PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: linguistics
American linguist
Noam Chomsky is an American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through...
English scientist
Lancelot Thomas Hogben was an English zoologist, geneticist, medical statistician, and linguist, known especially for his many contributions to the study of social biology. Hogben’s birth was premature...
French author
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-born French psychoanalyst, critic, novelist, and educator, best known for her writings in structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and philosophical feminism....
American anthropologist and linguist
Joseph H. Greenberg was an American anthropologist and linguist specializing in African languages and in language universals. Greenberg was the first to present a unified classification of African languages....
American linguist
Roman Jakobson was a Russian born American linguist and Slavic-language scholar, a principal founder of the European movement in structural linguistics known as the Prague school. Jakobson extended the...
German linguist
Karl Brugmann was a German linguist who gained a position of preeminence in comparative Indo-European linguistics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of his comprehensive and still-authoritative...
British linguist
John R. Firth was a British linguist specializing in contextual theories of meaning and prosodic analysis. He was the originator of the “London school of linguistics.” After receiving an M.A. in history...
German linguist and ethnologist
Oswin Köhler was a German linguist and ethnologist specializing in African languages and culture. In 1962 Köhler was appointed to the first professorship of African studies at the University of Cologne,...
Danish linguist
Karl Verner was a linguist and formulator of Verner’s law, which provided convincing evidence of the regularity of sound change in the historical development of languages. His findings were a decisive...
American linguist
William Labov is an American linguist. After working for many years as an industrial chemist, Labov began graduate work in 1961, focusing on regional and class differences in English pronunciation on Martha’s...
American linguist
Mary R. Haas was a U.S. linguist. She studied with Edward Sapir at Yale University, where her dissertation was on Tunica, a moribund American Indian language. She continued her fieldwork on, and comparative...
German classical scholar
Gottfried Hermann was a German classical scholar who led a school contending that the emphasis in classical philology should be on linguistic, rather than historico-antiquarian, research. His entire professional...
Canadian-American psychologist
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-born American psychologist who advocates evolutionary explanations for the functions of the brain and thus for language and behaviour. Pinker was raised in a largely Jewish...
American linguist
Kenneth L. Pike was an American linguist and anthropologist known for his studies of the aboriginal languages of Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, New Guinea, Java, Ghana, Nigeria, Australia, Nepal, and...
Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century. While still...
Russian philosopher and literary critic
Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian literary theorist and philosopher of language whose wide-ranging ideas significantly influenced Western thinking in cultural history, linguistics, literary theory, and aesthetics....
British language scholar
Archibald H. Sayce was a British language scholar whose many valuable contributions to ancient Middle Eastern linguistic research included the first grammar in English of Assyrian. During his lifetime...
American linguist
Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist whose book Language (1933) was one of the most important general treatments of linguistic science in the first half of the 20th century and almost alone determined...
Austrian linguist
Friedrich Müller was an Austrian linguist who worked on many different languages and language families; he is often cited for his contributions to the study and classification of African languages. Among...
American linguist
Mario Pei was an Italian-born American linguist whose many works helped to provide the general public with a popular understanding of linguistics and philology. Pei immigrated to the United States with...
American linguist
Sydney M. Lamb is an American linguist and originator of stratificational grammar, an outgrowth of glossematics theory. (Glossematics theory is based on glossemes, the smallest meaningful units of a language.)...
Polish linguist
Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay was a linguist who regarded language sounds as structural entities, rather than mere physical phenomena, and thus anticipated the modern linguistic concern with language...
Danish linguist
Holger Pedersen was a Danish linguist of exceptional accomplishment, especially in comparative Celtic grammar. After receiving his doctorate in 1897, Pedersen proceeded, as professor at the University...
British philosopher
J.L. Austin was a British philosopher best known for his individualistic analysis of human thought derived from detailed study of ordinary language. After receiving early education at Shrewsbury School...
British linguist
Michael Halliday was a British linguist, teacher, and proponent of neo-Firthian theory who viewed language basically as a social phenomenon. Halliday obtained a B.A. in Chinese language and literature...
German linguist
Eduard Hermann was a German linguist who specialized in comparative studies of Indo-European languages and whose exhaustive linguistic exegesis of passages from Homer is a model of its kind: Sprachwissenschaftlicher...
American literary critic
George Steiner was an influential French-born American literary critic who studied the relationship between literature and society, particularly in light of modern history. His writings on language and...
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