Jespersen (1860- 1943) is a Danish linguist. 1860 was born in Lannes, jutland, Denmark on July 6th. When he was a child, he became interested in the works of Rasmus Lasker, began to learn Icelandic, Italian and Spanish, and read the works of Miao Lei and Whitney. /kloc-entered the university of Copenhagen at the age of 0/7, studied law at first, then turned to philology, studied shorthand and French literature, studied Danish dialects, and devoted himself to phonetics. 1887 obtained a master's degree in literature from Columbia University. After that, he visited Europe, met many famous linguists, and then devoted himself to studying Old English and Middle English in Germany.
From 1893, Yesberson worked as an English professor at the University of Copenhagen until 1925. 1920- 192 1 year as president of the university. He is also a member of many societies and associations. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Columbia University in new york and St Andrews University in Scotland. He was also the chairman of the 4th International Conference of Linguists held in Copenhagen from 65438 to 0936. 1943 died in Roskilde on April 30th at the age of 83.
Jespersen is mainly engaged in the study of English grammar and language theory, and has written a lot in his life. His representative works include: Progress of Language, Especially English; How to Teach Foreign Languages; Growth and Structure of English; Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin; Grammar Philosophy; Essentials of English Grammar; Analytical Syntax; and his seven-volume magnum opus Modern English Grammar: On Historical Principles, which took 40 years of painstaking efforts.
Jaspers made great contributions to general linguistics and grammar. For one hundred years, his series of works have been regarded as classic documents in the history of language science and recognized as the highest authority of English grammar. When evaluating the three most important linguists in the 20th century, Lapov said: "Saussure is considered as the most influential linguist in this century, Meyer is one of the most outstanding linguists in historical linguistics, and Yesbergen is the linguist whose works are read and quoted most attentively."
Grammatical philosophy
Jespersen, a famous Danish linguist, 1924 George Allen in London &; Chapter 25 of the book quotes a large number of English materials and various other language phenomena, studies human language activities from the actual activities of human society, and systematically expounds the general principles of grammar. This is formed when the author studied various languages for many years, especially English grammar. Please refer to the author's Modern English Grammar and English Grammar Essentials. The Chinese version of Grammatical Philosophy was translated by He Yong et al. and published by Language Press 1988.
The whole book mainly discusses logical category and grammatical category and their relationship. In the first three chapters, Yesbergen discusses his views on the general theoretical problems of linguistics, emphasizing the study of the essence of language from the perspective of movable words in actual communication. In view of the traditional view that grammar is divided into morphology, syntax and word formation, he puts forward a new classification of grammar research and grammar description, and advocates that grammar description is divided into two steps: the first step is from form to meaning, which is called "morphology"; The second step from meaning to form is called "syntax".
In the next chapter, Yesbergen established his grammatical system and put forward two important categories: "grade" and "connection".
He believes that writing is not a sign of individual things, but a sign of general things abstracted from all things with a lot of * * * characteristics. Words are units of language, not phonetic units or ideographic units. Chapter seven puts forward his famous theory of "three products". According to the position of words in sentences, they are divided into first-class, second-class and third-class products, in which the first-class product is roughly equal to nouns, the second-class product is roughly equal to adjectives and verbs, and the third-class product is roughly equal to adverbs. The theory of "connection" and "conjunction" is also one of the cornerstones of Jespersen's grammatical system, and they are two structural ways of phrases.
"Contact" is a restrictive or decorative relationship, representing a single concept; "Iron refining" is a subject-predicate relationship, which connects two independent concepts. Defective products in the connection always bring something new to this connection. Independent connectives are a sentence, and connectives can also be used as components of a sentence.
With regard to the definition of sentences, from the perspective of function, Jespersen divides sentences into three categories: (1) unconnected sentences; (2) Semi-combined sentences; (3) Combined sentences. Finally, he talked about the important role of psychology, logic and linguistic history in grammar research.
Yelson's theoretical exploration in grammar philosophy is of great significance, which is an important step in the transformation from traditional normative grammar to modern descriptive grammar. He broke through the shackles of traditional logic and studied grammar from the perspective of language itself and its communicative function. According to the reality of modern English, he put forward the "three-product theory", which made language theory a tool to summarize language facts, instead of letting language facts contain grammatical dogma.
In his book, Yesbergen created many new terms, such as "existential sentence" and "big vowel transfer". He first used the letters SVO to represent "moving objects", and he also systematically used "1. 1" instead of "festival" in his works, which has almost become a norm in today's linguistic works. This book had a great influence on the study of Chinese grammar by China linguists Lu Zhiwei, Lv Shuxiang and Wang Li in 1930s and 1940s. An Introduction to China's Grammar, Modern Grammar in China and Grammar Theory in China all adopt the theory of "three categories".