A Theory of Language and Information

ISBN-13: 9780198242246 / Angielski / Twarda / 1991 / 440 str.

Zellig Harris

Opis

Professor Harris presents a formal theory of language structure, in which syntax is characterized as an orderly system of departures from random combinations of sounds, words, and indeed of all elements of language. He argues that the combining of words into a sentence constitutes a mathematical object, and that each departure from equiprobability is a contribution both to the structure and to the meaning of a sentence. He discusses the differences in the structure and content of language, mathematics, and music, and shows that the use of language in a science constitutes a distinguishable sub-language. The structure of that sub-language organizes the information in the science and lies between the structure of language and that of mathematics. The syntactic theory developed here throws light upon the structuring of information and upon the nature and development of language, which the author shows to be a self-organizing and evolving system.

This is the magnum opus of Zellig Harris, one of the pre-eminent figures in linguistics of this century. This book is based on the theoretical framework which he has developed very successfully in his other books, but its scope is far more comprehensive than theirs. It differs from many other modern works on linguistics by offering an alternative to the current dominant school of thought, led by Noam Chomsky.

Recenzje

`interesting discussions on language as a self-organizing and evolving system with specific limits' Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

Spis treści

I Introduction: Overview; Method; II Theory of syntax: A theory of sentences; Language structure: The system created by the constraints; Metalinguistic apparatus within language; On the mathematics of language; III Grammatical analysis: Analysis of sentences; Analysis of the set of sentences; IV Subsets of sentences: Sentence sequences; Sublanguages; V Interpretation: Information; The nature and development of language; Index

O autorze

Professor Harris is one of the pre-eminent figures in linguistics this century. He was the most eminent exponent of Structuralism, which was the dominant paradigm in American linguistics before Chomsky. Professor Harris's best-known work Structural Linguistics (University of Chicago Press, 1951) is an enduring student text.