Wolfgang U. Dressler | |
---|---|
Born | 22 December 1939 |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Vienna |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Linguist |
Institutions | University of Vienna |
Wolfgang U. Dressler (born 22 December 1939) is an Austrian professor of linguistics [1] at the University of Vienna. Dressler is a polyglot [2] and scholar [3] who has contributed to various fields of linguistics,especially phonology,morphology, [4] text linguistics, [5] clinical linguistics and child language development. He is an important representative of the 'naturalness theory'.
After studying linguistics and classical philology in Vienna (1957–1962),Dressler spent time in Rome and Paris and worked both at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Linguistics of the University of Vienna,finishing his habilitation in 1968. He joined the Department of Linguistics in Vienna in 1964. [6] In 1970,he went to the United States,working as associate professor,and returned to Vienna in 1971,when he was appointed professor for general and applied linguistics at the University of Vienna. Since then,Dressler has been based there,while still travelling and teaching at other universities.
Dressler has written more than 400 publications,among them:
In the beginning of his career,Dressler worked on Indo-European topics. After 1969,he began publishing in the field of text linguistics. After a few publications within the then new framework of generative grammar,he permanently turned away from this model and has become a profound critic with a strong science-theoretical and semiotic background.
Around the same time,Dressler worked on Breton language from a phonological,text linguistic and sociolinguistic perspective ('language death'). At that time morphology,phonology and morphonology were also of interest to him. Since 1972,what was later called 'sociophonology' has been developed,first as 'fast speech rules',later in a refined model on 'casual speech' and competing phonological processes and rules.
From 1973 onwards,in search of 'external evidence' for linguistic theoretical assumptions (as opposed to generative models,but as an important science-theoretical background for theoretical arguments),Dressler became interested in the disturbed speech of aphasia. Similarly,he started to work with psychologists on a model of psychological '(de)activation' for phonological processes and,with his background in IE studies,he compared historical evidence with his phonological theory,making conclusions about rules,processes and the boundaries of phonological theory towards morpho(no)logy.
In his contributions in morphology,Dressler established,together with Wolfgang Wurzel and Oswald Panagl,a subtheory of 'Natural Morphology' based on the establishment of more or less "natural" operations on universal,typological,or language-specific levels,respectively. In a monograph on morphonology,he proved morphonology to be a subtype of morphology,contrary to contemporary claims in generative phonology of its being treated as a phonological phenomenon. Dressler proposed a model of morphological operations between lexical and grammatical functions,thereby establishing a gradual scale between derivational and inflectional processes. His theory explains why derivational rules apply before inflectional rules,and why 'unprototypical' derivation such as diminutive and 'unprototypical' inflections such as plural formation sometimes get mixed in the middle:cf. German "Kind-er-chen" (child-PL-DIM),in which derivation occurs after inflection.
For Dressler,language phenomena interact at different levels of linguistic organisation with more or less "natural" operations or states which might,however,lead to competition between them,so that an "ideal" state of the system is unlikely to be reached—which in turn may explain the usual grammaticalization channels in language change and language use. Therefore,Dressler coined the term 'polycentristic theory' of word formation in 1977,then in 1983 'polycentristic language theory'.
Due to his science-theoretical interests,Dressler introduced a semiotic model (following Charles Sanders Peirce) into linguistic theory. This 'semiotic model' reappears in Dressler's publications time and again as prerequisite for theoretical assumptions in various fields.
Dressler finally adopted the model of 'Natural Phonology' as developed by David Stampe and Patricia Donegan,but refined it with his semiotic science-theoretical considerations. This may seem an unnecessary addition,but in fact firmly puts the model on a very solid meta-theory. Following this new trend,together with Willi Mayerthaler,Oswald Panagl and Wolfgang U. Wurzel,Dressler coined the term 'Natural Morphology' for their way to look at morphological processes. Here again,a semiotic foundation of the model strongly influenced his explanations,much more than with the other authors.
Dressler has to be named a typologist. Both in phonology and morphology,he sees the common ground of languages in more general principles of how signs can be used (= semiotics).
