A Study of Glossematics Critical Survey of Its Fundamental Concepts a Study of Glossema Tics Critical Survey of Its Fundamental Concepts
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A STUDY OF GLOSSEMATICS CRITICAL SURVEY OF ITS FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS A STUDY OF GLOSSEMA TICS CRITICAL SURVEY OF ITS FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS BY B. SIERTSEMA PH. D. (AMSTERDAM) SECOND EDITION • THE HAGUE MARTIN US NI]HOFF 1965 ISBN 978-94-011-8161-7 ISBN 978-94-011-8796-1 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-8796-1 COPYright .1965 by Maytinus Nijhoff. The Hague. Holland. All rights yeseYVed. including the Yight to tyanslate OY to yepyodflce this book OY payts thereof in any foym_ PREFACE This book owes its .existence to the encouragement and help of many others. In the first place I mention Prof. Dr. A.]. B. N. Reichling, who was my supervisor at Amsterdam University and who from the beginning helped me on, through his most stimulating teaching and above all through his encouragement, his friendly advice and his sincere interest. The readiness with which he was always prepared to spend hours and hours of his valuable time on the discussion of the many problems with which the study of Glossematics confronts one, has often inspired me with wonder and deep gratitude. It is hardly possible to do justice in a preface to a supervisor to whom one owes so much, and from whose keen insight one has learned so much. One can only feel profoundly thankful for having been brought up in the linguistic atmosphere which Prof. Reichling creates about him, an atmosphere characterized by a persistent desire for an empirical approach to the facts of language, which desire he knows how to instill into his pupils. It is with some hesitation that I proceed to thanking the Danish scholars to whom I owe so much. The hesitation is due to an awareness that probably this work bears no proportion to all the trouble they took in my behalf. Above all I am extremely grateful to Prof. Dr. Louis Hje1mslev of Copenhagen, for the patience he showed in the long hours of discussion which he very kindly granted me, and for his willing ness to answer my endless and often cumbersome questions. It certainly is not owing to a lack of patient explaining on his side that the present study of Glossematics still excels in its great number of question-marks: in advance I tender him my sincere apologies for the cases where I may have misunderstood him or may simply not have been able to follow him. If this thesis should do no more than induce Prof. Hjelmslev to writing an exposition of glossematic theory some day which could be VI PREFACE understood in all its details also by those linguists who are no specialists in the field, I should consider it an ample reward for my own trouble, for I am convinced that glossematic th~ory has most valuable things to teach to present-day linguistics. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Miss Eli Fischer J~rgensen, Lektor in Copenhagen University, for helping me wherever and whenever she could. At the very beginning it was she who gave me a complete bibliography of glossematic writings up to that time. Later on I greatly benefited from the corre spondence and the pleasant and enlightening discussions which I was privileged to have with her. Her kindness in giving me her stencilled lecture on Glossematics, held in Washington in 1951, and in lending me her Reports of the meetings of the glossematic committee in the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, has done much to give me a better understanding of the theory. Her own attitude towards glossematics, which appears also in her lucidly written publications, has been a great help to me in defining my own standpoint. I gladly acknowledge the generosity of Prof. Dr. H. j. Uldall in lending me a proof of his Outline 01 Glossematics before its publication. Several letters resulted from the reading of it, which he always found time to answer, whether from Scotland or Nigeria; this stimulating correspondence has also clarified some intricate problems to me. I do hope I shall not have fallen too far behind the severe self-criticism and methodical way of proceeding of Prof. Dr. P. N. U. Harting of Amsterdam University, who directed my studies of the English language, and to whom I remain thankful for his ever ready helpfulness and advice. As regards the final preparation of the book I express my sincere thanks to Mrs. A. M. de Bruin-Cousins, M. A., for the trouble she took to correct my English and the wording of this study., Finally I wish to thank Miss C. M. Felderhof and Mrs. M. G. Siertsema-Egberts for their very kind help in correcting the proofs and compiling the bibliography. Haarlem, 6 December 1954. