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Charles F. Hockett | |
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| Born | Charles Francis Hockett (1916-01-17)January 17, 1916 Columbus, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | November 3, 2000(2000-11-03) (aged 84) Ithaca, New York, U.S. |
| Spouse | Shirley Orlinoff |
| Children | 5 |
| Academic background | |
| Education |
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| Thesis | The Potawatomi Language: A Descriptive Grammar (1939) |
| Influences | Leonard Bloomfield |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguist |
| Institutions |
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| Main interests | |
Charles Francis Hockett (January 17, 1916 – November 3, 2000) was an Americanlinguist who developed many influential ideas in Americanstructuralist linguistics. He represents the post-Bloomfieldian phase ofstructuralism often referred to as "distributionalism" or "taxonomic structuralism". His academic career spanned over half a century at Cornell and Rice universities. Hockett was also a firm believer of linguistics as a branch of anthropology, making contributions that were significant to the field of anthropology as well.
At the age of 16, Hockett enrolled atOhio State University inColumbus, Ohio where he received aBachelor of Arts andMaster of Arts inancient history. While enrolled atOhio State, Hockett became interested in the work ofLeonard Bloomfield, a leading figure in the field ofstructural linguistics. Hockett continued his education atYale University where he studiedanthropology andlinguistics and received hisPhD in anthropology in 1939. While studying at Yale, Hockett studied with several other influential linguists such asEdward Sapir,George P. Murdock, andBenjamin Whorf. Hockett's dissertation was based on his fieldwork inPotawatomi; his paper on Potawatomisyntax was published inLanguage in 1939. In 1948 hisdissertation was published as a series in theInternational Journal of American Linguistics. Following fieldwork inKickapoo andMichoacán,Mexico, Hockett did two years ofpostdoctoral study withLeonard Bloomfield inChicago andMichigan.
Hockett began his teaching career in 1946 as an assistant professor of linguistics in the Division ofModern Languages atCornell University where he was responsible for directing theChinese language program. In 1957, Hockett became a member of Cornell's anthropology department and continued to teach anthropology and linguistics until he retired toemeritus status in 1982. In 1986, he took up an adjunct post atRice University inHouston, Texas, where he remained active until his death in 2000.
Charles Hockett held membership among many academic institutions such as theNational Academy of Sciences theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and theSociety of Fellows atHarvard University. He served as president of both theLinguistic Society of America and the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.
In addition to making many contributions to the field ofstructural linguistics, Hockett also considered such things asWhorfian Theory,jokes, the nature ofwriting systems, slips of the tongue, andanimal communication and their relativeness tospeech.
Outside the realm of linguistics and anthropology, Hockett practicedmusical performance andcomposition. Hockett composed a full-lengthopera calledThe Love of Doña Rosita which was based on a play byFederico García Lorca and premiered atIthaca College by theIthacaOpera.
Hockett and his wife Shirley were vital leaders in the development of theCayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, New York. In appreciation of the Hocketts' hard work and dedication to the Ithaca community, Ithaca College established the Charles F. Hockett Music Scholarship, the Shirley and Chas Hockett Chamber Music Concert Series, and the Hockett Family Recital Hall.
In his paper "A Note on Structure", he proposes thatlinguistics can be seen as "a game and as a science." A linguist as a player in the game of languages has the freedom to experiment on all utterances of a language, but must ensure that "all the utterances of the corpus must be taken into account."[2] Late in his career, he was known for his stinging criticism ofChomskyan linguistics.
Hockett was initially receptive toGenerative grammar, hailing Chomsky'sSyntactic Structures as "one of only four major breakthroughs in the history of modern linguistics" (1965).[3] After carefully examining the generative school's proposed innovations in Linguistics, Hockett decided that this approach was of little value. His bookThe State of the Art outlined his criticisms of the generative approach. In his paraphrase a key principle of the Chomskyan paradigm is that there are an infinite number of grammatical sentences in any particular language.
The grammar of a language is a finite system that characterizes an infinite set of (well-formed) sentences. More specifically, the grammar of a language is awell-defined system by definition not more powerful than a universal Turing machine (and, in fact, surely a great deal weaker).[4]
The crux of Hockett's rebuttal is that the set of grammatical sentences in a language is not infinite, but rather ill-defined.[5] Hockett proposes that "no physical system is well-defined".[6]
Later in "Where the tongue slips, there slip I" he writes as follows.
It is currently fashionable to assume that, underlying the actual more or less bumbling speech behavior of any human being, there is a subtle and complicated but determinate linguistic "competence": a sentence-generating device whose design can only be roughly guessed at by any techniques so far available to us. This point of view makes linguistics very hard and very erudite, so that anyone who actually does discover facts about underlying "competence" is entitled to considerable kudos.
Within this popular frame of reference, a theory of "performance" -- of the "generation of speech" -- must take more or less the following form. If a sentence is to be uttered aloud, or even thought silently to oneself, it must first be built by the internal "competence" of the speaker, the functioning of which is by definition such that the sentence will be legal ("grammatical") in every respect. But that is not enough; the sentence as thus constructed must then beperformed, either overtly so that others may hear it, or covertly so that it is perceived only by the speaker himself. It is in this second step that blunders may appear. That which is generated by the speaker's internal "competence"is what the speaker "intends to say," and is the only real concern of linguistics: blunders in actually performed speech are instructions from elsewhere. Just if there are no such intrusions is what is performed an instance of "smooth speech".
