Roman Jakobson, cybernetics and information theory: A critical assessment
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Jürgen Van de Walle
This article addresses the development of Roman Jakobson's linguistic theory from its origins in the Prague Circle through the 1940s and 1950s. During that period Jakobson adapted his theory to concepts of Information Theory and cybernetics, two new “hard sciences” that had emerged during the 1940s. It is argued that such a reinterpretation was possible because of both Jakobson's and the Prague linguists' particular perspective on language. Three core elements of Jakobson's view on language support this claim: teleology, functionality and binarism. Each has a counterpart in Information Theory and/or cybernetics, making it possible to reinterpret Jakobson's linguistic analysis in information theoretic terms.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Overt and covert prestige in Late Middle English: A case study in East Anglia
- Narrative and the Catalan go-past
- Towards a description of the narrative discourse units in Tannaitic Hebrew
- Roman Jakobson, cybernetics and information theory: A critical assessment
- Will and shall as markers of modality and/or futurity in Middle English
- Company Company, Concepción, ed.: Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española. Primera parte: La frase verbal
- Christiane Marchello-Nizia: Grammaticalisation et changement linguistique
- Randall S. Gess & Deborah Arteaga, eds.: Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives
- Frederick W. Schwink: The Third Gender: Studies in the Origin and History of Germanic Grammatical Gender Ranko Matasović: Gender in Indo-European Francisco José Ledo-Lemos: Femininum Genus: A Study on the Origins of the Indo-European Feminine Grammatical Gender
