Charles F. Hockett

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Charles Francis Hockett (born January 17, 1916 in Columbus , Ohio , † November 3, 2000 in Ithaca , New York ) was an American linguist . His work makes him one of the most influential linguists of the post-Bloomfield era of American structuralism , which is often referred to as "distributionalism" or "taxonomic structuralism". In the course of his career, Hockett became a sharp critic of Noam Chomsky's methods and theories .

Private life

Charles F. Hockett was married to his wife Shirley (née Orlinoff) since 1942. Together they had four daughters and one son. The Hockett couple were largely responsible for setting up the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca . In his spare time, Hockett occupied himself with music and composed, for example, an opera entitled The Love of Doña Rosita .

Career

Hockett received his PhD from Yale University in 1939 with a thesis on the Potawatomi language . There the later influential linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf were among his fellow students. From 1946 he was an assistant in the department of modern languages ​​at Cornell University , where he was responsible for the study program of the Chinese language . From 1957 until his retirement in 1982 he was a professor at the Institute for Anthropology . Hockett was named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences the following year. In 1986 he became an associate professor at Rice University , where he was active until his death in 2000.

Scientific contributions

Hockett defined 13 characteristics that are characteristic of human language:

  1. Acoustic-auditory channel (vocal-auditory channel)
  2. Transmission and directional reception (broadcast transmission and directional reception)
  3. Transience (transitoriness)
  4. Interchangeability (interchangeability)
  5. Complete feedback (total feedback)
  6. Specialization (specialization)
  7. Semanitizität (semanticity)
  8. Arbitrariness (arbitrariness)
  9. Discreteness (discreteness)
  10. Dislocation (displacement)
  11. Productivity (productivity)
  12. Tradierung (traditional transmission)
  13. Duality of patterning (duality of patterning)

Fonts

  • Potowatomi syntax. Language 15: 235-248. 1939.
  • A Manual of Phonology. Baltimore: Waverly Press. 1955.
  • A Course in Modern Linguistics . New York: The Macmillan Company. 1958.
  • The Origin of Speech. Scientific American 203. 1960.
  • The Problem of Universals in Language. In: Joseph H. Grenberg (Ed.), Universals of Language . Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press, 1-22. 1963.
  • The State of the Art. The Hague: Mouton. 1968.
  • The View From Language. Athens, Ge: The University of Georgia Press. 1977.
  • Refurbishing our Foundations. Elementary linguistics from an advanced point of view . Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 1987.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hockett, Charles F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hockett, Charles Francis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American linguist
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 2000
Place of death Ithaca , New York