Bored

I feel like I haven't been this depressed in a while. There is very little to be done at school... or so I've convinced myself that this is the case. I could be reading, could be sketching... doing something, but instead I sit in the apartment, bored to death and wishing I were motivated to get something done. For some reason none of my classes have really caught my inspiration, I know that Sensory Culture is everything that's right up my alley but I barely read the reading in its entirety... I haven't even looked into what's next and I definitely haven't gotten into any writing rants lately. This blog has been left to the abandoned wayside... everything in my life has seemed to just come to a halt.

Usually I'm ontop of things, deeply involved with my work and completely enthralled by this or that topic. At the beginning of this semester I thought it was "dance" that was going to take me up into a whirlwind of emotion and research... it's connected to music, but has the additional rich spatial complexities that aren't always at the forefront of the musical experience. I am still interested in understanding space in dance... but it hasn't trapped me like other things in my life.

I just can't pin it down... what has made me become like this? What has drained the enthusiasm and drive from me? I am typically concerned about my job prospects for the future... and maybe it's the multiple options that I currently have open to me... what with Grimshaw and Envision still on the table... it seems like something I shouldn't have to worry about... but deep down I know nothing is certain... especially not after the email I just sent Daria basically demanding to see the gas money they promised me... from two months ago. I know I'm right in asking for this, but I could also be losing my position... then again I'm not sure I really care... it's a crappy firm that puts down the school I go to, treats my friends bad, and acts as though LEED is the most interesting thing on the planet.... which it's definitely not.

Ahh, I hope this semester changes for the better... and soon.

- c 

only a few more nights of freedom

I can't believe tomorrow I'll be back, living in Troy again. I feel like this break has basically consisted of these two short days I've taken off from work... even though they have been filled with running errands and very little coffee. I can't wait to get back to RPI to see everyone and finally be without all of the boys... but I'm nervous about what verticals will be offered. I was so thankful when I got into Oatman's vertical, and I was really looking forward to it, but that semester was from hell. I've heard that DBell won't be going to India, and so I'm hoping he's planning on doing another awesome vertical. I really don't want to be stuck doing parametric bio-mimicry. I also can't do the PIP seminar again... I think... and I'm not sure I'd really want to I liked the people I was in PIP with at first and I don't think that could be topped again. It would also be nice if Kreuger were to do another vertical, but I haven't heard anything yet. I'll also be in his elective class so if he doesn't like me in one or the other class it could end up being a really tough semester.

Soo, I've updated the resume already... it's gone through probably five iterations since the semester ended, but I guess that's good. The portfolio is still trudging along. I'm not in love with my images or layout... I always think of what it could be if I really knew some fancy graphic design techniques, but that's not going to happen in a couple days. I also have to finish the writing portions for every project and for my design statement, anddd I think I need a few more images for the "MISC." section. This portfolio has also been a work-in-progress for over a year now, I think ever since I got back from Rome. It's been through three scale-changes, and by now, about two major layout and design changes. I think I'm liking the new color-scheme and organization a little better, but I wish I had the knowledge and patience to make better Rhinos, get better renders, and learn how to blend and organize these images in a more architectural way. I guess my work will stand-out as a more clean-lined, minimal artsy look... it does sort of stem from an artist's portfolio I saw a long time ago, but it's not quite as beautifully minimal as his. I guess I know my portfolio is at least zillions of times better than James's though.. and that thought can make me happy, especially if he's still set on doing those stupid-looking watermarks, that would just make my day. Okay, sorry that was mean, but I really, really don't like him.

It's strange not having much to say at the moment. Work kept me busy, and my mind from wandering too far into the future. It also helped settle me from worrying about money issues, and kept me from driving too much and visiting the mall and Starbucks every day. I was even thinking that I shouldn't have taken yesterday off because by 5pm I was already bored about of my mind... but it was probably a good idea over all. I still have to pack... everything haha and attempt to get up early, then pack the car and be prepared to set up everything... keeping in mind there's going to be an awesome party already Saturday night.

I'm also kind of praying this anthropology class might be exactly what I'm looking for. But I know the more and more I get my hopes set up for something, the more I'm ultimately let-down. I also kind of want to drop Structural Morphologies already... but I'm not sure if that would totally screw me over for thesis... kind of seems like it would. Yea, thinking more about it fitting in electives with required courses like Cities/Lands and Case Studies will probably end up being pretty tough, I don't want to get stuck in a tight spot with absolutely no options.

