Zellig Harris facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Zellig Harris
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| Born | October 23, 1909 Balta, Russian Empire
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| Died | May 22, 1992 (aged 82) New York City, U.S.
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| Education | University of Pennsylvania |
| Spouse(s) | Bruria Kaufman |
| Children | Eva Harris |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania |
| Doctoral advisor | James Alan Montgomery |
| Doctoral students | Noam Chomsky Aravind Joshi Naomi Sager Charles Ferguson Fred Lukoff Eugene Garfield Lila Gleitman Ellen Prince |
| Other notable students | Maurice Gross |
| Influenced | Noam Chomsky |
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Zellig Sabbettai Harris (born October 23, 1909 – died May 22, 1992) was an important American linguist. A linguist is someone who studies language. Harris was also a mathematical expert in how sentences are built (syntax). He also studied how to use scientific methods.
He first studied Semitic languages, which are languages like Hebrew and Arabic. He is best known for his work in structural linguistics. This field looks at how language parts fit together. He also worked on discourse analysis, which studies how sentences connect in longer texts. Harris also discovered "transformational structure" in language. This means how sentences can be changed into other forms while keeping their meaning.
Later in his career, he developed ideas like string analysis and operator grammar. He also created a theory about how language carries information.
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Biography
Zellig Harris was born on October 23, 1909. His birthplace was Balta, in what is now Ukraine. His family was Jewish. In 1913, when he was four, his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the U.S.
At 13, he asked to live in Mandatory Palestine, which is now Israel. He worked there to support himself. For the rest of his life, he often returned to live on a socialist kibbutz in Israel. A kibbutz is a community farm or settlement.
His brother, Dr. Tzvi N. Harris, helped understand the immune system. His sister, Anna H. Live, directed the English Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1941, Zellig Harris married Bruria Kaufman, a physicist. She worked with Albert Einstein in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Zellig and Bruria lived on a kibbutz in Israel. They adopted their daughter, Tamar, there. His daughter, Eva Harris, is now a professor. She studies Infectious Diseases.
Harris died in his sleep on May 22, 1992, in New York. He was 82 years old.
Linguistics
From the 1930s, Harris wanted to build a strong scientific base for language study. He believed that we should understand language by looking at what we can observe. We should not rely on ideas that are just guesses. He said that language itself gives us clues about its rules.
Early Career and Studies
Harris earned his degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He got his bachelor's in 1930, master's in 1932, and doctorate in 1934. His first studies were in Semitic languages. He wrote about ancient languages like Ugaritic and Phoenician. He also studied the origins of the alphabet. Later, he worked on both classical and modern Hebrew.
He started teaching language analysis at Penn in 1931. His work became useful during World War II in the 1940s. In 1946, he helped create the first modern linguistics department in the U.S.
Harris was influenced by other famous linguists. These included Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. He admired their work greatly.
Understanding Language Structure
Many people thought Harris took Bloomfield's ideas to an extreme. Bloomfield studied how language sounds and parts (like words) are arranged. Harris's book, Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951), explained his ideas. This book made him famous.
Harris believed his work showed how to check if language studies were correct. He thought that linguists should use clear methods. He said that the basic information in linguistics comes from how speakers judge sounds. For example, they can tell if two sounds are different or the same. This idea helped his language analysis be very flexible.
A close colleague said that Harris focused on methods of analysis. He wanted to describe language simply. He believed that language could only be described by how words are placed next to each other. He thought his methods would lead him to new discoveries.
This approach built on the "distributional methodology" of Sapir and Bloomfield. It looks at which language elements can appear together and which cannot. By observing how words are used, linguists can find word and sound boundaries.
Linguists often use simple tests. They substitute one word in a sentence and see if the new sentence still makes sense. This helps them find patterns in language. Harris's method relied on speakers' judgments. This is different from the idea that Harris, like Bloomfield, ignored how people think about language.
Key Ideas from the 1940s
Harris's work in the 1940s included several important ideas. He studied how sounds are made up of smaller parts (componential analysis). He also looked at how parts of words can be separated (discontinuous morphemes). His work also included a "substitution-grammar." This showed how words and phrases can be expanded.
His 1946 book was one of the first to talk about "generative grammar." This is a system that can create all possible correct sentences in a language.
