Search results – LINGUIST

74 matches.
Item #DateTimeRecs Subject
00010191/03/2312:512572.90 Responses: Cognitive Linguistics, French
00015491/04/1712:511852.143 Responses
00054291/09/2111:391802.545 Linguist
00054791/09/2307:311092.550 Linguist
00055591/09/2511:171772.558 Linguist
00056491/09/2709:16912.567 Einstein
00058191/09/2821:311512.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change
00058691/09/2923:081402.589 Odd Plurals
00058891/09/2923:201922.591 Responses
00059191/09/3009:20922.594 Queries: Punjabi, Whorf, Text Analysis
00059791/10/0109:111312.600 ASL
00060091/10/0109:261502.603 Whorf and Plurals
00126892/04/2813:591043.372 Chomsky, Human Subjects
00134292/05/3016:413883.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris
00168392/10/1709:291183.784 Unification vs Constraints
00188092/12/1109:39743.977 Jobs: France, Los Alamos
00221693/04/2109:192364.286 Sum: Arabic MT and Text-to-Speech
00232993/05/2422:431024.392 Calls for papers: Language pedagogy, Afroasiatic
00252193/07/2911:283214.590 Conference: Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition
00265093/09/1815:321484.719 The Linguistic Wars: Ross, Syllabi
00272493/10/0408:04764.793 Second Conference On Afroasiatic Languages
00335794/03/2106:421825.310 Mainstream Linguistics
00337894/03/2207:092225.331 Mainstream Linguistics
00340594/03/2608:495075.537 Mainstream Linguistics
00341894/03/2809:324435.370 Last posting: Mainstream linguistics
00359694/05/1310:522785.545 Confs: ICCS'94 Advance Program
00364594/05/2412:141305.606 Sound symbolism
00368294/06/0208:212825.621 Confs: ICCS'94 Second Notice
00382994/07/0706:051275.780 Pinker's book, Quantum physics
00391794/08/0315:012185.868 Confs: ICCS'94
00431894/11/0923:231865.1265 Linguistics as "science"
00435594/11/1600:25735.1302 Linguistics and Acculturation
00436094/11/1610:34715.1302 Linguistics and Acculturation
00448394/12/1009:311375.1426 Varia: +/- animate pronouns, "Mazel tov", Lang and thinking
00487495/02/2616:413336.304 Sum: Discussion of human and non-human language
00497895/03/2120:173006.407 Fun
00541295/06/2212:271226.833, Sum: Dislocations
00542695/06/2222:552396.847, FYI: Call for Reviewers, Cognitive Science Reports
00572895/08/2216:162876.1149, Disc: Sapir-Whorf and what to tell students these days
00580895/09/1009:101026.1228, Qs: PhD programs, IPA, Relativity
00584595/09/1917:171396.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure
00586095/09/2101:21105Computational Linguistics,Linguistic Inquiry
00586195/09/2107:34816.1285, Disc: Einstein & Saussure, Re: 6.1270
00589895/09/2721:59826.1322, Disc: Teaching as a prestigious occupation?
00590495/09/2913:331416.1328, Disc: Teaching as a prestigious occupation?
00610295/10/3118:341206.1526, Confs: Comparative Linguistics
00623495/11/2511:012016.1659, Disc: Teaching/ Learning
00657396/02/0808:441757.206, Disc: Linguistics & Millennium, Re: vol-7-102
00659196/02/1211:161037.224, Qs: Slow Speech, Sicilian & Venetian, Nucleus Placement
00661896/02/1614:131007.251, FYI: Phonetics fonts, List of Language Lists
00690596/04/1210:193107.538, Sum: Reading after Whorf's "Language, Mind and Reality"
00690696/04/1210:403547.539, Confs: 3rd International Conference on HPSG (HPSG 96)
00691496/04/1310:154317.547, Confs: HPSG '96
00693396/04/1609:522327.566, Confs: AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES
00697096/04/2322:037547.603, Confs: Computational Linguistics
00700296/04/3009:375777.635, Sum: Language and Violence
00702796/05/0513:441517.660, Disc: Ungrammaticality
00707396/05/1611:024147.706, Disc: Ungrammatical Sentences
00714896/05/2909:491527.780, Disc: Lg & dreams, Unabomber, -y
00779296/10/1321:272117.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book
00781096/10/1708:185727.1451, Review: F. J. Newmeyer (1996) by R. A. Harris
00787296/10/2616:411547.1513, Disc: Natural language
00792696/11/0607:582187.1567, Confs: Workshop on Definites, Sentence Processing
00800896/11/2310:181597.1650, FYI: Cognitive Science intro text
00813196/12/1412:411627.1773, FYI: Liverpool Working Papers in Applied Lx
00823197/01/1713:105028.39, Sum: Myths in linguistics
00875597/04/2011:0712648.551, Confs: 35th Annual Meeting of ACL
00877997/04/2312:323078.575, Disc: Falsifiability in OT
00892297/05/1411:351558.718, All: In Memoriam: Paulo Freire
00913897/06/2623:561208.934, Qs: Deixis, Renumber Program, Old Indian Lx
00948297/09/0809:563918.1277, Review: Yngve: From Grammar to Science
00961497/10/0219:345708.1409, Disc: Author's reply to Review of Yngve 1996
00967897/10/1215:322618.1473, Disc: Discussion of Yngve Review
00975397/10/2916:211628.1549, Qs: Socio-ling theory,Lang purism,Possessives
Item #101 (23 Mar 1991 12:51) - 2.90 Responses: Cognitive Linguistics, French
 1) Re Popper and testability and aall that stuff. A quote fromquote from
Einstein shows he is no Popperian but I would doubt that anyone questions
his scientific credentials:

