Zellig Harris - Definition and Overview

Zellig Harris (October 23, 1909 - May 22, 1992) was an American linguist. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and discourse analysis. Born in Balta, Ukraine, he and his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1913. A student in the Oriental Studies department, he received his bachelor's (1930), master's (1932), and doctoral (1934) degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He began teaching at Penn in 1931, and would go on to found the linguistics department there in 1946--the first such department in the country. His best-known student at Penn was Noam Chomsky . Others included Maurice Gross, Fred Lukoff, Joseph Applegate, Lila Gleitman, John Ross, and Bruce Nevin.

His works include:

• Origin of the Alphabet (M.A. thesis, 1932)
• A Grammar of the Phoenician Language (Ph.D. dissertation, 1936)
• Development of the Canaanite Dialects: An investigation in linguistic history (1939)
• Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951)
• String Analysis of Sentence Structure (1962)
• Mathematical Structures of Language (1968)
• Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics (1970)
• Notes du Cours de Syntax (1976) (in french)
• A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles (1982)
• Language and Information (1988) (ISBN 0231066627)
• The Form of Information in Science: Analysis of an immunology sublanguage (1989) (ISBN 9027725160)
• A Theory of Language and Information: A mathematical approach (1991) (ISBN 0198242247)
• The Transformation of Capitalist Society (1997) (ISBN 0847684121)

External links

• Zellig Harris Home Page (http://www.dmi.columbia.edu/zellig/)
• Zellig S. Harris's Life and Work, Year-by-Year (http://www.arts.uwo.ca/chomsky/mit/zellig.html)
• Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent: Zellig Haris, Avukah, and Hashomer Hatzair (http://cognet.mit.edu/Books/chomsky/2/index.html)
• Penn's Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, successor to the Oriental Studies department (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/ames/)
• Penn's Department of Linguistics (the first in the U.S.) (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/)