scholarly journals SCIENTIFIC LINGUISTICS, A NEVER-ENDING HISTORY

Author(s):  
Jacques COULARDEAU ◽  

1866 was a turning point in scientific linguistics when the Linguistic Society of Paris banned all papers and presentations on the origin of language. De Saussure locked up the debate with two concepts, diachrony and synchrony. I intend to examine the emergence of the hypothesis of a single origin of human articulated languages, in Africa first, and then Black Africa. The phylogenic approach of biological studies has today spread to linguistics. Sally McBrearty rejected the idea of a Neolithic revolution. Consequently, Black Africa became a major field of archaeological research. Yuval Noah Harari stating the existence of a symbolic revolution around 70,000 years ago, rejected Black Africa along with the Americas, and the Denisovans. Asia has become a major archaeological field. Julien d’Huy implements phylogenetic arborescent technique to the study of myths. The oldest form of a myth is not the origin of it. In oral civlizations some literate individual had to tell the story behind representations for the people to understand, appreciate, and remember them. I will then consider structural linguistics (Noam Chomsky & Universal Grammar). UG has never been able to develop semantics within its own system (Generative Semantics & George Lakoff). Science is always a temporarily approximate vision of what it considers. First, what any science explores is constantly evolving following phylogenic dynamics that are contained in the very objects of such scientific studies. Second, any new knowledge appearing in the field concerned causes a complete restructuration of what we knew before.

Author(s):  
Jim Tomlinson

This introduction outlines how the idea of a national economy subject to governmental management was constructed in Britain out of the dissolution of the unmanaged economy of the pre-1914 era. It argues that a key turning point came in 1931 with the departure from the gold standard and the introduction of protection. But, it is argued, it was only from the 1940s that national economic management was combined with ‘managing the people’, through major efforts to shape public opinion on the economy. This chapter also summarizes the development of the major kinds of economic statistics which underpinned both facets of economic management.


2014 ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binoy Barman

Noam Chomsky, one of the most famous linguists of the twentieth century, based his linguistic works on certain philosophical doctrines. His main contribution to linguistics is Transformational Generative Grammar, which is founded on mentalist philosophy. He opposes the behaviourist psychology in favour of innatism for explaining the acquisition of language. He claims that it becomes possible for human child to learn a language for the linguistic faculty with which the child is born, and that the use of language for an adult is mostly a mental exercise. His ideas brought about a revolution in linguistics, dubbed as Chomskyan Revolution. According to him, the part of language which is innate to human being would be called Universal Grammar. His philosophy holds a strong propensity to rationalism in search of a cognitive foundation. His theory is a continuation of analytic philosophy, which puts language in the centre of philosophical investigation. He would also be identified as an essentialist. This paper considers various aspects of Chomsky’s linguistic philosophy with necessary elaborations.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pp.v51i1-2.17681


M/C Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Wilhelmsson

Editors' Preface When Ulf Wilhelmsson first contacted us about including his "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in the M/C 'chat' issue, we were initially taken aback. True, the notion of chat surely must include that of 'dialogue', but Wilhelmsson's idea, as he put it to us, was that of a Socratic dialogue about film. The dialogue "Film och Filosofi" already existed in Swedish, but he had done an initial rough translation of the dialogue on his Website. Since Wilhelmsson put this to us in the very early days of the submission period, we decided to have a look. Wilhelmsson had omitted to mention the fact that his dialogue was amusing as well as informative. Playing Socrates was ... Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino was not just discussing film, but he was moderating a hefty grab-bag of influential philosphers, film-makers, film-scholars and the odd Beatle (John Lennon). Furthermore, creeping in to many of the utterances in the discussion was Wilhelmsson's take on Tarantino's vernacular -- keep an eye out for "Bada boom bada boom, get it?" and "Oh Sartre. Dude, I would also like to provide a similar example". The philosphers sometimes also get a chance to break out of their linguistic bonds, such as Herakleit, who tells us that "War is the primogenitor of the whole shebang". Occasionally, Wilhelmsson lets his conversants get rowdy (St Thomas of Aquinas and Aristotle yell "Tabula Rasa!" in unison), put on accents (Michel Chion with French accent: "Merci merci. Je vous en pris that you are recognising tse sound"), be "dead sure of themselves" (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; Noam Chomsky thanks us for our attention) and wander in and out of the dialogue's virtual space (at the end, Immanuel Kant returns to us after his daily walk around town). Unfortunately, due to its length, the dialogue can not be supplied in regular M/C 'bits', and so we have made it available as a downloadable Rich Text Format file. Felicity Meakins & E. Sean Rintel -- M/C 'chat' co-editors Download "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy" in Rich Text Format: Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php>. Chicago style: Ulf Wilhelmsson, "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ulf Wilhelmsson. (2000) Dialogue on Film and Philosophy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/dialogue.php> ([your date of access]).