Ahh, alright well it's off to a hockey game for tonight... my final night of freedom I'll be watching RPI play Harvard and probably falling asleep without doing much more with this sad little portfolio, or advancing with anything related to packing.

- c

concrete!

I love concrete architecture... and I'm so bored right now that I just decided to find a bunch of pics of interesting conc. archiiitectures...

Berkley Art Museum [ ? ]

reminds me of something zumthor would do

this would make an awesome bar!

reminds me of the city from Inception... for some reason [ ? ]

little concrete house!

I love this museum!! ... alvaro siza

this last one is tando ando

- c

snow day!

Sooo, I just tried to escape the house on this beautiful, Wednesday snow day... but the roads are far too bad, even to attempt to get a Starbucks. Also, my sister is being a jerk to me [ as always ] so instead of going outside to shovel out the cars... I'm going to stay in and read. Here are some excerpts...  


from "the island of the fay" by poe 


... and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers


As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy -- but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. "The revolution which has just been made by the Fay," continued I, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black." 

And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over an things and I beheld her no more.




from "eleonora" 


Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before Love entered within our hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own, that we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the water of the River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the God Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burn out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory.

The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.

At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again and again, in every impressive variation of phrase.

She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom -- that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its happy recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to some maiden of the outer and everyday world. And, then and there, I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow, to herself and to Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of Earth -- that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of Him and of her, a saint in Helusion should I prove traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from her breast...




... Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Times path, formed by the death of my beloved, and proceed with the second era of my existence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and I mistrust the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on. -- Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass; but a second change had come upon all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that had been softer than the wind-harp of Aeolus, and more divine than all save the voice of Eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.

goals

Sooo, here it is! The post about goals and thoughts for next semester... super exciting, I know... oh... the suspense.

Well, I haven't had much time to think about the quickly-approaching semester... but I'm sure I can easily conjure up some fears and hestitations to write here.

[1]      one of my first goals is to go out more... my college life has been pretty boring and minimally existent ever since freshman year ended.... and after going through second year alot of those fun memories were lost [ I really feel like I have brain damage from literally NEVER sleeping second year ]. And thennn Eric came into my life and ever since that time I feel like I've been less interested in going out and drinking... buuuttt now that I could technically be graduating school [ if I had been in a four-year program ] this upcoming semester - I feel like I don't have enough awesome stories to tell or carry away with me... I think I've sucked the whole intelligence thing out of school - kind of got that under cover - now I just need the wild, crazy experiences that I can tell again and again once I leave.

[2]      figure out whether to drop an additional class now and have an awesome semester... and possibly create an overload problem during thesis... orrrr just stay in the freakin class and probably not enjoy it very much... but also probably not enjoy the options for what I would have to take to replace it in the future.

[3]      gooooo somewhere over spring break! no more staying at home for the week... that's soooo boring... I want to go somewhere - if it was entirely my choice I'd say Boston... but maybe someone else will have a good idea... I wouldn't mind some warm weather

[4]      try to keep up a good sleeping schedule... like I had for the beginning of dd - waking up early [ like 9 or 10 ] and working in studio in the am, rather than late into the night... also trying to make Saturdays free - to go home, or somewhere else, to spend time with Eric ... orrr if you see *1 above maybe to recover from a crazy Friday night!

[5]     probably the nerd trying to overcome my party-fever... but I still feel like I need to buy a GRE's study guide and maaaaybe start skimming it? I know I probably won't have time to read the thing... seeing as I tend to not even have time to read my own horoscope everyday... but it would be nice to know I've at least got the book for this thing in the bag.

[6]      pick a good vertical!

[7]      start gathering stuff for grad schools... what does each school ask for? choose three references. finish my portfoooolio [which should actually be done by now]... yadda yadda

[8]     start going to the gym!!! I need to try and workout even if it's only two or three times a week!

