The Copenhagen school (Linguistics)
Encyclopedia
The Copenhagen School, officially the "Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen (Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague)", was a group of scholars dedicated to the study of structural linguistics
founded by Louis Hjelmslev
(1899–1965) and Viggo Brøndal
(1887–1942). In the mid twentieth century the Copenhagen school was one of the most important centres of linguistic structuralism together with the Geneva School
and the Prague School
.
. Together with Viggo Brødal he founded the Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague a group of linguists based on the model of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Within the circle the ideas of Brøndal and Hjelmslev were not always compatible and Hjelmslevs more formalist approach attracted a group of followers, principal among them Hans Jørgen Uldall
and Eli Fischer Jørgensen, who would strive to apply Hjelmslevs abstract ideas of the nature of language to analyses of actual linguistic data. Hjelmslevs objective was to establish a framework for understanding communication as a formal system, and an important part of this was the development of precise terminology to describe the different parts of linguistic systems and their interrelatedness. The basic theoretical framework, called Glossematics
was laid out in Hjelmslevs two main works: "Prolegomena to a theory of Language" and "résumé of a theory of Language". However since Hjelmslev's death in 1965 left his theories mostly on the programmatic level, the group around Hjelmslev and his glossematic theory dispersed, and while the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle continued to exist it was not really a "school" united by common theoretical perspectives. In 1989 a group of members of the Copenhagen Linguistic circle inspired by the advances in cognitive linguistics and the functionalist theories of Simon C. Dik
founded the School of Danish Functional Grammar
aiming to combine the ideas of Hjelmslev and Brøndal, and other important Danish linguists such as Paul Diderichsen
and Otto Jespersen
with modern functional linguistics. Among the prominent members of this new generation of the Copenhagen School of Linguistics were Peter Harder
, Elisabeth Engberg Petersen, Frans Gregersen and Michael Fortescue
, and the basic work of the school is "Dansk Funktionel Grammatik" (Danish Functional Grammar) by Harder (2006). Recent developments in the school include Ole Nedergaard Thomsens Functional Discourse Pragmatics. In the following the two stages of the Copenhagen School will be described as 1. The glossematic school and 2. The Danish Functional School.
(the double duality of the linguistic sign). He formulated his linguistic theory together with Hans Jørgen Uldall
as an attempt to analyse the expression (phonetics and grammar) and the meaning of a language on a coherent basis. He assumed that language wasn't the only instrument of communication (cf. the communication of deaf-mutes), and he was interested in a general theory of the signs of communication, semiotics
or semiology.
More than the other schools, the Glossematic School referred to the teachings of Saussure
, even though it was in many aspects connected with older traditions. Thus, it tried once more to combine logics and grammar. At any rate, Hjelmslev has taken over the psychological interpretation of the linguistic sign and thereby extended his study of the sign further than language as such.
The principal ideas of the school are:
Even more than Saussure, the Copenhagen School is interested in the langue
rather than parole. It represented in a pure form the idea that language is a form and not a substance. It studied the relational system within the language on a higher level of abstraction. Critics accuse the somewhat one-sided formalism of the school with words like "antihumanism" or "linguistics in an empty space".
and cognitive linguistics
with the best ideas and concepts of the earlier structuralist
school. Like Hjelmslev and Saussure the school insist in the basic structural division of communication in planes of content and expression. Like Simon Dik and functionalist grammarians Danish functionalists also insist that language is fundamentally a means of communication between humans and is best understood and analysed through its communicative function. When analysing linguistic utterances the content and expression planes are analysed separately, with the expression plane being analysed through traditional structural methods and the content plane being analysed mostly through methods from semantics
and pragmatics
. However it is assumed that structures on the expression plane mirrors structures on the content plane. This can be seen in the parallelism between the structure of Danish sentences as described by the structural syntactic model of Paul Diderichsen
dividing utterenaces into three basic fields a foundation field, a nexus field and a content field, and the pragmatic structure of utterances that often use the foundation field for discourse pragmatic functions, the nexus field for illocutionary functions and the content field for the linguistic message. Danish functionalists assume that an utterance is not to be analysed from the minimal units and up, but rather from the maximal units and down, because speakers beging the construction of utterances by choosing what to say in a given situation, then by choosing the words to use and finally by building the sentence by means of sounds.
An example of a two planed analysis is given below in the analysis of the utterance "The book hasn't been read by anyone for a while". The Expression plane consists of "the book" which is a noun phrase with a determiner, a finite verb with a negational adverb "hasn't", and a passive verbal phrase "been read" with an agent "by anyone" and a time adverb "for a while". On the content plane "the book" has the function of topic of the utterance, that which the sentence is about and which links it to the larger discourse, the function of "hasn't" is to state the illocutionary force of the declarative utterance, and the predicate is the message "hasn't been read by anyone for a while" which is intended to be communicated.