Item #154 (17 Apr 1991 12:51) - 2.143 Responses
 Intuition is a hypothesis to test and support or refute. Obviously
intuition is a personal experience - Einstein's intuition that "time"
varied according to personal viewpoint was greatly at odds with the

Item #542 (21 Sep 1991 11:39) - 2.545 Linguist
 There are also obviously clear negative cases, though very
uninteresting ones. Einstein wasn't a linguist.

Item #547 (23 Sep 1991 07:31) - 2.550 Linguist
Michael Kak asserts that "Einstein wasn't a linguist" counts as a
totally uncontroversial and therefore uninteresting statement. But
I read somewhere that the theory of relativity was inspired in part
by Einstein's contacts with a Swiss scholar who introduced him to the
concept of dialectal variation. Maybe not so uninteresting ...

Item #555 (25 Sep 1991 11:17) - 2.558 Linguist
 From: Nancy L. Dray <dray@sapir.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Einstein and linguists

From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@ccb.bbn.com>
Subject: Einstein the linguist

From: Nancy L. Dray <dray@sapir.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Einstein and linguists


In re Geoffrey Russom's 21 Sept note concerning Einstein's contacts
with linguists (branching off from the discussion about what counts
him to the concept of dialectal variation" mentioned by Russom, but
my understanding is that Einstein did have some contact with Roman
Jakobson at some point; however, I can't remember specifics about
the nature of the contact or any role it may have played in the
development of the theories of either Einstein or Jakobson. As it
happens, my brother and sister-in-law are both "relativists" (yes,
relativity call themselves...), and at their wedding a few years ago
the guests happened to include both the editor of Einstein's letters
and the editor of Jakobson's letters. I remember that there was a
conversation between the two editors about some sort of connection
between Einstein and Jakobson, but I don't remember the content.
If Linda Waugh is hooked up to the network, perhaps she can provide
From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@ccb.bbn.com>
Subject: Einstein the linguist


>Michael Ka[c] asserts that "Einstein wasn't a linguist" counts as a
>totally uncontroversial and therefore uninteresting statement. But
>I read somewhere that the theory of relativity was inspired in part
>by Einstein's contacts with a Swiss scholar who introduced him to the
>concept of dialectal variation. Maybe not so uninteresting ...

Zellig Harris's wife, a physicist, was Einstein's assistant at
Princeton.

Item #564 (27 Sep 1991 09:16) - 2.567 Einstein
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: 2.567 Einstein


Subject: 2.567 Einstein

From: Ralf Thiede <FEN00RT1@UNCCVM.BITNET>
Subject: Einstein


Re: Einstein the Linguist

The anecdote about Einstein getting the idea of relativity from
linguistics is reported in "The Sound Shape of Language" by
Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh, p. 17. Einstein lodged with
Winteler when he (Einstein) was a student. Winteler, a phonologist
who worked on Swiss German, developed a concept called "situational
From: Ralf Thiede <FEN00RT1@UNCCVM.BITNET>
Subject: Einstein