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Berlinski ◽  
Juan Uriagereka

Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s famous 1977 letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik assumed that case is obligatory. As Juan Uriagereka and David Berlinski argue, Vergnaud’s case filter was a vindication of the principles and parameters approach to language. Case is an aspect of Universal Grammar itself.


Author(s):  
Kevin Begos

In 1970, Nobel Prize winner William Shockley made a dramatic declaration: that the average IQs of black people were significantly lower than those of whites, and that blacks of low intelligence should be paid by society to be sterilized. Shockley's Nobel was for work he conducted at Bell Telephone Labs that contributed to the discovery of the transistor. He was not an expert in genetics, biology, sociology, or anything to do with the human mind, behavior, or reproduction. Yet he was able to use his status as a “Nobel laureate” to get vast amounts of media coverage for his sterilization plan. Why did journalists give Shockley so much ink? Would they—or their editors—send a troubled child who needed help to a TV repair shop, or send a broken computer to the office of a psychologist at Harvard University? Why, then, would they quote a physicist like Shockley when writing about race and intelligence? The subject of the biology and genetics of behavior raises many questions like these. It is a fascinating field to write about, but it will take you into some pretty tricky terrain. You'll often find yourself (and your sources) moving back and forth across two vastly different scientific domains—the laboratory, which has traditionally been based on chemistry, biology, and experiments that can be duplicated and proven, and theoretical science, which aims to uncover and explain broad concepts about life. The people you encounter will have specific areas of expertise, but some may (consciously or not) attempt to make grand statements about how a particular idea or discovery may affect humanity. This is a huge, complicated, controversial subject just waiting to suck journalists into its hungry maw, from which it will spit us out in little pieces. Okay, I'm exaggerating (a little). But it can be overwhelming to figure out even how to begin. There's Darwin and cell biology, psychology, sociology, religion, and politics. There are historical figures such as B. F. Skinner and current stars such as Noam Chomsky at MIT and Harvard's E. O. Wilson and Steven Pinker. And there's the whole issue of racism at the edges.


2021 ◽  
pp. 301-362
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris

This chapter revisits the major linguists of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute (except Noam Chomsky, who fittingly gets his own chapter): Robin Lakoff, George Lakoff, Haj Ross, Paul Postal, and Jim McCawley, noting both their contributions and their post-dispute trajectories. It also charts out two broad legacies of the Generative Semantics movement: a number of technical proposals that arose in that framework which found themselves in other formal linguistic models, prominently including those associated with Chomsky; and the general “Greening of Linguistics”: a range of functional, cognitive, and usage-based approaches whose origins trace to the Generative Semanticists’ rejection of defining Chomskyan values.


1947 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 170-174
Author(s):  
Karl Keller-Tarnuzzer

Although Switzerland and its population had the good fortune to be spared from the second as from the first world war, it was not possible to continue archaeological research from 1939–1945 on a peace-time footing. The mobilisation of the people for guarding the frontiers, the closing of the foreign markets and the drive for greater production absorbed so many men and women, that cultural pursuits had of necessity to be curtailed. Foremost in the efforts to maintain a certain level of research were the Swiss Prehistoric Society and the Swiss National Museum, but in this work they were assisted by local museums of all grades.


1993 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 122-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chryssoula Saatsoglou-Paliadeli

A judicious combination of literary sources and archaeological research has often offered rewarding historical insights. In Macedonian studies such attempts have tended to be less fruitful, due to the scanty nature of the material and literary evidence. Now that archaeological investigation has expanded so widely in Northern Greece, it may be time to reassess aspects of Macedonian culture which have in the past been tackled with more enthusiasm than actual evidence, not surprisingly in view of the age-long interest in the people who shaped the Hellenistic world.


