Structural Linguistics

THE FOUNDING TEXT OF AMERICAN DISTRIBUTIONAL LINGUISTICS, and the book Chomsky was trained on. Copyright 1951; published 1951; this copy the SIXTH IMPRESSION, 1963. The half-title records that it was “formerly entitled METHODS IN STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS”. The preface, signed Philadelphia, January 1947, is disarmingly honest — “This book is, regrettably, not easy to read” — and acknowledges EDWARD SAPIR and LEONARD BLOOMFIELD, discussions with C. F. Voegelin and Rulon Wells, criticism from ROMAN JAKOBSON, and then this: “N. Chomsky has given much-needed assistance with the manuscript.” Harris was Chomsky’s teacher, and the shelf holds both sides of what followed.