The work of zellig harris on meaning and information
Bruce E. Nevin | Bolt Beranek & Newman/University of Pennsylvania
Zellig S. Harris (1909–1992) is a familiar icon of American structuralism. According to received views of the history of linguistics in the 20th century, he is an exemplar of ‘taxonomic linguistics’ seeking practical discovery procedures whereby one could mechanically derive a grammar from distributional analysis of a corpus of utterances without reference to meaning, and a proponent of empiricist and behaviorist views that have been overthrown by the revolution of Generative linguistics. An examination of what he actually wrote, however, shows a lifelong concern with the analysis and representation of meaning. Harris’ approach to the evaluation of alternative tools of analysis, alternative grammars, and alternative theories of language arises from a crucial but little acknowledged dilemma of linguistics grounded in a fundamental property of language, namely, that it contains within itself virtually unrestricted metalinguistic capacities, upon which any description of language whatever either directly or indirectly depends.
1967 “Cybernetic Explanation”. American Behavioral Scientist 10:8.29–32. (Repr. in Bateson 1972:399–410.)
Bateson, Gregory
1968 “Redundancy and Coding”. Chap 22 in Animal Communication: Techniques of study and results of research ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. (Repr. in Bateson 1972:411–425.)
Bateson, Gregory
1972Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bateson, Gregory
1979Mind and Nature: A necessary unity. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Bloomfield, Leonard
1927a “On Recent Work in General Linguistics”. Modern Philology 251:211–230. (Repr. in Bloomfield 1970:173–190.)
Bloomfield, Leonard
1927bReview of Jespersen, Philosophy of Grammar (London: Allen & Unwin 1924) Journal of English and Germanic Philology 261. 444–446.
Bloomfield, Leonard
1933Language. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Bloomfield, Leonard
1939Linguistic Aspects of Science. (=International Encyclopedia of Unified Science 1:4.) Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. (9th impression 1965.)
Bloomfield, Leonard
1942 “Philosophical Aspects of Language”. Studies in the History of Culture: The disciplines of the humanities, 173–177. Menash, Wis.: George Banta. (Repr. in Bloomfield 1970:400–405.)
Bloomfield, Leonard
1943 “Meaning”. Monatshefte für Deutschen Unterricht 351.101–106. (Repr. in Bloomfield 1970:400–405.)
Bloomfield, Leonard
1970A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Ed. by Charles F. Hockett. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
Borel, Emile
1928Leçons sur la théorie des fonctions. 3e ed. Paris: Gauthier-Villars & Cie.
Bruner, Jerome S[eymour]
1983Child’s Talk: Learning to use language. With the assistance of Rita Watson. New York: W. W. Norton.
Campbell, Jeremy
1982Grammatical Man: Information, entropy, language and life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Chomsky, Noam
1956 “Three Models for the Description of Language”. IRE Transactions on Information Theory vol.IT, No.3, 113–124. Cambridge, Mass.: Inst. of Radio Engineers, M.I.T.
Chomsky, Noam
1957Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, Noam
1971 “Onward and Upward with the Arts: John is easy to please”. The New Yorker8May 1971, 44–87. [Interview with Noam Chomsky by Ved Mehta.]
Chomsky, Noam
1975a [1955–56]The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York: Plenum Press.
Chomsky, Noam
1975b “Questions of Form and Interpretation”. The Scope of American Linguistics ed. by Robert Austerlitz, 159–106. Lisse/The Netherlands: Peter de Ridder Press. (Repr. in Essays on Form and Interpretation, 25–59, New York: Elsevier-North Holland 1977.)
Chomsky, Noam
1992A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory. (= MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 1.) Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Linguistics & Philosophy, M.I.T..
Diderichsen, Paul
1958 “The Importance of Distribution versus Other Criteria in Linguistic Analysis”. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists ed. by Eva Sivertsenet al., 156–182. Oslo: Univ. of Oslo Press.
Fodor, Jerrold A.
1980 “Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology”. Published in J. A. Fodor, Re-Presentations, 225–253. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1981.
Gibson, James J.
1982Reasons for Realism: Selected essays of J. J. Gibson. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Grishman, Ralph & Richard Kittredge
eds.1986Analyzing Language in Restricted Domains: Sublanguage description and processing. Ibid.
