Famous linguists

Student: Aidin Abdurashidova

 Famous linguists
We often think about famous writers, composers, and singers,
but we never thought of linguists that helped in the
development of languages. Let’s have a look at famous linguists
of their times and their contribution to linguistics.
1. Noam Chomsky
2. Ferdinand de Saussure
3. Umberto Ec
4. Roman Jakobso
5. Robin Lakoff
6. Charles Piers
7. Edward Sapir
8. Benjamin Whorf
9. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Noam Chomsky is a professor at
Noam Chomsky
the University of Arizona. He
invented the theory of
universal grammar, which is
called Chomsky Hierarchy.
He is a very intelligent man,
and he has written 100 books
on linguists. The theory of
universal grammar states that
all languages have the same
foundation, but the difference
appears in the use of words
and sounds. Additionally, he
suggested that humans have
an inborn ability to learn the
language.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure is a Swiss
linguist. He worked for years in
linguistics and semiology. Do you
know what semiology is? It is the
study of the connotation of symbols
and signs. He came up with the idea
that every word has a linguistic sign
that consists of two parts,the signifier
that is the phonetic form of the word,
and the signified which is the
conceptual form. This theory gained
great popularity and laid a foundation
for modern linguistics.
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco is famous for his
novels and critical work in
linguistics. He worked on
semiology with a touch of
philosophy. According to him,
symbols are the philosophical
reflection of signs, and they
depict both culture and things.
 Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson was a Russian-born
linguist. He is a renowned linguist who
has changed the traditional views about
linguistics. He gave the idea of distinctive
features that states that all sounds are
related to binary contrasts.
Therefore, you can easily describe or
quantify them. This point of view faced
great criticism in recent years. However,
it helped the linguists to organize the
sounds of different languages in a
classified structure, which they were
unable to do before.
Robin Lakoff
Robin Lakoff is a professor
emerita of linguistics at the
University of California,
Berkeley. Her 1975 book
Language and Woman's Place is
often credited for making
language and gender a major
debate in linguistics and other
disciplines
 Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir is a linguistic
anthropologist. His work on the
classification of American languages is
very famous. With the help of his student,
Benjamin Whorf came up with the
concept of linguistic relativity.

This hypothesis depicts that the language

that a person speaks has a great impact on
a person’s lens of viewing the world. This
view was rejected by many modern-day
linguists. However, it is still an important
topic that integrates language and culture.
 Benjamin Lee
Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist. Whorf is widely known for his ideas
about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought. An
important theme in many of his publications, he has been credited as one of the
fathers of this approach, often referred to as the “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis”, named
after him and his mentor Edward Sapir. In the last ten years of his life he dedicated
his spare time to linguistic studies, doing field work on Native American languages
in the United States and Mexico. He published many articles in the most prestigious
linguistic journals, many of them dealing with the ways in which he saw that
different linguistic systems affected the thought systems and habitual behaviour of
language users.
 Ludwig Wittgenstein
A language-game is a philosophical concept
developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring
to simple examples of language use and the
actions into which the language is woven.
Wittgenstein argued that a word or even a
sentence has meaning only as a result of the
"rule" of the "game" being played.
Depending on the context, for example, the
utterance "Water!" could be an order, the
answer to a question, or some other form of
communication.