Famous Linguists - List of Famous Linguists

Linguists study, describe and explain the human faculty of language. Modern linguistics as a field began to develop in the 18th century. Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure who laid a foundation for many significant developments both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century is considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics. Czech literary, linguistic, and aesthetic theorist Jan Mukařovský and Russian–American linguist and literary theorist Roman Osipovich Jakobson are both considered pioneers of the structural analysis of language. The discipline of linguistics was further enriched in the late 20th century by the emergence of the likes of Noam Chomsky, William Labov, and Michael Halliday. While Chomsky made pivotal contributions to generative grammar, Halliday worked on systemic functional linguistics and also modern psycholinguistics. Among the prominent ladies in the field, Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald is one who stands out owing to her specialization in Linguistic typology and the Arawak language family. Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig is another woman linguist who had conducted extensive research on second-language temporality and tense-mood-aspect systems and interlanguage pragmatics. This section provides you information about the life and works of famous linguists.