1941Review of N. S. Trubetzkoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie (Prague, 1939). Language 171.345–349. (Repr. in Harris 1970:706–711.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1946 “From Morpheme to Utterance”. Language 22.3:161–183. (Repr. in Harris 1981:45–70.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1951aMethods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Harris, Zellig S.
1951bReview of Sapir (1949). Language 27.3:288–333. (Repr. in Harris 1970:712–764, and in Edward Sapir: Appraisals of his life and work ed. by Konrad Koerner, 69–114. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1984.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1952a “Discourse Analysis”. Language 281.1–30. (Repr. in Harris 1970:313–348.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1952b “Discourse Analysis: A sample text”. Language 281:474–494. (Repr. in Harris 1970:349–372.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1952c “Culture and Style in Extended Discourse”. Indian Tribes of Aboriginal America: Proceedings of the 29th International Congress of Americanists ed. by Sol Tax, 210–215. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Harris, Zellig S.
1954 “Distributional Structure”. Word 10:2–3.146–162. (Repr. in Harris 1981:3–22.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1955 “From Phoneme to Morpheme”. Language 31:2.190–222. (Repr. in Harris 1970:32–67.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1956Introduction to Transformations. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 2.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania Linguistics Department. (Repr. in Harris 1970:383–389.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1957 “Co-Occurrence and Transformation”. Language 331.283–340. (Repr. in Harris 1970:390–457.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1959Computable Syntactic Analysis: The 1959 computer sentence-analyzer. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 15.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania. (Excerpted in Harris 1970:253–277.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1961Strings and Transformations in Language Description. (= Papers on Formal Linguistics, 1.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Harris, Zellig S.
1962String Analysis of Language Structure. The Hague: Mouton.
Harris, Zellig S.
1963Immediate-Constituent Formulation of English Syntax. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 45.) Ibid. (Repr. in Harris 1970:131–138.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1965 “Transformational Theory”. Language 411.363–401. (Repr. in Harris 1970:533–577.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1966 “Algebraic Operations in Linguistic Structure”. Paper read to the International Congress of Mathematicians, Moscow 1966. (Published in Harris 1970:603–611.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1967Morpheme Boundaries within Words: Report on a computer test. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 73.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania. (Repr. in Harris 1970:68–77.)
Harris, Zellig S.
1968Mathematical Structures of Language. (= Interscience Tracts in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 21.) New York: Interscience Publishers John Wiley & Sons.
Harris, Zellig S.
1970Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Harris, Zellig S.
1981Papers on Syntax. Edited by Henry Hiz. Ibid.
Harris, Zellig S.
1982aA Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Harris, Zellig S.
1982b “Discourse and Sublanguage”. Kittredge & Lehrberger 1982: 231–236).
Harris, Zellig S.
1988Language and Information. (= Bampton Lectures in America Delivered at Columbia University, 28.) New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Harris, Zellig S.
1991A Theory of Language and Information: A mathematical approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harris, Zellig S., Michael Gottfried, Thomas Ryckman, Paul Mattick, Jr., Anne Daladier, Tzvee N. Harris & Suzanna Harris
1989The Form of Information in Science: Analysis of an immunology sublanguage. Preface by Hilary Putnam. (= Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 104.) Boston: Kluwer.
Hockett, Charles F.
1947 “Problems of Morphemic Analysis”. Language 231. 321–343. (Repr. in Joos 1957:229–242.)
Hockett, Charles F.
1952 “A Formal Statement of Morphemic Analysis”. Studies in Linguistics 101.27–39.
Huck, Geoffrey & John A. Goldsmith
1993 “Gaps in the Paradigm”. (= Contemporary Linguistics, 1.) Chicago: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Chicago.
Hymes, Dell & John Fought
1981American Structuralism. The Hague: Mouton.
Joos, Martin
1957Readings in Linguistics: The development of descriptive linguistics in America since 1925. Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies. (4th ed., Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press 1966.)
Joshi, Aravind K.
1965String Representation of Transformations. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 58.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Joshi, Aravind K.
1969aString Adjunct Grammars and Transformational Grammars. (= Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers, 75II.) Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Joshi, Aravind K.
1969b “Formal Properties of Grammars with Mixed Types of Rules and Their Linguistic Relevance”.
Proceedings of theInternational Conference on Computational Linguistics
, Sänga Säby, Sweden, August 1969.
Joshi, Aravind K.
