The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Second Edition - E.M. Rickerson
You’re a linguist? How many languages do you speak?
The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Second Edition - E.M. Rickerson
Paul Chapin† [+]
Paul Chapin received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1967. After eight years on the faculty at the University of California at San Diego, he went to the National Science Foundation in 1975, where he became the first NSF Program Director for Linguistics. When he retired from the NSF in 2001, he received the Director’s Superior Accomplishment Award. That same year, the LSA awarded him the first Victoria A. Fromkin Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.
Description
People who speak multiple languages are called ‘polyglots’. Many linguists work on describing particular languages. Some linguists work at the more abstract level of linguistic theory, while others study speech or historical linguistics. Psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics are other disciplines that explore what language is about.