1952 ◽  
Vol 8 (21) ◽  
pp. 170-192 ◽  

George Kon came to British science from an unusual background. He was born in St Petersburg on 18 February 1892, the only child of his parents. His father was a cultured and talented member of an old Polish-Jewish family, an excellent mathematician and linguist and the son of a portrait painter; his mother, Marie Fleuret, was French. His father was a banker in a responsible position, and the family was comfortably off. George was a delicate child and was brought up with great care and devotion by his mother and an old nurse. In the candid and penetrating autobiographical notes which he left, he remarks ruefully, ‘It is clear that I was unnecessarily coddled and spoilt and this was to prove a handicap in later life’. He was educated privately by a succession of instructors; a French governess, two Polish tutors (one, Adolf Dygasinski, an author of some note, who gave him a love for natural history) and a German governess. When he was ten, the family moved to Tientsin in North China where his father had become manager of the Russo-Chinese Bank. He spent three happy years in China where his liking for natural history developed into a passion for butterfly collecting. He published two short notes in the Entomologische Zeitschrift between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. In Tientsin he first came into contact with the people whose nationality he was to adopt and was taught English by a ‘worthy though hideous’ lady, the daughter of a missionary. A later move was to Vladivostok, ‘magnificent country for shooting and ideal for butterfly-collecting’, and here the family made friends with Sir Robert Hodgson, then British Vice-Consul. The first turning point in Ron’s life came when Hodgson persuaded his parents to send him to Cambridge. Accordingly, in 1909, he passed the Russian equivalent of Matriculation and, after some coaching in Greek at a rectory near Wisbech, he went up to Caius to read medicine.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
José Eduardo Calvario Parra ◽  
Rolando Enríque Díaz Caravantes

Introducción: La experiencia migratoria tanto interna como internacional está compuesta por un conjunto de situaciones de peligros y riesgos que ponen en jaque la integridad física y emocional de las personas. El objetivo de este artículo es documentar las experiencias de los/as migrantes ante altas temperaturas y su salud tanto de quienes se dirigen de México o Centroamérica hacia los Estados Unidos de América como los que se desplazan al interior de México rumbo a los campos agrícolas del noroeste.Método: Este trabajo se basa en un estudio de corte cualitativo por medio de entrevistas semiestructuradas sobre el riesgo climático y la salud en migrantes internacionales e internos en la frontera norte de México, particularmente en el estado de Sonora.Resultados: La migración es un punto de inflexión en la vida de las personas entrevistadas. Existe una asocación cualitativa entre la masculinidad y el hecho de emigrar; la noción de proveduria e idea de la aventura son cruciales para entender el proceso migratorio. El afrontar distintos peligros como la violencia y los factores medioambientales generan daños físicos y emocionales.Discusión y/o Conclusión: Existe un proceso de relativización del riesgo climático, en este caso, la minimización de los daños en la salud por las altas temperaturas. La idea de la autosuficiencia e independencia es parte de las identidades de género en los varones migrantes entrevistados. Introduction: The migrational experience, both internal and international is composed by a combination of hazardous and risk situations that threaten the physical and emotional integrity of individuals. The goal of this article is to document the experiences and the health of migrants facing high temperatures when heading from Mexico or Central America towards the United States of America, as well as those that transit through the interior of Mexico towards the agricultural fields of the Northwest.Method: These findings are based on a qualitative method study that used semistructured interviews that delve into weather and health risks in international and internal migrants on the Mexican northern border, particularly in the state of Sonora.Results: Migration is a turning point in the lives of the people interviewed. There exists a qualitative association between masculinity and the act of migrating; the notion of being a provider and the idea of adventure are crucial for understanding the migrational process. Facing different hazards like violence and environmental factors generates physical and emotional damage.Conclusion: There exists a relativization process of weather risks, on this case, the minimization of the damage to health due to high temperatures. The idea of selfsufficiency and independence is part of the gender identities of the migrant males interviewed.


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