NYT Obiturary for Charles F. Hockett

[Richard J Senghas]

Dear collueagues (and apologies for the cross-posting)

I thought I should pass this New York Times obituary of Charles F. Hockett
on to you all.

Has anyone considered submitting an obituary of Hockett for the
Anthropology News? If you are interested, please contact me as soon as
possible. As a contributing editor for AN, I can help facilitate the
submission, if AN hasn't received one already.

-Richard

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Charles Hockett, Linguist With an Anthropological View, Dies at 84
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/13/national/13HOCK.html

November 13, 2000

By MARGALIT FOX

Charles F. Hockett, one of the last great champions of structural
linguistics, an approach to the study of language upstaged by the
"Chomsky Revolution" of the 1950's, died Nov. 3 at the Cayuga
Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 84 and lived in Ithaca.

 Before his retirement in 1982, Dr. Hockett was the Goldwin Smith
Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at Cornell University.
His many books included "A Course in Modern Linguistics" (1955),
which remained the standard introductory work for nearly two
decades, and the anthropology text "Man's Place in Nature" (1973).

 Dr. Hockett, whose goatee and deliberate manner of speaking
contributed to his professorial mien, was one of the most prominent
linguists of the post-World War II era, recognized for his
meticulous analyses of languages from Chinese to Fijian to
Potawatomi, a lifework he once described as "anthropology wrapped
around linguistics." He was later known for his stinging criticism
of Chomskyan linguistics, which he called "a theory spawned by a
generation of vipers."

 Until the late 1950's, structural linguistics held sway as the
field's reigning methodology. Closely allied with behavioral
psychology, it viewed language as a social phenomenon and the
linguist's task as the compilation of minutely detailed grammatical
inventories of individual languages.

 But in 1957 the young linguist Noam Chomsky redirected the course
of the field from behavior to biology, arguing that human language
ability is the product of an innate, universal cognitive faculty.
The task of the linguist, then, should be to characterize this
inborn faculty by means of abstract, quasi-mathematical rules. Dr.
Chomsky's work, originally known as transformational-generative
grammar, continues to be the dominant force in linguistics.

 Dr. Hockett, however, remained a lifelong adherent of
structuralism, lamenting what he viewed as the Chomskyans' ripping
of language from its social context. "In the form of an aphorism
that paraphrases Stalin and Einstein," he wrote in 1979,
"linguistics without anthropology is sterile; anthropology without
linguistics is blind."

 Charles Francis Hockett was born Jan. 17, 1916, in Columbus, Ohio,
where his father, Homer Carey Hockett, taught American history at
Ohio State University. Charles entered Ohio State in 1932 at the
age of 16, receiving his B.A. and M.A. in ancient history jointly
in 1936. He received his doctorate in 1939 from Yale, where he was
a student of the renowned linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.

 As a United States Army officer during World War II, Dr. Hockett
prepared foreign-language instructional materials for military
personnel ("In 1944 I could say `Where is the toilet?' in 28
languages," he recalled), and on returning to civilian life he
worked briefly on the American College Dictionary ("Many of the
nontechnical definitions in the B's are mine, and I am especially
proud of the entry on `bubble' "). He joined the Cornell faculty in
1946.

 Dr. Hockett is survived by his wife, the former Shirley Orlinoff,
a retired professor of mathematics at Ithaca College; his
daughters, Alpha Walker of Los Angeles, Amy Rose of Detroit, Rachel
Youngman of Cambria, Calif., and Carey Hockett of London; a son,
Asher, of Ithaca; and five grandchildren. He was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of
Science, and a past president of the Linguistic Society of America.

 In 1968, Dr. Hockett published "The State of the Art," a
book-length denunciation of the transformational grammarians.
"Their studies are as worthless as horoscopes," he told The New
Yorker in 1971. "They have rejected the scientific approach to the
study of the human mind and human behavior, and retreated into
mysticism."



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======================================================================
Richard J Senghas, Asst. Professor       | Sonoma State University
Department of Anthropology/Linguistics   | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
Coordinator, Linguistics & TESL Programs | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu               | 707-664-2312 (v); 664-3920 (fax)