The Legacy of Zellig Harris

Zellig Harris opened many lines of research in language, information, and culture, from generative grammar to informatics, from mathematics to language pedagogy. An international array of scholars here describe further developments and relate this work to that of others. Volume 1 begins with a survey article by Harris himself, previously unavailable in English. T.A. Ryckman, Paul Mattick, Maurice Gross, and Francis Lin show the importance of Harris's methodology for philosophy of science, the first two with reference especially to his remarkable findings on the form of information in science. Themes of discourse and sublanguage analysis are developed further in chapters by Michael Gottfried, James Munz, Robert Longacre, and Carlota Smith. Morris Salkoff, Peter Seuren, and Lila Gleitman present diverse developments in syntax and semantics. Phonology is represented in chapters by Leigh Lisker and by Frank Harary and Stephen Helmreich. Daythal Kendall applies operator grammar to literary analysis of Sapir's Takelma texts, and Fred Lukoff's chapter describes benefits of string analysis for language pedagogy.

John Goldsmith, University of Chicago, in Language Vol. 81:3 (2005):
All of the areas of Harris's linguistic work are covered in these volumes, and a careful reading of them leaves the reader with the conclusion that there is no way to understand American linguistic theory through the second half of the twentieth century without understanding Harris's thought.