I think Einstein has graduated to a new topic in our discussion, which is
timely because of the current discussion on cultural differences and lan-
guage variation. Geoffrey Russom's recollection that Einstein had some
contact and conversations with a Swiss linguist on "dialectal variation"
and Nancy L. Dray's anecdote on the two letter editors of Einstein and
Roman Jakobson discussing a connection during a party are intriguing. So
far, I think it has been assumed that it was the widespread acceptance of
Einstein's Theory of Relativity which influenced similar observations in
linguistics (to wit: the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis"). For example, at the
Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster, I studied with Helmut Gipper, whose office
sported an oversized poster of Einstein and who formulated an explicit
link between the principle of relativity in theoretical physics and a

Now what if the hints on Einstein's contacts with linguistics can be con-
densed to allow the speculation that the influence was exactly the other
way around, namely, that there was some sort of principle of relativity in
linguistics first before Einstein came up with a similar one in physics?
Anyone who looks at Einstein's letter exchanges, writings, biographies will
not fail to be impressed by the limitless diversity of his interests. Just
look through the index of Nathan and Norden's _Einstein on Peace_. Gipper
himself pointed out that the so-called "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis could also

Is anyone aware of any influence of 'Humboldtian' thought on Einstein?

Item #581 (28 Sep 1991 21:31) - 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change


Subject: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change

From: "Alan Prince" <prince@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.567 Einstein

From: "Michael Kac" <kac@cs.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.567 Einstein

From: "Alan Prince" <prince@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.567 Einstein

From: "Michael Kac" <kac@cs.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.567 Einstein

Ralf Thiede alludes to Einstein's having come up with the principle of
relativity. That's false: the principle had been in physics for a long
time (was due, I think, to Newton in fact). What Einstein did was to
resolve certain contradictions in Newtonian physics by abandoning the

Item #586 (29 Sep 1991 23:08) - 2.589 Odd Plurals
 "VAXen" sounds okay, although I don't use it, since I tend to think of "VAX"
as something that can't be pluralized, like the Einsteinian concepts of "time"
and "space" (i.e., "times" and "spaces" being different semantically).

Item #588 (29 Sep 1991 23:20) - 2.591 Responses
 From: valis@Athena.MIT.EDU
Subject: 2.588 Einstein

From: valis@Athena.MIT.EDU
Subject: 2.588 Einstein

> From: "Michael Kac" <kac@cs.umn.edu>
> Subject: Re: 2.567 Einstein
>
> Ralf Thiede alludes to Einstein's having come up with the principle of
> relativity. That's false: the principle had been in physics for a long

Item #591 (30 Sep 1991 09:20) - 2.594 Queries: Punjabi, Whorf, Text Analysis
 From: "Michael Kac" <kac@cs.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change

From: "Michael Kac" <kac@cs.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change

Item #597 (1 Oct 1991 09:11) - 2.600 ASL
Re Einstein and the origins of the Principle of Relativity: My own checking
of sources causes me to agree with John O'Neill that the idea should be cre-

Item #600 (1 Oct 1991 09:26) - 2.603 Whorf and Plurals
 From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.edu
Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change

From: KINGSTON@cs.umass.edu
Subject: Re: 2.588 Responses: Whorf, Einstein, Change

Item #1268 (28 Apr 1992 13:59) - 3.372 Chomsky, Human Subjects
 know how widely cited are such people as Copernicus, Galileo,
Einstein, Margaret Mead, etc., whose ideas seem intuitively
to have been much more influential.

Item #1342 (30 May 1992 16:41) - 3.445 A Tribute to Zellig Harris
 His wife was a physicist at the University of Jerusalem, and had been
Albert Einstein's assistant at Princeton. A brother was an immunologist
(he is an author of some of the work analyzed in the 1989 book). He

Item #1683 (17 Oct 1992 09:29) - 3.784 Unification vs Constraints
 I am inclined to agree with John Coleman (LINGUIST 3-759) re. terminology.
Theory labels are often misleading (Darwinian and Einsteinian theory are
certainly not the only theories of evolution and relativity, respectively,

Item #1880 (11 Dec 1992 09:39) - 3.977 Jobs: France, Los Alamos
 CNRS-LLAOR
250, rue Albert Einstein
06560 Valbonne

Item #2216 (21 Apr 1993 09:19) - 4.286 Sum: Arabic MT and Text-to-Speech
 CNRS-LLAOR
250, rue Albert Einstein
06560 Valbonne France

Item #2329 (24 May 1993 22:43) - 4.392 Calls for papers: Language pedagogy, Afroasiatic
 LLAOR
250, rue A. Einstein
06560 Sophia Antipolis

Item #2521 (29 Jul 1993 11:28) - 4.590 Conference: Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition
C. Carrithers & B. Weinstein (Rutgers) & C. Patrie (Gallaudet)
Deaf spellers do NOT learn English spelling as a second

Item #2650 (18 Sep 1993 15:32) - 4.719 The Linguistic Wars: Ross, Syllabi
 For examples, look at how physical scientists and mathematicians treat
old classic work, e.g. Newton, Einstein, Go"del, in textbooks (both
graduate and undergraduate).