Harris wanted to make sure language analysis was correct. He saw different ways of looking at language as tools. He used them to find the best way to describe language. He believed that language has many properties at the same time.
He also worked on "transfer grammar." This compares two languages to see how they are different. This was very helpful for early efforts in machine translation.
Language and Logic
Harris believed that we cannot describe language using a system outside of language itself. Any system we use to talk about language must already have the same basic structure as language. He said we cannot guess how sentences are logically formed before we study them.
Natural language has its own ways to talk about language. For example, we use words to define other words. Harris concluded that language science should study how language parts relate to each other. This is called their "distribution."
Harris wanted a "least grammar." This means a grammar that is as simple as possible. Every rule or complexity in a grammar should show something real about the language. It should not add extra rules that are not needed.
Some theories, like Universal Grammar, suggest that some language rules are born with us. Harris believed that we should first understand language based on itself. Then, we can look for these deeper properties.
Language as Applied Math
Harris wanted to use math to study language. He aimed to build a science of language. He wanted to create a mathematical system that described all the necessary parts of natural language. He did not want to just use math to create language-like systems.
Transformations in Language
By 1939, Harris was teaching about "linguistic transformations." These transformations helped find patterns in texts. By 1946, he had studied transformations in many languages. He published his ideas in 1952 and 1957.
Harris believed that meaning is part of grammar. It is not separate. He thought that how words are arranged and what they mean are two sides of the same coin.
Before Harris, grammar could only talk about word groups. Harris looked at how one group of sentences could be changed into another. In math, a change that keeps a certain property is called a transformation. Harris used this idea in linguistics. His transformational analysis helped define word groups more precisely.
Noam Chomsky was one of Harris's students. Chomsky used Harris's idea of transformations but changed it. Chomsky saw transformations as rules that change one sentence structure into another. This led to Chomsky's idea of "deep structure" and "surface structure." Harris's original idea was simpler. It focused on how words depend on each other.
Harris refined his ideas about transformations. He said that if two sentences are transforms, they should have similar word choices. If one sentence has acceptable word choices, the transformed sentence should too.
Operator Grammar
Harris broke down transformations into basic sentence differences. These differences could be used to build or take apart sentences. Some operations add words. Others change the sound of words. This led to his idea of "Operator Grammar."
This grammar shows how individual words build a sentence. When a word (an "operator") acts on another word (its "argument"), it can cause changes. This is similar to how math operations work.
Sublanguage and Information
Harris also studied "sublanguages." These are special ways of speaking used in certain fields. For example, science has its own sublanguage. In these areas, words and their meanings are very clear. This helps language carry information very precisely.
Harris's work showed how language can evolve. He also thought about how language could develop in the future.
His linguistic work ended with two books: A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles (1982) and A Theory of Language and Information (1991). The second book explained his theory of information content in language. He also discussed the nature and origin of language. He believed that language is a social tool. People create and recreate it as they use it.
Honors
For his work, Harris was elected to several important groups:
- American Philosophical Society (1962)
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1965)
- United States National Academy of Sciences (1973)
Legacy
Harris's ideas have had a wide impact on linguistics. Many researchers continue to develop his ideas. For example, the Medical Language Processor, a system for analyzing medical texts, was influenced by his work. Systems that automatically create text, like weather reports, also use his ideas.
Recent work on Statistical semantics and Distributional semantics builds on Harris's ideas. These fields study how the meaning of words comes from how they are used.
Many famous linguists were Harris's students. This includes Noam Chomsky, Aravind Joshi, and Naomi Sager.
Politics
Harris also influenced students and colleagues in social and political work. He believed in changing society from the ground up. His last book, The Transformation of Capitalist Society, was published after his death.
In this book, he said that capitalism ignores personal and social needs that are not profitable. He believed that cooperative ways of meeting needs can arise. He thought these should be encouraged. He saw them as starting points for a more humane society.
From his college days, he was active in a student group called Avukah. This was a left-Zionist organization. He later resigned as its national President.
In the 1940s, he worked with other scientists on a project. It was called "A Frame of Reference for Social Change." They wanted to create new ideas and words to talk about social change. They felt that old terms often supported existing systems.
See also
In Spanish: Zellig Harris para niños
- Distributionalism
- Leonard Bloomfield
