Words without grammar: Linguists and the international auxiliary language movement in the United States

Falk, Julia S.

doi:10.1016/0271-5309(95)00010-n

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…also gave a 'closed' lecture series on general linguistics and another course in phonology (Box 2 Folder 10). Contrary to what is suggested in Jakobson 1978's unsigned foreword to the English edition of his book, and also in Joseph (1989) and Falk (1995a), none of this first set of lectures could have been attended by Mattoso Câmara, who only went to the United States in the following year, 1943.…”

Section: Lessons On Sound and Meaningcontrasting

confidence: 52%

“…If tensions between European and American traditions in language study were echoing in a distant center like Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s, it is difficult to expect that things happened differently in New York, where a large number of European refugee scholars were starting to 'flood' the American market (Robert Hall in Murray [1994:216], but see also Jakobson 1979, Halle 1988, and Falk 1995a. In one sense, the creation of the Linguistic Circle of New York -Cercle Linguistique de New York, in 1943, named in the mold of other European circles like those of Moscow, Prague, Copenhagen, and Paris, can be interpreted as an effort to overcome some of these differences.…”

Section: Linguists and Their Circlesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…(Fowkes 1994: 3) Comments on the next two meetings occupy fewer pages in Mattoso's book. Morris Swadesh's (1909Swadesh's ( -1967 paper on "The Future of Basic English in the light of Language History" (2nd meeting of the Circle, 19 Nov. 1943) motivated discussions about the viability of a 'universal language', English in this case, and of an 'artificial language' (see Falk 1995b). The next themes did not raise great controversies, they refer to Jakobson's and Herzog's homage to Franz Boas (3rd meeting, 18 Dec. 1943) Mattoso Câmara's entrance into the American linguistics orbit, attested by the increasing references to American scholars in the texts he published and revised over the years which followed his visit to United States, brought deep and important changes in his conception of linguistic analysis and of the tasks to be accomplished by Brazilian linguists.…”

Section: Linguists and Their Circlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

Altman

2021

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SummaryWhen mention is made of Brazil in connection with American linguistics, it usually amounts to a reference to the Linguistic Circle of New York, where Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (b.1908), who had come from Brazil where he had done ethnological work, met and exchanged ideas. This singular event has cast a shadow on other contacts between Brazil and American linguistics, of which, the one between Jakobson and the Brazilian linguist Joaquim Mattoso Câmara (1904–1970) was much more consequential, at least as far as the implementation of structural linguistics in Brazil and in South America generally during the 1950s and the 1960s is concerned. Mattoso Câmara came to the United States and spent most of his time in New York City (September 1943 till April 1944), where he got exposure to Praguean type structuralism, notably through Jakobson’s lectures he attended at Columbia University and at the École Libre of New York, which had been established by European refugees at the time. He also participated in the first meetings of the Linguistic Circle of New York in 1943 as one of its co-founders. Following his return to Rio de Janeiro, Mattoso Câmara proposed, in 1949, as his doctoral thesis a phonemic description of Brazilian Portuguese. The work was published a few years later, in 1953. His most influential work,Princípios de Lingüística Gerai, first published in 1954, had two more revised and updated editions (1958, 1967) and served to introduce several generations of Brazilian as well as other South American students to structural linguistics during the 1950s and 1960s.

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Section: Lessons On Sound and Meaningcontrasting

confidence: 52%

Section: Linguists and Their Circlesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Linguists and Their Circlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

Altman

2021

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“…One branch focused on vocabulary (or the “lexicon”), searching for a core of words that would be optimal because they would be the most widely shared among existing so‐called “natural” languages. Sapir, for example, felt that “a highly efficient and maximally simple international language needs to be developed…[that] capitalizes for common purposes the stock of words and grammatical techniques which lie scattered about in the more important of the national languages of Europe” (1933, 87; quoted in Falk , 248). (One can maybe think of this as a form of linguistic DNA, with all of the ideological problems attendant upon such a concept.…”

Section: Artificial Languages As Alternative Worlds But Of Specific Kmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dr. Esperanto, or Anthropology as Alternative Worlds

