Everything about Otto Jespersen totally explained
» For the Norwegian comedian, see Otto Jespersen (comedian).
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or
Otto Jespersen (
July 16,
1860-
April 30,
1943) was a
Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the
English language.
He was born in
Randers in northern
Jutland and attended
Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English,
French, and
Latin. He also studied linguistics at
Oxford.
Jespersen was a professor of English at Copenhagen University from
1893 to
1925. Along with
Paul Passy, he was a founder of the
International Phonetic Association. He was a vocal supporter and active developer of
international auxiliary languages. He was involved in the 1907 delegation that created the auxiliary language
Ido, and in 1928, he developed the
Novial language, which he considered an improvement over Ido. Jespersen collaborated with
Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop the research program of the
International Auxiliary Language Association (
IALA), which in 1951 presented
Interlingua to the general public.
Edward Sapir and
William Edward Collinson also collaborated with Morris.
He advanced the theories of
Rank and
Nexus in Danish in two papers:
Sprogets logik (1913) and
De to hovedarter af grammatiske forbindelser (1921). Jespersen in this theory of ranks removes the parts of speech from the syntax, and differentiates between primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries; for example in "
well honed phrase," "phrase" is a primary, this being defined by a secondary, "honed", which again is defined by a tertiary "well". The term
Nexus is applied to sentences, structures similar to sentences and sentences in formation, in which two concepts are expressed in one unit; for example,
it rained, he ran indoors. This term is qualified by a further concept called a
junction which represents one idea, expressed by means of two or more elements, whereas a nexus combines two ideas. Junction and nexus proved valuable in bringing the concept of context to the forefront of the attention of the world of linguistics.
He was most widely recognized for some of his books.
Modern English Grammar (1909), concentrated on morphology and syntax, and
Growth and Structure of the English Language (1905) is a comprehensive view of English by someone with another native language, and still in print, over 60 years after his death and nearly 100 years after publication. Late in his life he published
Analytic Syntax (1937), in which he presents his views on syntactic structure using an idiosyncratic shorthand notation.
More than once Otto Jespersen was invited to the U.S. as a guest lecturer, and he took occasion to study the country's educational system. His autobiography (see below) was published in English translation as recently as 1995.
Jespersen was a proponent of
phonosemanticism and wrote: “Is there really much more logic in the opposite extreme which denies any kind of
sound symbolism (apart from the small class of evident echoisms and ‘
onomatopoeia’) and sees in our words only a collection of accidental and irrational associations of sound and meaning? ...There is no denying that there are words which we feel instinctively to be adequate to express the ideas they
stand for.”
Essays and articles
Bibliography
1889: The articulations of speech sounds represented by means of analphabetic symbols. Marburg: Elwert.
1894: Progress in Language. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
1905: Growth and Structure of the English Language (ISBN 0-226-39877-3)
1909ff: A Modern English Grammar (in seven volumes; the title should be understood as 'A grammar of Modern English') (ISBN 0-06-493318-0)
1922: Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin
(ISBN 0-04-400007-3)
1924: The Philosophy of Grammar (ISBN 0-226-39881-1)
1928: An International Language (the introduction of the Novial language)
1930: Novial Lexike Novial to English, French and German dictionary.
1937: Analytic Syntax (ISBN 0-226-39880-3)
1938: En sprogmands levned, Copenhagen, Jespersen's autobiography
1993. A literary miscellany: proceedings of the Otto Jespersen Symposium April 29-30, edited by Jørgen Erik Nielsen and Arne Zettersten 1994
1995: A Linguist's Life: an English translation of Otto Jespersen's autobiography, edited by Arne Juul, Hans Frede Nielsen and Jørgen Erik Nielsen, Odense (ISBN 87-7838-132-0)Further Information
Get more info on 'Otto Jespersen'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://otto_jespersen.totallyexplained.com">Otto Jespersen Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
