Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Faulkner, Brian

(Encyclopedia)Faulkner, Brian fôkˈnər [key], 1921–77, Northern Irish politician. A Protestant businessman, he was elected to the Northern Ireland Parliament as a Unionist in 1949. As minister of home affairs (...

Hume, John

(Encyclopedia)Hume, John, 1937–2020, Northern Irish political leader. A moderate Catholic, he devoted his career to the peaceful settlement of sectarian conflicts in his homeland. Hume began by seeking to improve...

Whorf, Benjamin Lee

(Encyclopedia)Whorf, Benjamin Lee hwôrf [key], 1897–1941, American linguist and anthropologist, b. Winthrop, Mass. Although he was trained in chemical engineering and worked for an insurance company, Whorf made ...

grammar

(Encyclopedia)grammar, description of the structure of a language, consisting of the sounds (see phonology); the meaningful combinations of these sounds into words or parts of words, called morphemes; and the arran...

Shakhmatov, Aleksey Aleksandrovich

(Encyclopedia)Shakhmatov, Aleksey Aleksandrovich əlĭksyāˈ əlĭksänˈdrəvĭch shôkmətôfˈ [key], 1864–1920, Russian philologist and historian. Shakhmatov's many books on the history of the Russian langua...

Carnap, Rudolf

(Encyclopedia)Carnap, Rudolf kärˈnäp, –năp [key], 1891–1970, German-American philosopher. He taught philosophy at the Univ. of Vienna (1926–31) and at the German Univ. in Prague (1931–35). After going t...

Aramaic

(Encyclopedia)Aramaic ârəmāˈĭk [key], language belonging to the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). At some point during the se...

Manx

(Encyclopedia)Manx măngks [key], virtually extinct language belonging to the Goidelic or Gaelic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The last native speaker, Ned Madrell, died in...

Krapp, George Philip

(Encyclopedia)Krapp, George Philip, 1872–1934, American scholar, b. Cincinnati. Krapp joined the faculty of Columbia Univ. in 1897, was professor of English at the Univ. of Cincinnati (1908–10) and at Columbia ...

Tagalog

(Encyclopedia)Tagalog tägälˈ [key], dominant people of Luzon, the Philippines, and the second largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines. They number about 16 million. Most of the population is Christian. ...

Browse by Subject