[9]     try to make coffee out of the kurig more than buying it on campus! [... or at starbuckss]



Okaaay, well that's about all I can say for now... whenever I think about starting the semester I think about being in Oatman's vertical. I was sooo happy to kick-off that semester - I was finally back in America with Eric again, I chose a studio with a professor I liked, I was in awesome electives.... I looked forward to that semester as if I was entering a fairytale. Anddd then it came back to bite me. Within the first week I was swamped with work... I don't think I even wrote on the blog for another month or some long period of time like that. I was depressed since the struggles of the first project and the whole semester dragged on like a horrible toothache. Sure, Enclosures, Writing, and Philosophy went well... with Writing actually also taking a turn for the worst in the last few weeks of the semester.... when my parter wasn't doing any work [ oh surprise, surprise... as if Claudio hadn't prepared me for that... and I couldn't see it coming with James]. But Philosophy ended very well - my final essay was research on a topic I truly wanted to explore and did an awesome job discussing it... Enclosures was a huuuge risk... I had chosen a weird, out-there project, and had to convince my partners of a few criteria with the idea [ that I wasn't sure would work or not ], even before presenting in the final I sat next to Katie Czub and told her they were either going to absolutely hate it, or really, really love the idea... good for me [ and my partners, too ] they loved the ideas and what we were going for in the design... Enclosures ended well. Overall though, that semester made me want to quit architecture for good. That was when I took alot of measures to talk to people about changing majors, I was in a state of crisis.... and all after believing the semester was going to run smoothly. I really can only hope this Spring will be the doppleganger of that experience.

- c

corbusier

I was just reminded of la Tourette... a monastery by Corb that I like alot... though I'd just include it in this diary anthology of all my thoughts, ideas, and the things I like.

la Tourette - le Corbusier

This is another project by Corb that I like... just found one picture of the area I find interesting.

- c

fancy schmancy

This project is almost an exact replica of the SUNY Albany dorms Tim Yiu and I designed second year. From concepts about the courtyards and circulation... down to the angled walls... its soo so similar.
 [ KAPSARC, by Zaha Hadid Architects ]

[ KAPSARC again ]

This one is the Ten Broeck Cottage... which I just love for the siding and how the bottom level is situated into the landscape. I'm not toooo crazy about the interior... but I would be interested in seeing the inside of the old house its connected to.

I want a pup..... Eric.

Another exterior view.

Residence by A-cero [ ? ].... This just looks awesome. I would definitely want to see this.

New University for Angola by Hanbury Evans... reminds me of SUNY Albany [ E. D. Stone's campus... not mine and Tim Yiu's design...], which I just love... and I appreciate this for exhibiting a similar feel... also kind of reminds me of Lincoln Center.... which I also really, really love.

Plan-view of the campus design.

Came across this one randomly, also... apparently it was another entry for KAPSARC the competition [ ? ] I'm not sure if it would be on another part of the Zaha project or if it was in competition with her entry.

Okaaay, well I'm kind of too lazy to write right now... plus the only thing I've been thinking about is how nervous I am to tell Daria I won't have time to work during the semester... [1] because I don't think she plans on leaving the office tonight [2] I was offered more work by the hospital that's due in April [3] she really likes me and probably won't very much after I tell her I don't have time .... [4] I'm kind of scared she'll just outright say "no". Also, I've been contemplating a future in anthropology... and it's alot to think about. It sounds like an amazing job... being out doing fieldwork in places from corporate America to undisturbed tribes in the rainforest. The downside is taking three years to prepare to go into the field.... living and working in the field for about two years [ possibly alone ]... and then compiling all of the notes and research for years after the fact and probably missing everything from the experience. Ohhh sailor syndrome... how you slay me.

- c

linguistic anthropology

Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use.

Whatever one calls it, this field has had a major impact in the studies of visual perception (especially colour) and bioregional democracy, both of which are concerned with distinctions that are made in languages about perceptions of the surroundings.

Conventional linguistic anthropology also has implications for sociology and self-organization of peoples. Study of the Penan people, for instance, reveals that their language employs six different and distinct words, all of whose best English translation is "we"^{[citation needed]}. Anthropological linguistics studies these distinctions, and relates them to types of societies and to actual bodily adaptation to the senses, much as it studies distinctions made in languages regarding the colours of the rainbow: seeing the tendency to increase the diversity of terms, as evidence that there are distinctions that bodies in this environment must make, leading to situated knowledge and perhaps a situated ethics, whose final evidence is the differentiated set of terms used to denote "we".

linguistics - from wiki [to read later...]

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language.^[1][2][3][4] Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields: the study of language form, of language meaning, and of language in context.

