John A. Goldsmith

This interdisciplinary new work explores one of the central theoretical problems in linguistics: learnability. The authors, from different backgrounds---linguistics, philosophy, computer science, psychology and cognitive science-explore the idea that language acquisition proceeds through general purpose learning mechanisms, an approach that is broadly empiricist both methodologically and psychologically. For many years, the empiricist approach has been taken to be unfeasible on practical and theoretical grounds. In the book, the authors present a variety of precisely specified mathematical and computational results that show that empiricist approaches can form a viable solution to the problem of language acquisition. It assumes limited technical background and explains the fundamental principles of probability, grammatical description and learning theory in an accessible and non-technical way. Different chapters address the problem of language acquisition using different assumptions: looking at the methodology of linguistic analysis using simplicity based criteria, using computational experiments on real corpora, using theoretical analysis using probabilistic learning theory, and looking at the computational problems involved in learning richly structured grammars. Written by four researchers in the full range of relevant fields: linguistics (John Goldsmith), psychology (Nick Chater), computer science (Alex Clark), and cognitive science (Amy Perfors), the book sheds light on the central problems of learnability and language, and traces their implications for key questions of theoretical linguistics and the study of language acquisition.

“We frequently see one idea appear in one discipline as if it were new, when it migrated from another discipline, like a mole that had dug under a fence and popped up on the other side.” Taking note of this phenomenon, John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks embark on a uniquely interdisciplinary history of the genesis of linguistics, from nineteenth-century currents of thought in the mind sciences through to the origins of structuralism and the ruptures, both political and intellectual, in the years leading up to World War II. Seeking to explain where contemporary ideas in linguistics come from and how they have been justified, Battle in the Mind Fields investigates the porous interplay of concepts between psychology, philosophy, mathematical logic, and linguistics. Goldsmith and Laks trace theories of thought, self-consciousness, and language from the machine age obsession with mind and matter to the development of analytic philosophy, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, positivism, and structural linguistics, emphasizing throughout the synthesis and continuity that has brought about progress in our understanding of the human mind. Arguing that it is impossible to understand the history of any of these fields in isolation, Goldsmith and Laks suggest that the ruptures between them arose chiefly from social and institutional circumstances rather than a fundamental disparity of ideas.

With a perpetually tight job market, the road to an academic career can be a rocky and frustrating one. There are lots of questions, and this book attempts to provide good, frank answers to them. The three authors, with more than 75 years of combined academic experience, talk openly about what is good and what's not so good about academic life. The book provides information on finding a mentor, avoiding the pitfalls when writing a dissertation and negotiating job listings. The authors also discuss tough issues such as departmental politics, dual-career marriages and sexual harassment. There are also short essays that offer advice on financing graduate education, publishing your first book and leaving academia for the corporate world.

With a perpetually tight job market, the road to an academic career can be a rocky and frustrating one. There are lots of questions, and this book attempts to provide good, frank answers to them. The three authors, with more than 75 years of combined academic experience, talk openly about what is good and what's not so good about academic life. The book provides information on finding a mentor, avoiding the pitfalls when writing a dissertation and negotiating job listings. The authors also discuss tough issues such as departmental politics, dual-career marriages and sexual harassment. There are also short essays that offer advice on financing graduate education, publishing your first book and leaving academia for the corporate world.

In Ideology and Linguistic Theory Geoffrey Huck and John Goldsmith provide a revisionist account of the development of ideas about semantics in modern theories of language, focusing particularly on Chomsky's very public rift with the Generative Semanticists about the concept of Deep Structure.

In The Ideological Structure of Linguistic Theory Geoffrey J. Huck and John A. Goldsmith provide a revisionist account of the development of ideas about semantics in modern theories of language, focusing particularly on Chomsky's very public rift with the Generative Semanticists about the concept of Deep Structure.