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION To prepare this edition a:nd bring it up to date in the most economic way as regards time and space, the writer decided not to recast the whole work, but to make as few alterations as possible in the text and put comments and additions in a separate chapter at the end, leaving the body of the book as it is. The only major changes in the text itself are on pp. 140 (a, b, c), 144 (b), and 179-181. Slight alterations have been made in many places. Further, there has been a considerable rearrangement at two points, in an attempt to somewhat tighten up the rather loose set-up of the book. In Chapter VIII, sections 3 and 4 have changed places for the greater part. Chapters V, 3 and VI, 3 have been shifted in that VI, 3 has become V, 3; and V, 3 sections a-I inclusive have become VI, 1; VI, 1 has become VI, 2; VI, 2 has become VI, 3 up to the third paragraph of p. 118; the rest of VI, 2 has been combined with V, 3, g into a new section VI, 4: "Oppositions". This has resulted in a couple of new headings of chapters and sections. The new chapter XIII deals in the first place with Professor Hjelmslev's main publications since the first edition went to press, and with the rather extensive literature which deals with or touches upon some aspect or other of glossematic theory, directly or indirectly. Secondly the chapter presents the writer's own further thoughts on glossematic theory, as put forward already at the VIII International Congress of Linguists in Oslo, 1957 -(Pro ceedings 1958 p. 142-143) and in her inaugural lecture (Lingua X, 1961, p. 128--147). Discussions with H. J. Uldall t during the time of her lectureship at the University College, Ibadan, Nigeria, where Uldall was head of the Department of Phonetics, gave her a clearer insight on some points. But Uldall's views had by then diverged considerably from Hjelmslev's. In the third place the additional chapter has offered an opportunity to answer some of the questions and critical remarks VIII PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION made in reviews of the first edition. On the whole the book has been well received, although the opinions expressed were of an interesting diversity and frequently each other's direct opposites. If an American critic holds that the book "fails to provide ... an introduction" to glossematic. theory (Language 31, 1955) (it does not mean to be an introduction, that is why it is called a study, BS) - a Copenhagen one states that it is "certainement l'introduction la plus complete a la theorie linguistique de Louis Hjelmslev qui a He donnee jusqu'a ce jour" (Studia Neophilologica XXVII, 1955). Half a dozen similar examples of directly opposite evaluations could be given. Apart from those there was some criticism of the more fundamental kind in several reviews, as well as some most valuable comments in personal letters from C. E. Bazell, Eli Fischer-J~rgensen and A. Martinet. These will be referred to repeatedly in the present edition. But what to do with those reviews which instead of discussing the book merely present the reviewers' own con ceptions of Glossematics and finish off the book u~der review with a casual remark such as: "On aurait aime trouver cela chez Sierstema" (sic) (Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 38, 1960, p. 181). or: "The present work is really an exposition of Hjelmslev's views on language by someone who is, only too obviously, a most devoted disciple" (sic!) (The Modern Language Review LI, No.4, 1956). Such remarks make one wonder whether the reviewers in question have really read the book - a doubt which turns into a suspicion that it has not even been looked at properly when one finds one's name consistently misspelled amongst such statements as: that the book contains no intro duction (it contains one of 30 pages, BS) and no conclusion (there are separate cOl).clusions at the end of most chapters, BS): "Cela se passe de commentaire" (Revue beIge ... etc. mentioned above). It does indeed! The above enumeration of the contents of Chapter XIII in three parts: Hjelmslev's and others' later pUblications, the writer's own further thoughts on the subject, and reviews of the present study, does not mean that these parts have been dealt with in that order. Wherever one of them gives rise to a remark somewhere in the text of the first 12 chapters, this has been indicated by an asterisk and the comment or addition PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION IX is to be found in chapter XIII with page- and paragraph reference to the text. The bibliography has been brought up to date, but since we now have the detailed list of all Hjelmslev's publications up to 1959 in his Essais Linguistiques, published on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, the bibliography in the present study contains only those works which are essential contributions to glossematic theory.