Item #2724 (4 Oct 1993 08:04) - 4.793 Second Conference On Afroasiatic Languages
 CNRS-LLAOR
250, rue Albert Einstein
06560 Sophia Antipolis

Item #3357 (21 Mar 1994 06:42) - 5.310 Mainstream Linguistics
 "why are these 'generalizations' so important"? Of course they are not
God-Given -- but as Einstein put it for physics "the structure of the theory
is the work of reason; the empirical contents and their mutual relations

Item #3378 (22 Mar 1994 07:09) - 5.331 Mainstream Linguistics
 >"why are these 'generalizations' so important"? Of course they are not
>God-Given -- but as Einstein put it for physics " the empirical contents
>and their mutual relations must find their representation in the conclusions

Item #3405 (26 Mar 1994 08:49) - 5.537 Mainstream Linguistics
 physics. Sorry to keep quoting authorities but sometimes it helps to
quote from an Einstein so noone can object to a statement as simply
another one of those 'formalist' views. So a few more quotes from AE:

Item #3418 (28 Mar 1994 09:32) - 5.370 Last posting: Mainstream linguistics
 With all due respect to my former mentor, and despite my joy in
seeing her quote Einstein for contemporary linguists, it's
unfortunate that she equates *hypothesis* with *principle*, as
not." A hypothesis is a guess, pure and simple, which can be
tested/falsified, while principles, as in the Einstein quotation,
"serve as the starting point of deductions" or hypotheses.
principle to be either valid or invalid; it can only lead (eventually)
to useful or non-useful results. Einstein's principle of relativity
led to useful results; Whorf's analogous principle of linguistic
seriously as a principle. (Then again, physicists never called
Einstein's famous statement the "Einstein Hypothesis").

>Sorry to keep quoting authorities but sometimes it helps
>to quote from an Einstein so no one can object to a statement
>as simply another one of those `formalist' views. So a few more
There are several points worthy of comment here. To begin with,
it is important to note that the decision to quote Einstein in the con-
text of the formalist/functionalist debate invites an implicature which

Fromkin's quote of Einstein implicitly assumes that when Einstein refers
to a "formal" theory he may properly be interpreted as referring to a

Item #3596 (13 May 1994 10:52) - 5.545 Confs: ICCS'94 Advance Program
 RETURN BY JULY 15, 1994 TO:
Johanna Weinstein
UMIACS

Item #3645 (24 May 1994 12:14) - 5.606 Sound symbolism
 American intellectuals and other systems thinkers to compare
worldviews. David Bohm, a co-worker with Einstein, was the
sparkplug for these meetings, and (as he told me in a private

Item #3682 (2 Jun 1994 08:21) - 5.621 Confs: ICCS'94 Second Notice
 RETURN BY JULY 15, 1994 TO:
Johanna Weinstein
UMIACS

Item #3829 (7 Jul 1994 06:05) - 5.780 Pinker's book, Quantum physics
 of time held by Newton, and by your your typical representative of whatever one
wants to call the cultural stream to which he belongs. Einstein's relativity,
which is partly compatibible with quantum mechanics but is an independent idea,
respects. But I doubt that many physicists would call this intuition a
_linguistic_ construct, even if they knew any linguistics. Einsteinian time
differs insignificantly from Newtonian time in situations where no relative

Item #3917 (3 Aug 1994 15:01) - 5.868 Confs: ICCS'94
 RETURN TO:
Johanna Weinstein
UMIACS

Item #4318 (9 Nov 1994 23:23) - 5.1265 Linguistics as "science"
Whorf took one step, in transforming Einstein's relativity principle
from the more limited geometry focus to the larger focus of human

[N7] Einstein also had the larger language issues in mind, which he
talked about in a 1941 radio speech ("What is it that brings about such

Item #4355 (16 Nov 1994 00:00) - 5.1302 Linguistics and Acculturation
To coin a phrase that sums it up (with apologies to Albert Einstein):

Item #4360 (16 Nov 1994 10:34) - 5.1302 Linguistics and Acculturation
To coin a phrase that sums it up (with apologies to Albert Einstein):

Item #4483 (10 Dec 1994 09:31) - 5.1426 Varia: +/- animate pronouns, "Mazel tov", Lang and thinking
 relative pronouns (emphasis added below) referring back to "Coke" (as she has
been nicknamed by Kennedy Vet Port director Dr. Steven Weinstein) and a fellow
canine mentioned in the write-up in the Times:
Fortunately for the dog, WHICH is gray and white and about two feet high,
none of the condoms had ruptured, which [Dr. Weinstein] said would have been
fatal.