1972 “How Much Hierarchical Structure Is Necessary for Sentence Description?”. Plötz 1972:389–398.
Joshi, Aravind K.
1983 “How Much Context-Sensitivity is Required to Provide Reasonable Structural Descriptions: Tree adjoining grammars”. Natural Language Processing: Psycholinguistic, computational and theoretical perspectives ed. by David Dowty, Lauri Karttunen & Arnold Zwicky, 206–250. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1982 “Phrase Structure Trees Bear More Fruit Than You Would Have Thought”. American Journal of Computational Linguistics 6:2. 272–284.
Joshi, Aravind K., L. Levy & Masako Takahashi
1975 “Tree Adjunct Grammars”. Journal of the Computer and System Sciences 10:1.136–163.
Katz, Jerrold J.
1972Semantic Theory. New York: Harper & Row.
Kittredge, Richard & John Lehrberger
eds.1982Sublanguage: Studies of Language in Restricted Semantic Domains. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Koerner, E. F. Konrad
1970 “Bloomfieldian Linguistics and the Problem of ‘Meaning’: A chapter in the history of the theory and study of language”. Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien/German Yearbook of American Studies 151. 162–183. (Repr. in Koerner, Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected essays, 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins 1978.)
Kroch, Anthony S. & Aravind K. Joshi
1985 “The Linguistic Relevance of Tree Adjoining Grammar”. MS-CIS-85-16, LINC LAB 03. Philadelphia: Department of Computer & Information Science, Univ. of Pennsylvania.
1972 “Reflections on the Development of Transformational Theories”. Plötz 1972.251–274.
Nevin, Bruce E. M. S.
[1989] “Unbounded Dependencies in Operator Grammar”. Unpublished paper.
Newmeyer, Frederick J.
1980Linguistic Theory in America: The first quarter-century of transformational generative grammar. New York: Academic Press.
Plötz, Senta
ed.1972Transformationelle Analyse: Die Transformationstheorie von Zellig Harris und ihre Entwicklung/Transformational Analysis: The transformational theory of Zellig Harris and its development. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum.
Postal, Paul M.
1964Constituent Structure. The Hague: Mouton.
Powers, William T.
1973Behavior: The control of perception. Chicago: Aldine.
Putnam, Hilary
1975 “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. Language, Mind, and Knowledge ed. by Keith Gunderson & George Maxwell (= Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7), 1–25. Minneapolis: Univ of Minnesota Press.
Ryckman, Thomas A.
1986Grammar and Information: An investigation in linguistic metatheory. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ., New York.
Ryckman, Thomas A.
1991 “Zellig Harris’ Methodology of Language and Information”. Lecture, Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 8 October 1991.
Sager, Naomi
1975Natural Language Information Processing. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Sager, Naomi
1986 “Sublanguage: Linguistic phenomenon, computational tool”. Grishman & Kittredge 1986.1–18.
Sapir, Edward
1929 “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”. Language 51. 207–214. (Repr. in Sapir 1949:160–166.)
Sapir, Edward
1949Selected Writings of Edward Sapir. Ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
Shannon, Claude
1949The Mathematical Theory of Communication. With an essay by Warren Weaver. Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press.
Shannon, Claude
1956 “The Bandwagon”. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2:1.3. Cambridge, Mass.: Inst. of Radio Engineers, M.I.T.
Swadesh, Morris
1934 “The Phonemic Principle”. Language 101.117–129. (Repr. in Joos 1957.32–37.)
Wells, Rulon S.
1947 “Immediate Constituents”. Language 231.81–117. (Repr. in Joos 1957:186–207.)
Wells, Rulon S.
1962 “What Has Linguistics Done for Philosophy?”. Journal of Philosophy 591.697–708.
Williams, Gregory
1992A Bibliography of Hierarchical Perceptual Control Theory. Gravel Switch, Kentucky: CSG Publications.
1995. [no title] - Randy Allen Harris. The Linguistics Wars. New York: Oxford University Press. 1993. Pp. xii + 356. US$42.00 (hardcover).. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 40:2 ► pp. 247 ff.
Millaku, Shkelqim
2017. Kontributi i Zellig Sabbetai Harris ppr gjuhhsinn (The Contribution of Zellig Sabbetai Harris for Linguistics). SSRN Electronic Journal
Nevin, Bruce
2020. Language and thought as control of perception. In The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory, ► pp. 351 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 august 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.