Otto Jespersen
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"There is one expression that continually comes to my mind whenever think of the English language and compare it with others: It seems to me positively and expressly masculine, it is the language of a grown-up man and has very little childish or feminine about it. [...] To bring out clearly one of these points I select at random, by way of contrast, a passage from the language of Hawaii: "I kona hiki ana aku ilaila ua hookipa ia mai la oia me ke aloha pumehana loa." Thus it goes on, no single word ends in a consonant, and a group of two or more consonants is never found. Can any one be in doubt that even if such a language sound pleasantly and be full of music and harmony, the total impression is childlike and effeminate? You do not expect much vigour or energy in a people speaking such a language; it seems adapted only to inhabitants of sunny regions where the soil requires scarcely any labour on the part of man to yield him everything he wants, and where life therefore does not bear the stamp of a hard struggle against nature and against fellow-creatures. In a lesser degree we find the same phonetic structure in such languages as Italian and Spanish; but how different are our Germanic tongues."--Growth and Structure of the English Language (1905) by Otto Jespersen |
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Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen (16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.
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.”
Bibliography
- 1889: The articulations of speech sounds represented by means of analphabetic symbols. Marburg: Elwert.
- 1894: Progress in Language. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
- 1904: How to teach a foreign language. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co. 1928 printing available online through OpenLibrary.org.
- 1905: Growth and Structure of the English Language (Template:ISBN)
- 1909–1949: A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (in seven volumes; the title should be understood as 'A grammar of Modern English') originally published by Carl Winter, Heidelberg, later vols. by Ejnar Munksgard, Copenhagen and George Allen & Unwin, London (Template:ISBN) (Vols. 5–7, issued without series title, have imprint: Copenhagen, E. Munksgaard, 1940–49; Imprint varies: Pt.5–6: London: Allen & Unwin; pt.7: Copenhagen: Munksgaard, London: Allen & Unwin.)
- 1922: Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin (Template:ISBN)
- 1924: The Philosophy of Grammar (Template:ISBN)
- 1925: Mankind, nation and individual: from a linguistic point of view. H. Aschehoug (det Mallingske bogtryk.), 1925
- 1928: An International Language (the introduction of the Novial language)
- 1930: Novial Lexike Novial to English, French and German dictionary.
- 1933: Essentials of English Grammar
- 1937: Analytic Syntax (Template:ISBN)
- 1938: En sprogmands levned, Copenhagen, Jespersen's autobiography
- 1941: Efficiency in linguistic change
- 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