Item #4874 (26 Feb 1995 16:41) - 6.304 Sum: Discussion of human and non-human language
 here, science fiction being often very useful for such 'thought-experi-
ments' in the Einsteinian sense. H. Beam Piper, who while definitely not
PC was brilliant, wrote a story called 'Naudsonce' (pp. 57-112 in the col-

Item #4978 (21 Mar 1995 20:17) - 6.407 Fun
) Albert Einstein:
) Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the

Item #5412 (22 Jun 1995 12:27) - 6.833, Sum: Dislocations
 From aaa552@agora.ulaval.ca
Subject /graviton/einstein/aaa552/mail/bb

Item #5426 (22 Jun 1995 22:55) - 6.847, FYI: Call for Reviewers, Cognitive Science Reports
 Aravind K. Joshi
Scott Weinstein
IRCS-95-01

Our original paper (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein, 1983) on centering claimed
that certain entities mentioned in an utterance were more central than others
claims has been in wide circulation since 1986. This draft (Grosz, Joshi, and
Weinstein 1986, hereafter, GJW86) has led to a number of papers by others on
this topic and has been extensively cited, but has never been published.
Eric Rosen
Scott Weinstein
IRCS-95-04

Item #5728 (22 Aug 1995 16:16) - 6.1149, Disc: Sapir-Whorf and what to tell students these days
 Next: what does Whorf's "linguistic relativity principle" have to do, if
anything, with Einstein's "relativity principle" (which I covered in my
also BLS, 1980?, paper, "Is Whorf's Relativity Einstein's Relativity?").
Ah, now we've gotten to the crux of it -- much against Pinker's stand
well was Nootka in the Pacific Northwest rather than Apache in the
beachless desert), Whorf was upping the ante on Einstein, who argued that
Euclidian geometry, far from being UNIVERSAL, was applicable only to flat
this century; 3) Whorf's relativity principle had something important to
do with Einstein's; and 4) Whorf was a universalist as well as a
relativist -- he just had them in balance, a notable enough rarity in

Item #5808 (10 Sep 1995 09:10) - 6.1228, Qs: PhD programs, IPA, Relativity
 Dear Linguists, not long ago a friend asked me whether I had heard
or seen anything linking Albert Einstein's theory of Relativity
with his ruminations on Saussure while strolling through a museum
gotten this idea. Perhaps we were dreaming. Perhaps not. Can any-
one help with a citation linking Einstein and Saussure in any way?
Thanks for your help.

Item #5845 (19 Sep 1995 17:17) - 6.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure


Subject: 6.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure

From: DOUGLASO@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Subject: sum: Einstein and Saussure

From: DOUGLASO@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Subject: sum: Einstein and Saussure

Dear Friends, a few days ago I posted a query concerning Einstein and
Saussure. Other than notes from those also interested in the question, I
Dear Linguists, not long ago a friend asked me whether I had heard or seen
anything linking Albert Einstein's theory of Relativity with his
ruminations on Saussure while strolling through a museum in Paris, I
Perhaps we were dreaming. Perhaps not. Can anyone help with a citation
linking Einstein and Saussure in any way? Thanks for your help.
douglaso@citrus.ucr.edu
an issue of Scientific American, there was an article by Jakobson about
Einstein, which said that Einstein, when a student in Switzerland, had
lived in a house with Jost Winteler, a Swiss linguist who believed in
canton. Jakobson suggested that Winteler's interest in linguistic
relativity may have contributed to Einstein's theory of physical
relativity.

I don't have a direct link between Einstein and Saussure, but you might
be interested in an indirect link. At the 1952 International Symposium on
Anthropology, Roman Jakobson opened his remarks with comments on the
concept of relativity in two books published in 1916, one by Einstein
[General Theory of Relativity, D. Oliver] and the other Saussure's _Cours_.
**Actually, I've found from the leads above that Jakobson discussed
Einstein in several articles and presentations. Jost Winteler comes into
most of them.
schoolteacher (Jakobson 1972:75)." But this does not tell us about the
ideas that had so taken Einstein. To do this, I will give a somewhat more
lengthy quote from Jakobson:

Till the last of his days, Einstein remembered Winteler fondly and
acknowledged him as a primary source for some of his own insights. I will
interested. I feel that these references are all interesting and well
worth reading for anyone interested in Einstein and linguistics. --Douglas
Oliver
American Scholar 1971-72 (winter): 95-110. (This article talks of
Einstein's time spent in Switzerland, among other things.)


