From an epistemological perspective, Wilhelm von Humboldt's studies on the Oriental and East Asian languages and writing systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, Chinese, Polynesian) raise the question of his position in the Orientalist discourse of his time. Said [Said, E.W., 1978. "Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, fourth…

The use of the term "Creole" to refer to the Haitian language is discussed, and it is argued that "Haitian" is a more appropriate term. Psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic functions of the term are examined, including its etymological and usage history and images associated with its application in a variety of locations and…

The comments presented here were made after the presentation of four papers and commentary by two other symposium participants. They address issues in language comparison and classification. First, comments are made on the papers ("An African Test Case in Comparative Methodology,""The Mathematics of Multilateral Comparison,""Testing a Basic…

A discussion of American Sign Language looks at its history in the context of deaf education and its increasing acceptance as a complete natural language both among linguists and in the college curriculum. (MSE)

In linguistic analysis of the speech act, the data used to support theoretical conclusions are too often comprised of semantically isolated utterances of the ideal speaker-hearer. In reality, one of the most revealing kinds of data is imperfect data, where the functioning language processes are often unmasked. The study of first language…