Linguistic Models in Anthropology
01 Oct 1972-Annual Review of Anthropology (Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139, USA)-Vol. 1, Iss: 1, pp 383-410
About: This article is published in Annual Review of Anthropology.The article was published on 1972-10-01. It has received 7 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Contrastive linguistics & Anthropological linguistics.
Citations
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TL;DR: The authors argued that many social scientists literally do not know what they are talking about and cannot communicate with each other because they cannot ground any significant portion of their discourse in a coherent set of describable observational practices.
Abstract: Cultural materialism shares with other scientific strategies an epistemology which seeks to restrict fields of inquiry to events, entities, and relationships that are knowable by means of explicit, logico-empirical, inductive-deductive, quantifiable public procedures or "operations" subject to replication by inde pendent observers. This restriction necessarily remains an ideal aim rather than a rigidly perfected condition, for it is recognized that total operationalization would cripple the ability to state principles, relate theories, organize empirical tests. It is a far cry, however, from the recognition that unoperationalized, vernacular, and metaphysical terms are necessary for the conduct of scientific inquiry to Feyerabend-like invitations (13,14) to throw off all operational re straints, The plain fact of the matter is that many social scientists literally do not know what they are talking about and cannot communicate with each other because they cannot ground any significant portion of their discourse in a coherent set of describable observational practices. Under such circumstances, it is sheer obscurantism to promote the further expansion of unoperationalized terms.
535 citations
Book•
01 Jun 1986
TL;DR: This paper presented a concise treatment of the various contemporary ways of interpreting myths and rituals, organized in terms of the most important schools of interpretation and discusses many of the recent approaches that have had widespread influence as well as older approaches that are still viable.
Abstract: Presenting a concise treatment of the various contemporary ways of interpreting myths and rituals, this book is organized in terms of the most important schools of interpretation and discusses many of the recent approaches that have had widespread influence as well as older approaches that are still viable. While the primary focus is reflective and critical - how the various mythographic approaches have come about, and how they may be characterized and used - the framework of the book also provides a series of questions for contemporary study of particular myths and rituals. Myths and rituals remain important conveyors of cultural values, and the book argues that they form storehouses of significance that must not be omitted as our scientific establishments tend toward more abstract analysis of supposedly objective data. This work represents a wide synoptic view of research not usually considered within a single perspective, or treated as having on-going influences. The book has a unified critical perspective upon a mass of materials and approaches and is designed to function both as a reference work for the historical developments of mythography and as a stimulus to individual studies of specific myths and rituals.
132 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the role of emics in avoiding interpreter imposition of etic categories in ethnographic systematization, arguing that ethnographic objectivity must acknowledge some degree of imposition but that this does not render emic analysis pointless.
Abstract: Emic analysis, whether seen as opposed or as complementary to etic modes, is regarded as essential for ensuring that culture-specific particularities are not suppressed in efforts to subsume social phenomena under cross-culturally valid generalizations. Particularly, there is concern that the aim of providing an account of the concepts and principles subjects use to organize reality will be frustrated if alien etic notions function in ethnographic systematization where emic ones should. This paper examines this and other aspects of the emics/etics problem, with particular emphasis on the ostensible function of emic analysis to avoid interpreter imposition of etic categories. It is argued that ethnographic objectivity must acknowledge some degree of imposition but that this does not render emic analysis pointless. Particular emphasis is given to W. V. Quine's idea of the indeterminacy of translation, which seems antithetical to emics but which, with some reconstruction, provides a basis for a viable emic mode.
56 citations
Cites background from "Linguistic Models in Anthropology"
...245 1 Harris is also criticized for not defining emics in terms of contrastive relationships within the cultural-linguistic ontext (Durbin 1972:385; cf. Harris 1976:341-42)....
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: This article examined how semantic features are configured by children diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and by children showing typical language development (TLD) in their understanding of prepositions.
Abstract: The study examines how semantic features are configured by children diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and by children showing Typical Language Development (TLD) in their understanding of prepositions. Semantic Feature Analysis was used to analyse the research data. The findings reveal patterns of similarities and differences in the way semantic features are configured by the two cohorts. The study has ramifications for the learning outcomes of children with SLI.
6 citations
Cites background from "Linguistic Models in Anthropology"
...xxx Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) or Componential Analysis: A linguistic model that involves characterising the semantic differences between different semantic features (Durbin, 1972)....