- ---. 1985. "Einstein and the Science of Language." In Roman Jakobson:
Selected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 254-264. The Hague: Mouton. (Presented at
the Einstein Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem, March 16, 1979, and
published in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. G.
Holton and Y. Elkana (Princeton, 1982).)

P.S. I have found a number of sources in which Einstein and Saussure are
mentioned in the same breath, so to speak, but never directly linking them.

Item #5860 (21 Sep 1995 01:21) - Computational Linguistics,Linguistic Inquiry
 A. Joshi, Local Coherence of Discourse
S. Weinstein

Item #5861 (21 Sep 1995 07:34) - 6.1285, Disc: Einstein & Saussure, Re: 6.1270
 From: The Linguist List <linguist@tam2000.tamu.edu>
Subject: 6.1285, Disc: Einstein & Saussure, Re: 6.1270


Subject: 6.1285, Disc: Einstein & Saussure, Re: 6.1270

From: morpurgo@vax.ox.ac.uk (ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES)
Subject: RE: 6.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure

From: morpurgo@vax.ox.ac.uk (ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES)
Subject: RE: 6.1270, Sum: Einstein and Saussure

For Jakobson's view that Einstein's relativity theory was
influenced by Winteler, the Swiss dialectologist, it is
As a physicist who sometimes sees bits of the Linguist List, courtesy
of his wife, I was surprised to hear that "Einstein ... acknowledged
[Winteler] as a primary source for some of his own insights." Perhaps
he did do this, but I am inclined to suppose that some offhand and
generous comment by Einstein has been exaggerated by a
Winteler-booster.
The reason for this suspicion is that the basic notion that "things can
be relative" was not one of Einstein's insights. It has been present
in physics since Galileo; Einstein's contributions were some much more
specific ideas. The Special Theory _of_ Relativity was a novel theory
like to warn against the temptation, offered by the perhaps misleading
titles of Einstein's theories, to construe relativism, plain and
simple, as the fount of modern physics. Associates of Einstein with
relativistic ideas in other fields are thus not thereby likely to have

Item #5898 (27 Sep 1995 21:59) - 6.1322, Disc: Teaching as a prestigious occupation?
 A couple of weeks ago there was some discussion on the List about the
possible influence of Saussure on the development of Einstein's theory of
relativity. I admit that after the first couple of postings or so i
Jakobson was quoted fairly extensively, and one statement caught my eye.
Speaking of a possible vehicle for Sausure --> Einstein influence, a
friend/roomate? of Einstein's who was a student of Saussure's, Jakobson
said that, although the fellow was brilliant, his ideas were unfortunate-

Item #5904 (29 Sep 1995 13:33) - 6.1328, Disc: Teaching as a prestigious occupation?
 >A couple of weeks ago there was some discussion on the List about the
>possible influence of Saussure on the development of Einstein's theory of
>relativity. I admit that after the first couple of postings or so i
>Jakobson was quoted fairly extensively, and one statement caught my eye.
>Speaking of a possible vehicle for Sausure --> Einstein influence, a
>friend/roomate? of Einstein's who was a student of Saussure's, Jakobson
>said that, although the fellow was brilliant, his ideas were unfortunate-
precious little or no opportunity to present or discuss their scholarly
work in the classroom. Not as bad a situation as Einstein himself
perhaps, working as a patent office clerk, but clearly not the canonically

Item #6102 (31 Oct 1995 18:34) - 6.1526, Confs: Comparative Linguistics
9:30 - 12:00, Session 1, Issues in Sampling Procedure, Mark Feinstein,
Hampshire College, chair

Item #6234 (25 Nov 1995 11:01) - 6.1659, Disc: Teaching/ Learning
 Gymnasium students, and certainly not because anything to do with
Einstein. What kind of intellectual caviar was that?? I understand
why he is not envied, though he may have made peace with his

Item #6573 (8 Feb 1996 08:44) - 7.206, Disc: Linguistics & Millennium, Re: vol-7-102
 conceptualized and discussed in German linguistics in the 1800s before
Einstein appropriated it in simplified form for physics and mathematical
languages, and then Whorf reestablished it in linguistics for human
languages with Einsteinian rephrasing in order to make it more rigorous,
or 'scientific', for linguists -- who then mostly spurned it, not knowing