Structural Linguistics
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. De Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a static system of interconnected units...
founded by Louis Hjelmslev
Louis Hjelmslev
Louis Hjelmslev was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family , Hjelmslev studied comparative linguistics in Copenhagen, Prague and Paris...
(1899–1965) and Viggo Brøndal
Viggo Brøndal
Rasmus Viggo Brøndal was a Danish philologist and professor of Romance languages and literature at Copenhagen University.He was also a founder of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen....
(1887–1942). In the mid twentieth century the Copenhagen school was one of the most important centres of linguistic structuralism together with the Geneva School
Geneva School
The expression Geneva School refers to a group of linguists based in Geneva who pioneered modern structural linguistics and a group of literary theorists and critics working from a phenomenological perspective.-Geneva School of Linguistics:...
and the Prague School
Prague linguistic circle
The Prague school or the Prague linguistic circle was an influential group of literary critics and linguists in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics...
.
History
The Copenhagen School of Linguistics evolved around Louis Hjelmslev and his developing theory of language, glossematicsGlossematics
Glossematics is a structuralist linguistic theory of the twentieth century proposed by Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. It defines the glosseme as the most basic unit or component of language...
. Together with Viggo Brødal he founded the Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague a group of linguists based on the model of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Within the circle the ideas of Brøndal and Hjelmslev were not always compatible and Hjelmslevs more formalist approach attracted a group of followers, principal among them Hans Jørgen Uldall
Hans Jørgen Uldall
Hans Jørgen Uldall was a Danish linguist known for developing the linguistic theory of glossematics with Louis Hjelmslev. From 1951-52 he wrote the first part of his and Hjelmslev's coauthored work "Outline of Glossematics", Uldalls views differed from Hjelmslev's in several important points...
and Eli Fischer Jørgensen, who would strive to apply Hjelmslevs abstract ideas of the nature of language to analyses of actual linguistic data. Hjelmslevs objective was to establish a framework for understanding communication as a formal system, and an important part of this was the development of precise terminology to describe the different parts of linguistic systems and their interrelatedness. The basic theoretical framework, called Glossematics
Glossematics
Glossematics is a structuralist linguistic theory of the twentieth century proposed by Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. It defines the glosseme as the most basic unit or component of language...
was laid out in Hjelmslevs two main works: "Prolegomena to a theory of Language" and "résumé of a theory of Language". However since Hjelmslev's death in 1965 left his theories mostly on the programmatic level, the group around Hjelmslev and his glossematic theory dispersed, and while the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle continued to exist it was not really a "school" united by common theoretical perspectives. In 1989 a group of members of the Copenhagen Linguistic circle inspired by the advances in cognitive linguistics and the functionalist theories of Simon C. Dik
Simon C. Dik
Simon Cornelis Dik was a Dutch linguist, most famous for developing the theory of functional grammar. He occupied the chair of General Linguistics at University of Amsterdam between 1969 and 1994...
founded the School of Danish Functional Grammar
Danish Functionalism
Danish functional linguistics is a strand of functional linguistics drawing heavily on the work and ideas of Louis Hjelmslev, but also other functional frameworks such as cognitive semantics and Simon Dik's functional grammar. It is mainly associated with linguists at the University of Copenhagen...
aiming to combine the ideas of Hjelmslev and Brøndal, and other important Danish linguists such as Paul Diderichsen
Paul Diderichsen
Paul Diderichsen was a Danish linguist who is known for his model of sentence structure in Danish which has been widely applied to describe the syntax of languages with fixed word order, such as the mainland Scandinavian languages. Diderichsen was professor of Danish at the University of...
and Otto Jespersen
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen 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...
with modern functional linguistics. Among the prominent members of this new generation of the Copenhagen School of Linguistics were Peter Harder
Peter Harder
Peter Harder is a Danish linguist and professor of English language at the University of Copenhagen. He is notable as a cofounder of the Danish Functional Linguistics stage of the Copenhagen School in linguistics. He has worked extensively with functional linguistic theories and speech act theory...
, Elisabeth Engberg Petersen, Frans Gregersen and Michael Fortescue
Michael Fortescue
Michael David Fortescue is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He is professor of General Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen...
, and the basic work of the school is "Dansk Funktionel Grammatik" (Danish Functional Grammar) by Harder (2006). Recent developments in the school include Ole Nedergaard Thomsens Functional Discourse Pragmatics. In the following the two stages of the Copenhagen School will be described as 1. The glossematic school and 2. The Danish Functional School.
