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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The increasing triumph of man over matter has come about through an understanding facilitated by the awakening of the scientific spirit. At the same time, the application of the scientific method to the study of man and his activities has been slower. Probably all humanists agree with Alexander Pope that “the proper study of mankind is man,” but there is less unanimity as to the proper method to be followed in such study. Still, the social sciences are gradually developing scientific methods of their own, based like nuclear science on statistics and probability.
This is a revision of a paper originally presented before the Division of Chemical Literature, Symposium on Aids to the Use of the Foreign Chemical Literature, at the 126th meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York, 14 Sept. 1954. It was written for that occasion, and revised for PMLA, at the suggestion of the Editor of PMLA.
1 Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine and Le mtcanisme de la parole, suivie de la description d'une machine parlante (Vienna: Bauer, 1791).
2 “Theorie der Luftschwingungen in Röhren mil offenen Enden,” Journal für die reine und angewandle Mathematik, Vol. 57 (1860).
3 For a recent acknowledgment of this fact, see Marguerite Durand, Orbis, ii, ii (1953), 501: “Un plus grand développement des sciences permettra sans doute d'aller plus avant dans la connaissance du contenu phonétique du phonème (considéré comme fonction différenciatrice), contenu que nous ignorons encore presque entièrement, il faut l'avouer.”
4 Die Sprachlaute (Berlin, 1926).
5 “The Sounds of Speech,” Bell System Technical Jour., iv (1925), 586; Speech and Hearing, 2nd ed. (New York, 1953).
6 W. Koenig, H. K. Dunn, and L. Y. Lacy, “The Sound Spectrograph,” Jour of the Acoustical Soc. of America, xviii, i (July 1946), 19–49.
7 A step in this direction has been taken by L. Dolansky of Northeastern University; “Pitch-Period Indicator,” Jour of the Acoustical Soc. of America, xxvii, i (Jan. 1955), 67–72.
8 Technical Report #13 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Acoustics Lab., 1952).
9 “Letter Reading Machine,” Electronics, xxii (July 1949), 80–86.
10 “The Analyzing Reader,” a paper presented at a meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 19 Aug. 1953, in San Francisco.
11 To be published in the spring of 1955 by the Technology Press of M.I.T. jointly with John Wiley and Sons, Inc., in Machine Translation of Languages, W. N. Locke and A. D. Booth.
12 “Some Methods of Mechanized Translation,” mimeographed, June 1952, reprinted in Machine Translation of Languages (see Note 11).
13 Machine Translation of Russian Technical Literature, Notes on Preliminary Experiments, mimeographed, about Oct. 1952, and Machine Translation of Russian Technical Literature, Notes on Exploitation of the Russian Grammar, mimeographed, about Nov. 1952.
14 “A Study for the Design of an Automatic Dictionary,” Harvard diss., April 1954.
15 See his chapter on “Syntax and the Problem of Multiple Meaning” in Machine Translation of Languages, op. cit. (n. 11).
16 Modern Language Forum, xxxvi, iii–iv (1951), 1–24.
17 The following presented papers at the M.I.T. conference: Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem), William E. Bull (U.C.L.A.), Stuart C. Dodd (Univ. of Washington), Jay W. Forrester (M.I.T.), Harry D. Huskey (U.C.L.A.), William N. Locke (M.I.T.), Victor A. Oswald (U.C.L.A.), James W. Perry (Battelle Memorial Inst.), Erwin Reifler (Univ. of Washington).
18 For a linguist's view of the conference: Erwin Reifler, “Report on the First Conference on Mechanical Translation,” Mechanical Translation, i, ii (Aug. 1954), 23–32. For an engineer's view: A. C. Reynolds, Jr., “The Conference on Mechanical Translation,” Mechanical Translation, i, iii (Dec. 1954), 47–55.
