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Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 20:2/3 (1993) ► pp.355–398

A minimalist program for linguistics

The work of zellig harris on meaning and information

| Bolt Beranek & Newman/University of Pennsylvania

Zellig S. Harris (1909–1992) is a familiar icon of American structuralism. According to received views of the history of linguistics in the 20th century, he is an exemplar of ‘taxonomic linguistics’ seeking practical discovery procedures whereby one could mechanically derive a grammar from distributional analysis of a corpus of utterances without reference to meaning, and a proponent of empiricist and behaviorist views that have been overthrown by the revolution of Generative linguistics. An examination of what he actually wrote, however, shows a lifelong concern with the analysis and representation of meaning. Harris’ approach to the evaluation of alternative tools of analysis, alternative grammars, and alternative theories of language arises from a crucial but little acknowledged dilemma of linguistics grounded in a fundamental property of language, namely, that it contains within itself virtually unrestricted metalinguistic capacities, upon which any description of language whatever either directly or indirectly depends.

Published online: 1 January 1993
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.20.2-3.06nev
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