I believe this view is unmitigated nonsense, unsupported by any empirical evidence of any sort. In its place, I propose the following.
All speech, smooth as well as blunderful, can be and must be accounted for essentially in terms of the three mechanisms we have listed: analogy, blending, and editing. An individual's language, at a given moment, is a set of habits--that is, of analogies, where different analogies are in conflict, one may appear as a constraint on the working of another. Speech actualizes habits--and changes the habits as it does so. Speech reflects awareness of norms; but norms are themselves entirely a matter of analogy (that is, of habit), not some different kind of thing.[7]
Despite his criticisms, Hockett always expressed gratitude to the generative school for seeing real problems in the preexisting approaches.
There are many situations in which bracketing does not serve to disambiguate. As already noted, words that belong together cannot always be spoken together, and when they are not, bracketing is difficult or impossible. In the 1950s this drove some grammarians to drink and other to transformations, but both are only anodynes, not answers[8]
One of Hockett's most important contributions was his development of thedesign-feature approach to comparative linguistics. He attempted to distinguish the similarities and differences amonganimal communication systems andhuman language.
Hockett initially developed seven features, which were published in the 1959 paper “Animal ‘Languages’ and Human Language.” However, after many revisions, he settled on 13 design-features in theScientific American "The Origin of Speech."[9]
Hockett argued that while every communication system has some of the 13 design features, only human, spoken language has all 13 features. In turn, that differentiates human spoken language from animal communication and other human communication systems such aswritten language.
While Hockett believed that all communication systems, animal and human alike, share many of these features, only human language contains all 13 design features. Additionally,traditional transmission, andduality of patterning are key to human language.
Foraginghoney bees communicate with other members of their hive when they have discovered a relevant source ofpollen,nectar, or water. In an effort to convey information about the location and the distance of such resources, honeybees participate in a particular figure-eight dance known as thewaggle dance.
In Hockett's "The Origin of Speech", he determined that the honeybee communication system of thewaggle dance holds the followingdesign features:
Gibbons are small apes in the family Hylobatidae. While they share the samekingdom,phylum,class, andorder of humans and are relatively close to man, Hockett distinguishes between the gibbon communication system and human language by noting that gibbons are devoid of the last four design features.
Gibbons possess the first ninedesign features, but do not possess the last four (displacement, productivity,traditional transmission, andduality of patterning).
In a report published in 1968 with anthropologist and scientist Stuart A. Altmann, Hockett derived three moreDesign Features, bringing the total to 16. These are the additional three:
Cognitive scientist and linguist at the University of SussexLarry Trask offered an alternative term and definition for number 14,Prevarication:
Chomsky theorized that humans are unique in the animal world because of their ability to utilize Design Feature 5: Total Feedback, or recursive grammar. This includes being able to correct oneself and insert explanatory or even non sequitur statements into a sentence, without breaking stride, and keeping proper grammar throughout.[citation needed]
While there have been studies attempting to disprove Chomsky, Marcus states that, "An intriguing possibility is that the capacity to recognize recursion might be found only in species that can acquire new patterns of vocalization, for example, songbirds, humans and perhaps some cetaceans."[citation needed] This is in response to astudy performed by psychologist Timothy Gentner of the University of California at San Diego. Gentner's study found that starling songbirds use recursive grammar to identify “odd” statements within a given “song.” However, the study does not necessarily debunk Chomsky's observation because it has not yet been proven that songbirds have the semantic ability to generalize from patterns.
There is also thought that symbolic thought is necessary for grammar-based speech, and thus Homo Erectus and all preceding “humans” would have been unable to comprehend modern speech. Rather, their utterances would have been halting and even quite confusing to us, today.
The[1]: Phonetics Laboratory Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics published the following chart, detailing how Hockett's (and Altmann's) Design Features fit into other forms of communication, in animals:
| Feature | Crickets | Bee dancing | Western meadowlark song | Gibbon calls | Signing apes | Alex, a grey parrot | Paralinguistic phenomena | Human sign languages | Spoken language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vocal-Auditory Channel | Auditory, not vocal | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rapid Fading | Yes (repeating) | ? | Yes | Yes (repeating) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Interchangeability | Limited | Limited | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Largely Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Total Feedback | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Specialization | Yes? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes? | Yes | Yes |
| Semanticity | No? | Yes | In Part | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes? | Yes | Yes |
| Arbitrariness | ? | No | If semantic, Yes | Yes | Largely Yes | Yes | In Part | Largely Yes | Yes |
| Discreteness | Yes? | No | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Largely No | Yes | Yes |
| Displacement | – | Yes, always | ? | No | Yes | No | In Part | Yes, often | Yes, often |
| Productivity | No | Yes | ? | No | Debatable | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Traditional Transmission | No? | Probably not | ? | ? | Limited | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Duality of Patterning | ? | No | ? | No (Cotton-top Tamarin: Yes) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Prevarication | – | – | – | – | Yes | No | – | Yes | Yes |
| Reflexiveness | – | – | – | – | No? | No | – | Yes | Yes |
| Learnability | – | – | – | – | Yes | Yes | – | Yes | Yes |
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