Item #6591 (12 Feb 1996 11:16) - 7.224, Qs: Slow Speech, Sicilian & Venetian, Nucleus Placement
 Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 17:35:15 MST
From: gracem@einstein.com.ar ("graciela moyano")
Subject: nucleus placement
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 17:35:15 MST
From: gracem@einstein.com.ar ("graciela moyano")
Subject: nucleus placement

Item #6618 (16 Feb 1996 14:13) - 7.251, FYI: Phonetics fonts, List of Language Lists
 Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:15:02 MST
From: gracem@einstein.com.ar ("Graciela Moyano")
Subject: Phonetics fonts
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:15:02 MST
From: gracem@einstein.com.ar ("Graciela Moyano")
Subject: Phonetics fonts

Item #6905 (12 Apr 1996 10:19) - 7.538, Sum: Reading after Whorf's "Language, Mind and Reality"
Alford, Dan Moonhawk, "Is Whorf's Relativity Einstein's Relativity?",
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics

Item #6906 (12 Apr 1996 10:40) - 7.539, Confs: 3rd International Conference on HPSG (HPSG 96)
 Bank name: Tresorerie Generale Nice
Bank address: 250 Av. Albert Einstein, F-06560 Valbonne
Position code: 06000

Item #6914 (13 Apr 1996 10:15) - 7.547, Confs: HPSG '96
 Bank name: Tresorerie Generale Nice
Bank address: 250 Av. Albert Einstein, F-06560 Valbonne
Position code: 06000

Item #6933 (16 Apr 1996 09:52) - 7.566, Confs: AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES
 Conference site will be located on the CNRS campus, Building 4, 250 rue
Albert Einstein.

Item #6970 (23 Apr 1996 22:03) - 7.603, Confs: Computational Linguistics
 Segmentation and Labelling of Slovenian Diphone Inventories
Clifford Weinstein, Dinesh Tummala, Young-Suk Lee, Stephanie Seneff
Automatic English-to-Korean Text Translation of Telegraphic Messages

Item #7002 (30 Apr 1996 09:37) - 7.635, Sum: Language and Violence
Taylor, Anita & Judi Beinstein Miller Conflict and Gender Hampton Press 1994
Elgin, Suzette Haden You cant say that to me! Wiley 1994
Elgin You Can't intro, step 1
Taylor & Beinstein intros & 1
Week 3
Elgin You Can't step 2,3
Taylor & Beinstein 2
Week 4
Elgin You Can't step 4,5
Taylor & Beinstein 3,4
Week 5
Elgin You Can't step 6,7
Taylor & Beinstein intro & 5
Week 6
Elgin You Can't step 8
Taylor & Beinstein 6,7
Week 7
Elgin Staying Well chap 1,2
Taylor & Beinstein 8,9
Week 8
Elgin Staying Well chap 3,4
Taylor & Beinstein intro & 10
Week 9
Elgin Staying Well chap 5,6
Taylor & Beinstein 11,12
Week 10
Elgin Staying Well chap 7
Taylor & Beinstein 13,14
Week 11

First Taylor/Beinstein

Prentice Hall 1990
Taylor, Anita & Judi Beinstein Miller Conflict and Gender Hampton Press 1994
Tickner, J. Ann Gender in International Relations; Feminist perspectives on

Item #7027 (5 May 1996 13:44) - 7.660, Disc: Ungrammaticality
 the nature of the physical universe. But localizing grammars in the
brain/mind makes no more sense than localizing Einstein's equations in
the ether. It's this reification of grammar that we may one day

Item #7073 (16 May 1996 11:02) - 7.706, Disc: Ungrammatical Sentences
 relativity has a counterpart in physics. The concept of invariance is
central to Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein's theory of
relativity is concerned with finding out things that remain invariant

Item #7148 (29 May 1996 09:49) - 7.780, Disc: Lg & dreams, Unabomber, -y
 rest of life? Quantum physics demands something like 'the Old
Language' in order for the entire universe to work (see the Einstein-
Podolsky-Rosen experiment & Bell's Theory). As the 1992-96 Fetzer

Item #7792 (13 Oct 1996 21:27) - 7.1433, Sum: Cognitive science intro book
 Stillings, Neil A., Weisler, Steven, E. Chase, C. H.,
Feinstein, M. H., Garfield, J. L, & Fissland, E. L. 1995.
_Cognitive Science: An Introduction_ 2nd edition. Cambridge,

