and
Gillian Ramchand, eds. (1994) ''Theoretical Perspectives on Word Order in South Asian Languages'', 1329 Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).
*Bengali writing. In Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds. (1996) ''The World's Writing Systems'', pp. 399–403. New York: Oxford University Press.
*Generic sentences, social kinds, and stereotypes. In Rajeev Bhargava et al., eds. (1999) ''Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy'', pp. 308–322. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
*Romany language. In ''The Students’ Britannica-India'' (2000), vol. iv, pp. 307–308. New Delhi: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
*Turing's 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' revisited: cognition from a linguistic perspective. In J. R. Isaac and Karuna Batra, eds. (2000) ''Cognitive Systems: Reviews and Previews'', pp. 728–733. New Delhi: NIIT-Phoenix.
*Linguistic methods and minority languages in India. In Sujata Patel et al., eds. (2002) ''Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner''. New Delhi: Sage.
*Causation and tense in subordinate clauses: conjunctive participles and conditionals in Bangla and Hindi. In Salikoko S. Mufwene, Elaine J. Francis, and Rebecca S. Wheeler, eds. (2005) ''Polymorphous Linguistics: Jim McCawley’s Legacy'', pp. 109–134. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
*Morally right action under silence and disempowerment. In ''XXIst World Philosophy Conference Proceedings, vol. 9: Philosophical Anthropology'', ed. (2006) Stephen Voss, pp. 161 –166. Istanbul: International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) and Turkish Philosophical Society.
*On theta role assignment by feature checking. In ''Linguistik Aktuell 108: Argument Structure'', eds. (2007) Eric Reuland, Tanmoy Bhattacharya, and Giorgos Spathas, pp. 159–173. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
*“Biological”. Translation of Narendranath Mitra, “jaiba”, in Jasodhara Bagchi,
Subhoranjan Dasgupta, and Subhasree Ganguly, eds. (2009) ''The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India'', vol. II. Kolkata: Stree Publications.
*The signing system of Mudra in traditional Indian dance. ''Paragrana: Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie'',(2010) Band 19.1: pp. 259–266.
*Review of John Peterson (2011) ''A Grammar of Kharia (Leiden:Brill). Himalayan Linguistics'' 11.1 (online), https://web.archive.org/web/20140512220431/http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/reviews/2012/HL1101_RA.pdf
*Regulation of human reproduction-related technologies in India. In ''India Science and Technology'', vol. 2, eds. (2013) NISTADS Editorial Team, pp. 243–245. New Delhi: Foundation Books (Cambridge University Press, India) and CSIR-NISTADS.
*Sign language and signing in the traditions of performance in India. Forthcoming in ''People’s Linguistic Survey of India (Chief Editor: Ganesh N. Devy): Indian Sign Language(s)'', eds. (2014) Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Nisha Grover, and Surinder P. K. Randhawa, 118–127. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Membership in learned bodies and committees
* Member,
Chicago Linguistic Society, 1988–1993.
* Member, Student-Faculty Liaison Committee, Department of Linguistics,
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, 1992–1993.
* Member, Faculty of Arts,
University of Delhi
Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...
, 1994–1997 and 2000–2001.
* Member,
Linguistic Society of America
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...
, since 2000.
* International Associate Member,
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly ...
, since 2002.
* Overseas Associate Member,
Forum for European Philosophy
The Forum for Philosophy (previously, the Forum for European Philosophy, 1996–2018), founded in 1996, is a nonprofit philosophical organization whose purpose is to promote philosophy. The Forum is not aligned with any particular school of philo ...
, 2002–2006.
* Member,
Society for Applied Philosophy
The Society for Applied Philosophy is a philosophical organization founded in 1982 by Brenda Almond. The purpose of the organization is promoting study and research in philosophy in areas with real-world applications, and work that is intended to ...
, United Kingdom, 2005–2007.
* Nominated Member,
Indian Council for Social Science Research, 2005–2008.
* Member-Representative for the
ICSSR
The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) is the national body overseeing research in the social sciences in India. It was established in New Delhi in 1969.
Council
The Council is currently chaired by Bhushan Patwardhan. Current ...
,
Indian Council for Philosophical Research, 2006–2008.
* Member, Academic Council,
The English & Foreign Languages University, 2008–2009.
* Member, Academic Council, Central Sikkim University, 2008–2011.
* Member, Technical Advisory Committee of the Social Sciences Division,
Indian Statistical Institute
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...
, 2012–2014.
* Member, Advisory Committee, Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences,
University of Hyderabad
The University of Hyderabad (IAST: ''Hydarāvād visvavidyālayamu'') is a top ranking public central research university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
Founded in 1974, this mostly residential campus has more than 5,000 students a ...
, 2013–2014.
References
External links
Sikkimuniversity.ac.inLinguistlist.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bagchi, Tista
Living people
1964 births
20th-century Indian linguists
Academic staff of Delhi University
Indian women linguists
Bengali scientists
Indian women science writers
Indian social sciences writers
English-language writers from India
Women writers from Delhi
21st-century Indian linguists
20th-century Indian women writers
20th-century Indian writers
21st-century Indian women writers
21st-century Indian writers
Women educators from Delhi