The glossematic school
Brøndal emphasised that formal properties of a system should be kept apart from its substance. Accordingly, Hjelmslev presented, as the key figure of Copenhagen School in the 1930s, a formal linguistic fundament, which was later known as glossematicsGlossematics
Glossematics is a structuralist linguistic theory of the twentieth century proposed by Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. It defines the glosseme as the most basic unit or component of language...
(the double duality of the linguistic sign). He formulated his linguistic theory together with Hans Jørgen Uldall
Hans Jørgen Uldall
Hans Jørgen Uldall was a Danish linguist known for developing the linguistic theory of glossematics with Louis Hjelmslev. From 1951-52 he wrote the first part of his and Hjelmslev's coauthored work "Outline of Glossematics", Uldalls views differed from Hjelmslev's in several important points...
as an attempt to analyse the expression (phonetics and grammar) and the meaning of a language on a coherent basis. He assumed that language wasn't the only instrument of communication (cf. the communication of deaf-mutes), and he was interested in a general theory of the signs of communication, semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
or semiology.
More than the other schools, the Glossematic School referred to the teachings of Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
, even though it was in many aspects connected with older traditions. Thus, it tried once more to combine logics and grammar. At any rate, Hjelmslev has taken over the psychological interpretation of the linguistic sign and thereby extended his study of the sign further than language as such.
The principal ideas of the school are:
- A language consists of content and expression.
- A language consists of a succession and a system.
- Content and expression are interconnected by commutation.
- There are certain relations in the succession and the system.
- There are no one-to-one correspondents between content and expression, but the signs may be divided into smaller components.
Even more than Saussure, the Copenhagen School is interested in the langue
Langue (linguistics)
Langue and parole are linguistic terms used by Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs, while parole describes the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject...
rather than parole. It represented in a pure form the idea that language is a form and not a substance. It studied the relational system within the language on a higher level of abstraction. Critics accuse the somewhat one-sided formalism of the school with words like "antihumanism" or "linguistics in an empty space".
Danish functional school
The Danish school of functional linguistics was developed in an attempt to combine modern functional grammarFunctional grammar
Functional theories of grammar include a range of functionally based approaches to linguistics, the scientific study of language. The grammar model developed by Simon Dik bears this qualification in its name, functional grammar, as does Michael Halliday's systemic functional grammar.Role and...
and cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics
In linguistics, cognitive linguistics refers to the branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms...
with the best ideas and concepts of the earlier structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
school. Like Hjelmslev and Saussure the school insist in the basic structural division of communication in planes of content and expression. Like Simon Dik and functionalist grammarians Danish functionalists also insist that language is fundamentally a means of communication between humans and is best understood and analysed through its communicative function. When analysing linguistic utterances the content and expression planes are analysed separately, with the expression plane being analysed through traditional structural methods and the content plane being analysed mostly through methods from semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
and pragmatics
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
. However it is assumed that structures on the expression plane mirrors structures on the content plane. This can be seen in the parallelism between the structure of Danish sentences as described by the structural syntactic model of Paul Diderichsen
Paul Diderichsen
Paul Diderichsen was a Danish linguist who is known for his model of sentence structure in Danish which has been widely applied to describe the syntax of languages with fixed word order, such as the mainland Scandinavian languages. Diderichsen was professor of Danish at the University of...
dividing utterenaces into three basic fields a foundation field, a nexus field and a content field, and the pragmatic structure of utterances that often use the foundation field for discourse pragmatic functions, the nexus field for illocutionary functions and the content field for the linguistic message. Danish functionalists assume that an utterance is not to be analysed from the minimal units and up, but rather from the maximal units and down, because speakers beging the construction of utterances by choosing what to say in a given situation, then by choosing the words to use and finally by building the sentence by means of sounds.
An example of a two planed analysis is given below in the analysis of the utterance "The book hasn't been read by anyone for a while". The Expression plane consists of "the book" which is a noun phrase with a determiner, a finite verb with a negational adverb "hasn't", and a passive verbal phrase "been read" with an agent "by anyone" and a time adverb "for a while". On the content plane "the book" has the function of topic of the utterance, that which the sentence is about and which links it to the larger discourse, the function of "hasn't" is to state the illocutionary force of the declarative utterance, and the predicate is the message "hasn't been read by anyone for a while" which is intended to be communicated.
| Utterance: | The book | hasn't | been read by anyone for a while. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expression | Determiner/Noun | Nexus: Intransitive Verb/Present tense/negation | Passive verb/Agent/Time adverb |
| Content | Topic Topic Topic or Topicality may refer to:* Topic , what is being talked about* Topic * Topic , a brand of confectionery bar* Topics , a work by Aristotle* Topical, a medication applied to body surfaces... - known information |
Declarative illocutionary force | Predicate: to be read/Specifier: by anyone/Time frame: for a while |