Heller

2017

American Anthropologist

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In this 2015 presidential address, I use the story of so-called artificial (invented, constructed) languages to discuss anthropology as an act of imagining alternative worlds. I argue that this activity becomes particularly salient at moments of crisis in liberal democratic capitalism and takes a variety of forms according to the position of social actors with respect to the political economic conditions they face. From Esperanto to Klingon and beyond, artificial languages illustrate some key dilemmas and responses, of which anthropology is a part. [Presidential Address, language, anthropology, artificial languages] RESUMEN En este discurso presidencial del 2015, uso la historia de los llamados lenguajes artificiales (inventados, construidos) para discutir la antropología como un acto de imaginar mundos alternativos. Argumento que esta actividad llega a ser particularmente prominente en momentos de crisis en el capitalismo democrático liberal, y toma una variedad de formas de acuerdo a la posición de los actores sociales con respecto a las condiciones económicas políticas que ellos enfrentan. Desde el esperanto al klingon y más allá, LAs ilustran algunos dilemas y respuestas claves, de los cuales la antropología es una parte. [Discurso Presidencial, lenguaje, antropología, lenguajes artificiales] INTRODUCTION: INVENTED LANGUAGES AND IMAGINING ALTERNATIVE WORLDSOne of my esteemed colleagues once suggested to me that an anthropological exploration of language is akin to studying the tail rather than the dog. The point, I gather, was that if we want to understand human experience, we ought to go straight for the experience, and not something epiphenomenal like language. Not surprisingly, I take the view, common in linguistic anthropology, that language is scarcely an epiphenomenon but rather one of the central terrains on which we construct our understanding of the world and our relations with each other and with the world we live in. However, not content to base an argument about anthropology from the perspective of what is often considered a peripheral subdiscipline, I will further situate my argument from the perspective of a theme not normally taken seriously in linguistic anthropology: the question of so-called "artificial," "invented," or "constructed" languages, of which Esperanto is probably the best known, albeit likely overtaken by Klingon, Dothraki, and other languages of recent science-fiction television and film.

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“…(109)(110) One wonders why Murray feels so compelled to harp on Sapir's uncompleted projects rather than the vast amount that he did accomplish in his 55 years, the last two in failing health. I should think that his 1929 classification of North American Indian languages and his 1933 "Réalité psychologique des phonèmes" alone would save Sapir from any charge of resting on his laurels, but I also believe that Murray underrates the significance of Sapir's work on an international auxiliary language (recently re-evaluated by Falk 1995) and his other attempts to extend the boundaries of linguistics beyond what less farreaching minds found comfortable. 7 6 However, as John Stonham has pointed out to me, Boas' language materials incorporate more implicit native analysis than meets the eye.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

The Structure of linguistic revolutions

Joseph

1995

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Among the questions never asked about modern linguistics is where and how it acquired its insatiable taste for revolution. Rare is the linguist who does not consider himself part of a linguistic revolution accomplished in recent memory, or in progress, or both. Alternatively she may be part of a past revolution that got it right, then was superseded by a false counter-revolution that will soon give way, with the old order being restored -a revolution in the true, 360° sense (or a second coming, for the SIL crowd). Nothing is so brash as a new Ph.D. sure that his revolution has at last broken through the darkness, while few things are sadder than a linguist jaded by the realization that her revolution will never live up to the promises made in youthful exuberance.We have somehow become addicted to it. Revolution is the master plot for linguistic history, what gives sense to our work and careers, what makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning. Of course this condition is not exclusive to linguists, but pervades academic life, and real life too, though * On the occasion of: Randy Allen Harris, The Linguistics Wars (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ix + 356 pp.; and Stephen O. Murray, Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America: A social history (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994), xix + 594 pp. I am grateful to Konrad Koerner, Stephen Matthews, and John Stonham for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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Words without grammar: Linguists and the international auxiliary language movement in the United States

Cited by 14 publications

References 9 publications

The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

Dr. Esperanto, or Anthropology as Alternative Worlds

The Structure of linguistic revolutions

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