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...Componential analysis is a widespread linguistic model that involves characterising the semantic differences between different semantic features (Durbin, 1972)....
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...…or understanding the subtle messages implied in an utterance (Bender, 2004; Crystal & Varley, 1993). xxx Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) or Componential Analysis: A linguistic model that involves characterising the semantic differences between different semantic features (Durbin, 1972)....
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01 Oct 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, a paradigm emerged in anthropology in mid-1950s, as a further result of the attempts made by some American anthropologists to redefine the concept of culture that will be in line with the new model they adopt for their study and description of culture, that is descriptive phonology.
Abstract: Ethnoscience is a paradigm emerged in anthropology in mid-1950s, as a further result of the attempts made by some American anthropologists to redefine the concept of culture that will be in line with the new model they adopt for their study and description of culture that is descriptive phonology. For ethnoscientists culture is not a material or behavioural phenomenon. It is an ideational phenomenon. In Goode-nough’s word, “culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior or emotions. It is rather the organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them as such..” (1964: 36). Culture is thus a system of knowledge. The culture of a people is their ethnoscience (ethnos = people; scientia = knowledge). Since culture is a very broad category, no anthropologist can do research on a peo-ple’s culture as a whole. He can only investigate and describe some parts of it. Thus, Harold Conklin (1954) focussed his research among the Hanunoo in the Phillippines on their knowledge about their environment, or their ethnoecology. Even then, ethnoecology is still a very broad category, for it encompasses flora, fauna and other material inanimate objects. Later ethnoscience researchers pay their attention to smaller parts of the phenomena. Several branches of study then sprouted from ethnoecology, focussing on some elements the environment, such as ethnozoology, ethnobotany, ethnoastronomy, ethnopedology, etc. From ethnozoology, new branches of study -narrower in scopeappeared, such as ethnoornithology, etnoichtyology, ethnoherpetology. These bran-ches show how the attentions of the researchers go deeper and deeper to the tiny details of the environment, of the nature, and how the people view, give meaning and relate themselves to them. These studies show that ethnoscience has helped humans to gain better understandings of and their relations to the nature. It is in this sense that ethnoscience has become a bridge to go “back to nature”.
4 citations
References
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TL;DR: Methodological preliminaries of generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammar; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning.
12,586 citations
Book•
01 May 1965
TL;DR: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence as discussed by the authors have been used as a theory of performance for language learning. But they have not yet been applied to the problem of language modeling.
Abstract: : Contents: Methodological preliminaries: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammars; formal and substantive grammars; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning; generative capacity and its linguistic relevance Categories and relations in syntactic theory: Scope of the base; aspects of deep structure; illustrative fragment of the base component; types of base rules Deep structures and grammatical transformations Residual problems: Boundaries of syntax and semantics; structure of the lexicon
12,225 citations
Book•
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TL;DR: The Silent Language is a work of interest to both the intelligent general reader and the sophisticated social scientist as discussed by the authors, which analyzes the many aspects of nonverbal communication and considers the concepts of space and time as tools for transmission of messages.
Abstract: Leading anthropologist Edward Hall analyzes the many aspects of non-verbal communication amd considers the concepts of space and time as tools for transmission of messages in this fascinating study. The Silent Language is a work of interest to both the intelligent general reader and the sophisticated social scientist.
3,995 citations
TL;DR: This discussion will discuss how each language can be described in terms of a distributional structure, i.e. in Terms of the occurrence of parts relative to other parts, and how this description is complete without intrusion of other features such as history or meaning.
Abstract: For the purposes of the present discussion, the term structure will be used in the following non-rigorous sense: A set of phonemes or a set of data is structured in respect to some feature, to the extent that we can form in terms of that feature some organized system of statements which describes the members of the set and their interrelations (at least up to some limit of complexity). In this sense, language can be structured in respect to various independent features. And whether it is structured (to more than a trivial extent) in respect to, say, regular historical change, social intercourse, meaning, or distribution - or to what extent it is structured in any of these respects - is a matter decidable by investigation. Here we will discuss how each language can be described in terms of a distributional structure, i.e. in terms of the occurrence of parts (ultimately sounds) relative to other parts, and how this description is complete without intrusion of other features such as history or meaning. It goes without saying that other studies of language - historical, psychological, etc.-are also possible, both in relation to distributional structure and independently of it.
2,996 citations
1,554 citations