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Sebastian Konstantinovich Shaumyan ((アルメニア語:Սեբաստյան Շահումյան), February 27, 1916 – January 21, 2007) was an Armenian American theoretician of linguistics and an outspoken adherent of structuralist analysis. ==Biography== He was born in Tbilisi, the polyglot capital of the Russian Empire's territories in the Transcaucasus, on February 14, 1916, (although the shift to the Gregorian calendar a couple of years later made his birthday February 27). A sickly child, he was mostly tutored at home until he took a course in chemistry at a vocational school. Having learnt German and English in addition to his Armenian, Georgian and Russian, Shaumyan took his degree in philology at Tbilisi State University. At some time in the late 1930s he came across Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) and, captivated, knew his academic course was set. World War II briefly interrupted his scholarly aspirations, as he became embroiled in the battles for twice Nazi-occupied Kerch. He applied for a front-line posting, but instead he was sent to the Main Intelligence Unit in Moscow (GRU), where he was permitted to pursue his studies. He was a Party member and, with a post at Moscow State University, used his position to help, and sometimes to shelter, those who might be accused of the various crimes of formalism or idealism. Shaumyan published ''Structural Linguistics'' in 1965 and founded the Section of Structural Linguistics at the Institute of Russian Language in Moscow, where he co-wrote many works with Polina Arkadievana Soboleva. He promoted the work of Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy, both of whom were out of favour (one an émigré, the other a prince). He also defended the "formalist", Noam Chomsky, (whom later he vigorously assailed) in Fundamentals of the ''Generative Grammar of Russian'' (1958), and ''Applicational Generative Model and Transformational Calculus of Russian'' (1963), both written with Soboleva. In 1968 Shaumyan spent a year in Edinburgh and in 1975 was able to join the wave of Jewish emigration permitted at that time, joining Yale’s faculty of linguistics. As part of the procedure for granting tenure, the department solicited opinions about Professor Shaumyan’s strengths and his standing from a large number of academic linguists around the world. "Brilliant world-famous linguist deserves tenure," came an admirably unambiguous cable from Belgrade. Others called his work "the cornerstone of modern linguistics" and him "one of the supreme masters of his subject". Generous praise came from the universities of Eastern Europe. For some Cold War scorekeepers, "Russia's loss is America's gain". From MIT itself, the belly of the beast, there were generous words. Chomsky himself, from whose positions Shaumyan was to deviate ever further, writes that “there should be no question, as far as I can see, with regard to offering him a permanent appointment at the highest level". Roman Jakobson praised his "genuine enthusiasm for inspired research and inspiring teaching"; while for Umberto Eco, Shaumyan’s model is the only alternative to Chomsky's. Shaumyan's paper ''Two Paradigms Of Linguistics: The Semiotic Versus Non-Semiotic Paradigm'' is available (online. ) Shaumyan's theory of applicative grammar was developed, reinforced, and extended in ''Applicational Grammar as a Semiotic Theory of Natural Language'', (1977); in ''A Semiotic Theory of Language ''(1987); and finally in ''Signs, Mind, and Reality'' (2006, in the series Advances in Consciousness Research), with the intriguing subtitle ''A Theory of Language As the Folk Model of the World''. To his chagrin, he was superannuated by Yale in 1986, but maintained, as Emeritus, a vigorous and very productive retirement. His bibliography contains a dozen books, some two hundred papers, and he was active on the conference circuit. In 2005, approaching 90, he returned to Moscow as a Fulbright scholar (but was refused a visa for a longer stay.) Shaumyan’s later work is marked by a broad interest in the philosophy of science, in foundational questions of linguistics and in related but separate studies of consciousness theory, and neurolinguistics. It is sharply critical of Chomsky, who Shaumyan saw as being unable to properly delineate what pertains to the study of linguistics proper. The list of languages cited in his last book gives evidence of the breadth of his interests; they include Basque, the endangered Australian language of Dyirbal, and the extinct Oregon Indian Takelma. Shaumyan's revival of Saussure's ideas and his reintroduction of the "dialectic" method into linguistics were found persuasive by many linguists, not only by those sceptical of Chomskyan theory. The generosity and simplicity of S.K. Shaumyan in helping his students at Yale University break through his mathematical-like philosophical analysis of semiotic principles in linguistics and master the art of thinking, put him at shoulder higher than his peers. Ever smiling but never complaining even when it was clear he had health issues, Shaumyan was not just a rare genius of linguistics, he was a human-being with a big heart. So blessed to be one of his students! (Michael O. Afolayan). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sebastian Shaumyan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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