Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-4thr5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T07:17:41.865Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Extract

Nature leads the way. Man emerges on the scene, follows her footprints, marks and registers them in language, and makes a Science of Nature. Then he looks back and discovers that Language, while following the path of Nature, has left a trail of her own. He returns on this new trail, again marks and registers its footprints, and makes a Science of Language.

The Birth of Language (1937)

The great majority of linguists in Canada today belong to only the second academic generation of linguists in Canadian universities. Members of the first generation are, of course, still active—in some cases more active than the younger members of their departments. They are characterized, roughly, as founding members of the Canadian Linguistic Association, or as members of long standing. They are also characterized in a few cases as having been the teachers of junior members of the profession, although this is less often the case than it is in other disciplines, partly because there have been very few graduate programs in Linguistics until recently, and partly because there has been little demand for linguists trained in the specialty of the first generation anyway, which is almost unanimously dialect geography, and partly because there has been a decided tendency toward hiring non-Canadians in the social sciences to fill positions in Canadian universities. Now, with the increase in graduate programs in Linguistics, the more diverse specializations, and the national consciousness that Canadian universities can also be served by Canadians, the third generation of linguists will increasingly be selected from the students of the present academic generation, which is how academic generations have been gauged in other cultures for centuries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Henry (1940) The Story of Our Language. NY: Thos. Nelson & Sons.Google Scholar
Alexander, Henry (1951) “The English language in Canada.” Royal Commission Studies. Ottawa: The King’s Printer, 1324.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard (1933) Language. NY: Holt, Rinehard & Winston.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger Langham (1967) Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Conception of Linguistic Relativity. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam (1959) “Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior .” Language 35: 2658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, J. A. (1961) “A Canadian sidelight on Bernard Shaw and his alphabet ‘thing.’Queen’s Quarterly LXVIII.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles F. (1960) “The origin of speech.” Scientific American 203: 8896.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hockett, Charles F. (1978) “In search of Jove’s brow.” American Speech 53: 243313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto (1925) Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin. NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar