Ling 403
Foundations of
Linguistics
Spring 2008
Suzanne Kemmer
Course schedule
Course readings
Selected
bibliography
Thumbnail biographies
Tentative course readings
- Hermann Osthoff and Karl Brugmann. 1878 [mod. edition
1967]. Preface to Morphological Investigations in the Sphere of the
Indo-European Languages, Vol. I. In Winfred P. Lehmann, ed. and
transl., A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Historical Indo-European
Linguistics, pp. 197-209. (Indiana University Studies in the
History and Theory of Linguistics.) Bloomington and London: Indiana
University Press.
- Ferdinand de Saussure, 1916. Excerpts from Course in
General Linguistics, ed. by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in
collaboration with Albert Reidlinger. Translated from the French by
Wade Baskin, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.
Another, probably better, translation is by Roy
Harris, published 1986, Peru, Ill.: Open Court. We will read the
Baskin translation just because it is the one that the majority of the
current generation of professional linguists has read, including me. But I can
provide the text of the Harris translation as well.
- Franz Boas. 1911. Introduction to the Handbook of American
Indian languages. Vol. 1, no. 1. Originally published: Washington
DC: Government Printing Office, 1911-1922. (Bulletin, Smithsonian
Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology 40). Reprinted 1966 (along
with another classic work on American Indian languages by J.W. Powell)
in a volume edited by Preston Holder. Lincoln and London: University
of Nebraska Press. Paperback edition 1991.
- Edward Sapir. 1921. Chapters 1-5, Language, an Introduction
to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
- Leonard Bloomfield. 1933. Chapters 2 and 3 excerpted from
Language, 2nd edition. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Extensive
revision of the first edition of 1914, An Introduction to the Study
of Language. A new edition reprinting the original 1914 text, with
Introduction by Joseph Kess, is published in the Amsterdam Studies in
the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series II, Classics in
Psycholinguistics, v. 3. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1983. We will discuss the
1933 revision; but I passed out the corresponding material from
Bloomfield (1914) so that you can observe the differences,
specifically the change from a Wundtian, mentalist, perspective to a behaviorist one.
- Benjamin Lee Whorf. 1956. Language, Thought and Reality. Selected
Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. by John B. Carroll. Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press.
Selections: A Linguistic Consideration of
Thinking in Primitive Communities, pp. 65-86, and Grammatical
Categories, 87-101.
- Charles Hockett. 1958-59. Logical Considerations in the Study of
Animal Communication. In Hockett, Charles, 1977, The View from Language:
Selected Essays 1948-1974, 124-162. Athens, GA: University of
Georgia Press.
(Other versions of this material: 1) Final chapter of Charles
Hockett, 1958. Excerpt from A Course in Modern Linguistics.
New York: Macmillan. 2) Scientific American article, 1960, see Biblio.
- Joseph Greenberg. Synchrony, diachrony, and language universals.
Reference to Feature Hierarchies. (Janua
Linguarum Series Minor, nr. 59.) The Hague: Mouton (or another article).
- (possibly) Zellig Harris.
- Noam Chomsky, 1957. Excerpt from Syntactic Structures.
(Janua Linguarum series minor 4). Den Haag: Mouton.
- Noam Chomsky, 1965. Chapters 1 and 2, Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
© 2006-2008 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 17 Nov 07