The first is the study of language structure, or grammar. This focuses on the systems of rules that are followed by speakers or a language. It encompassesmorphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words), and phonology (sound systems). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds, nonspeech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.

The study of language meaning is concerned with how language users make the inferences required to understand another's speech, how meaning is assigned and processed, and ambiguity. This subfield encompasses semantics (how meaning is inferred from words and concepts) and pragmatics (how meaning is inferred from context).

Language in its broader context includes evolutionary linguistics, which considers the origins of language; historical linguistics, which explores language change;sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures; psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which looks at language processing in the brain; language acquisition, how children or adults acquire language; and discourse analysis, which involves the structure of texts and conversations.

Although linguistics is the scientific study of language, a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to language and influence its study. Semiotics, for example, is the general study of signs and symbols both within language and without. Literary theorists study the use of language in literature. Linguistics additionally draws on work from such diverse fields as psychology, speech-language pathology, informatics, computer science, philosophy, biology, human anatomy,neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and acoustics.

Divisions based on nonlinguistic factors studied

Alongside the structurally motivated domains of study are other fields of linguistics. These fields are distinguished by the kinds of nonlinguistic factors that they consider:

• Applied linguistics, the study of language-related issues applied in everyday life, notably language policies, planning, and education. (Constructed language fits under Applied linguistics.)
• Biolinguistics, the study of natural as well as human-taught communication systems in animals, compared to human language.
• Clinical linguistics, the application of linguistic theory to the field of Speech-Language Pathology.
• Computational linguistics, the study of computational implementations of linguistic structures.
• Developmental linguistics, the study of the development of linguistic ability in individuals, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.
• Evolutionary linguistics, the study of the origin and subsequent development of language by the human species.
• Historical linguistics or diachronic linguistics, the study of language change over time.
• Language geography, the study of the geographical distribution of languages and linguistic features.
• Linguistic typology, the study of the common properties of diverse unrelated languages, properties that may, given sufficient attestation, be assumed to be innate to human language capacity.
• Neurolinguistics, the study of the structures in the human brain that underlie grammar and communication.
• Psycholinguistics, the study of the cognitive processes and representations underlying language use.
• Sociolinguistics, the study of variation in language and its relationship with social factors.
• Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors that place a discourse in context.

Semiotics is not a discipline within linguistics; rather, it investigates the relationship between signs and what they signify more broadly. From the perspective of semiotics, language can be seen as a sign or symbol, with the world as its representation.

History

Main article: History of linguistics

Some of the earliest linguistic activities can be recalled from Iron Age India with the analysis of Sanskrit. The Pratishakhyas (from ca. the 8th century BC) constitute as it were a proto-linguistic ad hoc collection of observations about mutations to a given corpus particular to a given Vedic school. Systematic study of these texts gives rise to the Vedanga discipline of Vyakarana, the earliest surviving account of which is the work of Pāṇini (c. 520 – 460 BC), who, however, looks back on what are probably several generations of grammarians, whose opinions he occasionally refers to.Pāṇini formulates close to 4,000 rules which together form a compact generative grammar of Sanskrit. Inherent in his analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root. Due to its focus on brevity, his grammar has a highly unintuitive structure, reminiscent of contemporary "machine language" (as opposed to "human readable" programming languages).

Indian linguistics maintained a high level for several centuries; Patanjali in the 2nd century BC still actively criticizes Pāṇini. In the later centuries BC, however, Pāṇini's grammar came to be seen as prescriptive, and commentators came to be fully dependent on it. Bhartṛhari (c. 450 – 510) theorized the act of speech as being made up of four stages: first, conceptualization of an idea, second, its verbalization and sequencing (articulation) and third, delivery of speech into atmospheric air, the interpretation of speech by the listener, the interpreter.

Western linguistics begins in Classical Antiquity with grammatical speculation such as Plato's Cratylus. The first important advancement of the Greeks was the creation of the alphabet. As a result of the introduction of writing, poetry such as the Homeric poems became written and several editions were created and commented, forming the basis of philology and critic. The sophists and Socratesintroduced dialectics as a new text genre. Aristotle defined the logic of speech and the argument, and his works on rhetoric and poetics developed the understating of tragedy, poetry, and public discussions as text genres.

