Word: whatmough
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Joshua Whatmough, professor of Comparative Philology and chairman of the Department of Linguistics, will retire at the end of this year...
...Whatmough, who is 65, has been head of the Department since it was created in 1951. A firm believer in rigorous, "scientific" linguistics, he built up the Department from its predecessor, the loosely organized department of Comparative Philology...
Under his direction, and particularly with the change in name ten years ago, the emphasis in the Department became more descriptive, methodological, and scientific. Whatmough has tried to analyze the statistical nature of language, and has applied such concepts as information theory and probability theory to language as a system of communication. His works include Language and Poetic, Scientific, and Other Forms of Discourse, which contains elaborate graphs and charts...
...always been suspicious of the "metaphysics" of language and "meta-linguistic" problems such as how much language conditions thought and influence behaviour. Whatmough has instead worked with the actual substance of language as it appears in printed text or in a recording of someone speaking...
...your issue of Saturday, October 6, the statement is made concerning the Ga language that the last study of it "was made in 1858." Actually, a grammar of Ga with notes and exercises was published at Oxford in 1930, the author being M. B. Wilkie. Joshua Whatmough, Chairman of the Department of Lingulstics...