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Massachuset

(Encyclopedia)Massachuset măsəcho͞oˈsĭt [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early 1...

Backus, John Warner

(Encyclopedia)Backus, John Warner, 1924–2007, American computer scientist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Columbia (M.A. 1950). Trained as a mathematician, he was hired (1950) by IBM Corp. as a computer programmer. From ...

Washo

(Encyclopedia)Washo wäˈshō [key], Native North Americans occupying the region around Washo and Tahoe lakes in W Nevada and E California in the mid-19th cent. The Paiute were their inveterate enemies; before the ...

Smith, William Robertson

(Encyclopedia)Smith, William Robertson, 1846–94, Scottish biblical scholar and Orientalist. He studied for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland. From 1870 he was professor of Oriental languages and Old Tes...

Tarski, Alfred

(Encyclopedia)Tarski, Alfred tärˈskē [key], 1901–83, Polish-American mathematician and philosopher, Ph.D. Univ. of Warsaw, 1924, b. Alfred Teitelbaum, changed his named 1923. He lectured at Warsaw until 1939, ...

transformational-generative grammar

(Encyclopedia)transformational-generative grammar, linguistic theory associated with Noam Chomsky, particularly with his Syntactic Structures (1957), and with Chomsky's teacher Zellig Harris. Generative grammar att...

Rückert, Friedrich

(Encyclopedia)Rückert, Friedrich frīˈmo͝ont rīˈmär [key], 1788–1866, German scholar and poet. An editor and professor of Oriental languages, he wrote imitations of Asian and Middle Eastern poetry and made ...

Poe, Edgar Allan

(Encyclopedia)Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–49, American poet, short-story writer, and critic, b. Boston. He is acknowledged today as one of the most brilliant and original writers in American literature. His skillfully...

dialect

(Encyclopedia)dialect, variety of a language used by a group of speakers within a particular speech community. Every individual speaks a variety of his language, termed an idiolect. Dialects are groups of idiolects...

Church Slavonic

(Encyclopedia)Church Slavonic, language belonging to the South Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). Although it is still the liturgical language of m...