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DOES DISCOURSE HAVE A 'STRUCTURE'? HARRIS'S REVOLUTION IN
LINGUISTICS As a freshman back in 1947 I discovered that within the
various academic divisions and subdivisions of the University of
Pennsylvania there existed a something (it was not a Department,
but a piece of the Anthropology Department) called 'Linguistic
Analysis'. I was an untalented but enthusiastic student of Greek
and a slightly more talented student of German, as well as the son
of a translator, so the idea of 'Linguistic Analysis' attracted me,
sight unseen, and I signed up for a course. It turned out that
'Linguistic Analysis' was essentially a graduate program - I and
another undergraduate called Noam Chomsky were the only two
undergraduates who took courses in Linguistic Analysis - and also
that it was essentially a one-man show: a professor named Zellig
Harris taught all the courses with the aid of graduate Teaching
Fellows (and possibly - I am not sure - one Assistant Professor).
The technicalities of Linguistic Analysis were formidable, and I
never did master them all. But the powerful intellect and
personality of Zellig Harris drew me like a lodestone, and,
although I majored in Philosophy, I took every course there was to
take in Linguistic Analysis from then until my gradua tion. What
'Linguistics' was like before Zellig Harris is something not many
people care to remember today."
DOES DISCOURSE HAVE A 'STRUCTURE'? HARRIS'S REVOLUTION IN
LINGUISTICS As a freshman back in 1947 I discovered that within the
various academic divisions and subdivisions of the University of
Pennsylvania there existed a something (it was not a Department,
but a piece of the Anthropology Department) called 'Linguistic
Analysis'. I was an untalented but enthusiastic student of Greek
and a slightly more talented student of German, as well as the son
of a translator, so the idea of 'Linguistic Analysis' attracted me,
sight unseen, and I signed up for a course. It turned out that
'Linguistic Analysis' was essentially a graduate program - I and
another undergraduate called Noam Chomsky were the only two
undergraduates who took courses in Linguistic Analysis - and also
that it was essentially a one-man show: a professor named Zellig
Harris taught all the courses with the aid of graduate Teaching
Fellows (and possibly - I am not sure - one Assistant Professor).
The technicalities of Linguistic Analysis were formidable, and I
never did master them all. But the powerful intellect and
personality of Zellig Harris drew me like a lodestone, and,
although I majored in Philosophy, I took every course there was to
take in Linguistic Analysis from then until my gradua tion. What
'Linguistics' was like before Zellig Harris is something not many
people care to remember today."
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