Item #7810 (17 Oct 1996 08:18) - 7.1451, Review: F. J. Newmeyer (1996) by R. A. Harris
 Holton, Gerald. 1988. Thematic origins of scientific thought: Kepler to
Einstein. Revised edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Item #7872 (26 Oct 1996 16:41) - 7.1513, Disc: Natural language
I'm glad this was brought up, since this was Einstein's basic
LINGUISTIC point in his principle of relativity (which was not lost on

Item #7926 (6 Nov 1996 07:58) - 7.1567, Confs: Workshop on Definites, Sentence Processing
 Innovationskolleg entitled "Sentence Processing" which will take place
from 7 through 9 November 1996, at the Einstein Forum Potsdam, Am
Neuen Markt 7, 14 467 Potsdam. Abstracts of the invited talks will be

Item #8008 (23 Nov 1996 10:18) - 7.1650, FYI: Cognitive Science intro text
Stillings, N. A., Weisler, S. E., Chase, C. H., Feinstein, M. H.,
Garfield, J. L., and Rissland, E. L. (1995). Cognitive Science:

Item #8131 (14 Dec 1996 12:41) - 7.1773, FYI: Liverpool Working Papers in Applied Lx
 Everything should be as simple as possible but no
simpler. (A Einstein)

Item #8231 (17 Jan 1997 13:10) - 8.39, Sum: Myths in linguistics
 relativity," which he named as such, which was a qualitative
rewrite of the language (of geometries) question which Einstein
dealt with in his more famous principle. As we saw recently on
Linguist, Einstein in his later life paid homage many times to
linguist Jost Winteler, a Humboldtian-trained linguist

Item #8755 (20 Apr 1997 11:07) - 8.551, Confs: 35th Annual Meeting of ACL
 Ambiguity Resolution for Machine Translation of Telegraphic Messages
Young-Suk Lee, Clifford Weinstein, Stephanie Seneff and Dinesh Tummala
Machine Transliteration

Item #8779 (23 Apr 1997 12:32) - 8.575, Disc: Falsifiability in OT
 of gravitation include Euclidean geometry and calculus. The formalisms
accompanying Einstein's theory of gravitation include Riemannian geometry
and calculus. Theories in biology and medicine do not seem to have
conceptual framework within which Newton's theory of gravitation is
formulated. Einstein's framework replaces "force" with "field". The so
called distinctive feature theory is a conceptual framework in this
preoccupied with claims of appropriateness of formalisms. If Newton and
Einstein were to make claims of the type that we linguists make, physics
will have controversies on (9) and (10):

Item #8922 (14 May 1997 11:35) - 8.718, All: In Memoriam: Paulo Freire
 prevailing social and political systems -- died on
Friday in Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paolo. He was
75 and had lived in Sao Paolo since 1981.

Item #9138 (26 Jun 1997 23:56) - 8.934, Qs: Deixis, Renumber Program, Old Indian Lx
 Institut fuer Kommunikationswissenschaft
Einsteinufer 17 Phone: ++49 30 314-26675
10587 Berlin Fax: ++49 30 314-21143

Item #9482 (8 Sep 1997 09:56) - 8.1277, Review: Yngve: From Grammar to Science
 It is questionable whether we should be happy about excluding Aristotle
and Copernicus, but the implicit claim that Einstein's theory of
relativity is a straight continuation of the permanent foundation laid by
explanation of certain phenomena. Such models are not the only possible
ones. Einstein proposed a different model for astronomy and Bresnan &
Kaplan (1982) propose a different one for linguistics. I would be curious

Item #9614 (2 Oct 1997 19:34) - 8.1409, Disc: Author's reply to Review of Yngve 1996
Also, nowhere do I claim or imply "that Einstein's theory of relativity is
a straight continuation of the permanent foundations laid by Newton's
science." In fact, nowhere in the book do I even mention Einstein or
Newton. This seems to me to be the result of conclusion jumping coming

Item #9678 (12 Oct 1997 15:32) - 8.1473, Disc: Discussion of Yngve Review
 Order_ while keeping Whorf's "An American Indian
Model of the Universe" in mind). Einstein already
proved in relativity that the language you use
Winteler, and which Whorf was trying to reclaim for
linguistics from physics. Does Einstein's insight have
no place in Yngve's science?

Item #9753 (29 Oct 1997 16:21) - 8.1549, Qs: Socio-ling theory,Lang purism,Possessives
My father was a close friend of Albert Einstein

According to my limited knowledge of English grammar,
it seems Einstein's instead of Einstein should be used.
I want to know if both are OK. If the answer is yes,