One of the greatest of the Greek grammarians was Apollonius Dyscolus.^[18] Apollonius wrote more than thirty treatises on questions of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, orthography,dialectology, and more. In the 4th c., Aelius Donatus compiled the Latin grammar Ars Grammatica that was to be the defining school text through the Middle Ages.^[19] In De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), Dante Alighieri expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry from the traditional languages of antiquity to include the language of the day.^{[citation needed]}

In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760, in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology.^{[citation needed]}

Sir William Jones noted that Sanskrit shared many common features with classical Latin and Greek, notably verb roots and grammatical structures, such as the case system. This led to the theory that all languages sprung from a common source and to the discovery of the Indo-European language family. He began the study of comparative linguistics, which would uncover more language families and branches.

In 19th century Europe the study of linguistics was largely from the perspective of philology (or historical linguistics). Some early-19th-century linguists were Jakob Grimm, who devised a principle of consonantal shifts in pronunciation – known as Grimm's Law – in 1822; Karl Verner, who formulated Verner's Law; August Schleicher, who created the "Stammbaumtheorie" ("family tree"); andJohannes Schmidt, who developed the "Wellentheorie" ("wave model") in 1872.

Ferdinand de Saussure was the founder of modern structural linguistics, with an emphasis on synchronic (i.e. nonhistorical) explanations for language form.

In North America, the structuralist tradition grew out of a combination of missionary linguistics (whose goal was to translate the Bible) and anthropology. While originally regarded as a sub-field ofanthropology in the United States,^[20][21] linguistics is now considered a separate scientific discipline in the US, Australia and much of Europe.

Edward Sapir, a leader in American structural linguistics, was one of the first who explored the relations between language studies and anthropology. His methodology had strong influence on all his successors. Noam Chomsky's formal model of language, transformational-generative grammar, developed under the influence of his teacher Zellig Harris, who was in turn strongly influenced byLeonard Bloomfield, has been the dominant model since the 1960s.

The structural linguistics period was largely superseded in North America by generative grammar in the 1950s and 60s. This paradigm views language as a mental object, and emphasizes the role of the formal modeling of universal and language specific rules. Noam Chomsky remains an important but controversial linguistic figure. Generative grammar gave rise to such frameworks such asTransformational grammar, Generative Semantics, Relational Grammar, Generalized phrase structure grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar(LFG). Other linguists working in Optimality Theory state generalizations in terms of violable constraints that interact with each other, and abandon the traditional rule-based formalism first pioneered by early work in generativist linguistics.

Functionalist linguists working in functional grammar and Cognitive Linguistics tend to stress the non-autonomy of linguistic knowledge and the non-universality of linguistic structures, thus differing significantly from the formal approaches.

[edit]Schools of study

There are a wide variety of approaches to linguistic study. These can be loosely divided (although not without controversy) into formalist and functionalist approaches. Formalist approaches stress the importance of linguistic forms, and seek explanations for the structure of language from within the linguistic system itself. For example, the fact that language shows recursion might be attributed to recursive rules. Functionalist linguists by contrast view the structure of language as being driven by its function. For example, the fact that languages often put topical information first in the sentence, may be due to a communicative need to pair old information with new information in discourse.

[edit]Generative grammar

Main article: Generative grammar

During the last half of the 20th century, following the work of Noam Chomsky, linguistics was dominated by the generativist school. While formulated by Chomsky in part as a way to explain how human beings acquire language and the biological constraints on this acquisition, in practice it has largely been concerned with giving formal accounts of specific phenomena in natural languages. Generative theory is modularist and formalist in character. Formal linguistics remains the dominant paradigm for studying linguistics,^[22] though Chomsky's writings have also gathered much criticism.

[edit]Cognitive linguistics

Main article: Cognitive linguistics

In the 1970s and 1980s, a new school of thought known as cognitive linguistics emerged as a reaction to generativist theory. Led by theorists such as Ronald Langacker and George Lakoff, linguists working within the realm of cognitive linguistics posit that language is an emergent property of basic, general-purpose cognitive processes, though cognitive linguistics has also been the subject of much criticism.^[23] In contrast to the generativist school of linguistics, cognitive linguistics is non-modularist and functionalist in character. Important developments in cognitive linguistics includecognitive grammar, frame semantics, and conceptual metaphor, all of which are based on the idea that form-function correspondences based on representations derived from embodied experienceconstitute the basic units of language.