Charles F. Hockett (1916–2000)

Charles Hockett can be viewed as the Bloomfield of the 1950s. This college text book, first published in 1955, is the best example of Bloomfieldian descriptive and structural linguistics. Linguistics -- even the non-Chomskian types -- have gone way past this work. If you are looking for an introduction to linguistics, this is not the book for you. But for the trained linguist, it is not only an excellent representation of the discipline at its time, but is also a model of descriptive linguistic method, including its logic. It lacks many features that we are accustomed to today: syntax trees, case roles, text linguistics, and others. That is only to say, it's dated.

Hockett famously rejected Chomskian notions of "hard-wired" language acquisition, asserting that one cannot study syntax separate from semantics. His hard-nosed empiricism led him to sharp confrontations with the generativists.

For me, I enjoyed the trip back in time to a more innocent age.… (meer)