Then,Dressler turned towards morphopragmatics,the pragmatic uses of morphological elements. He investigated the uses of diminutives and similar phenomena,again creatively combining formal and semantic (or pragmatic) aspects in innovative ways.
Finally,Dressler developed a new model of language development,that of pre- and proto-morphology. Dressler assumes that language is self-organising in the child,thereby passing through a stage 'before' morphology and then through a stage of a very simple morphology,until finally the child learns to adapt to the adult target model of grammar. [7] In other words,a child neither inherits nor learns a grammatical function,but is able to gradually derive the full morphological meaning from fewer and more concrete functions which are developed and discovered first.
Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hearer's side,and the communicative needs of the speaker and of the given language community. Linguistic functionalism spawned in the 1920s to 1930s from Ferdinand de Saussure's systematic structuralist approach to language (1916).
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning,both in spoken and written forms,and may also be conveyed through sign languages. The vast majority of human languages have developed writing systems that allow for the recording and preservation of the sounds or signs of language. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity,with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement,which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences,and the ability to refer to objects,events,and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics,a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν,neuter of λεξικόςmeaning 'of or for words'.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In linguistics,morphology is the study of words,how they are formed,and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems,root words,prefixes,and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech,intonation and stress,and the ways context can change a word's pronunciation and meaning. Morphology differs from morphological typology,which is the classification of languages based on their use of words,and lexicology,which is the study of words and how they make up a language's vocabulary.
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize their phones or,for sign languages,their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time,the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages,but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either:
In linguistics,transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar,especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones.
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. See also the Outline of linguistics,the List of phonetics topics,the List of linguists,and the List of cognitive science topics. Articles related to linguistics include:
Cognitive science is the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence . Practically every formal introduction to cognitive science stresses that it is a highly interdisciplinary research area in which psychology,neuroscience,linguistics,philosophy,computer science,anthropology,and biology are its principal specialized or applied branches. Therefore,we may distinguish cognitive studies of either human or animal brains,the mind and the brain.
In linguistics,linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance,which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice.
Glossematics is a structuralist linguistic theory proposed by Louis Hjelmslev and Hans Jørgen Uldall. It defines the glosseme as the most basic unit of language.
In linguistics and social sciences,markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation,one term of an opposition is the broader,dominant one. The dominant default or minimum-effort form is known as unmarked;the other,secondary one is marked. In other words,markedness involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against one or more of its possible "irregular" forms.
Joan Lea Bybee is an American linguist and professor emerita at the University of New Mexico. Much of her work concerns grammaticalization,stochastics,modality,morphology,and phonology. Bybee is best known for proposing the theory of usage-based phonology and for her contributions to cognitive and historical linguistics.
Functional grammar (FG) and functional discourse grammar (FDG) are grammar models and theories motivated by functional theories of grammar. These theories explain how linguistic utterances are shaped,based on the goals and knowledge of natural language users. In doing so,it contrasts with Chomskyan transformational grammar. Functional discourse grammar has been developed as a successor to functional grammar,attempting to be more psychologically and pragmatically adequate than functional grammar.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as a descriptive study of language and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning,which entails the study of specific languages. Before the 20th century,linguistics evolved in conjunction with literary study and did not exclusively employ scientific methods.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is a book on linguistics written by American linguist Noam Chomsky,first published in 1965. In Aspects,Chomsky presented a deeper,more extensive reformulation of transformational generative grammar (TGG),a new kind of syntactic theory that he had introduced in the 1950s with the publication of his first book,Syntactic Structures. Aspects is widely considered to be the foundational document and a proper book-length articulation of Chomskyan theoretical framework of linguistics. It presented Chomsky's epistemological assumptions with a view to establishing linguistic theory-making as a formal discipline comparable to physical sciences,i.e. a domain of inquiry well-defined in its nature and scope. From a philosophical perspective,it directed mainstream linguistic research away from behaviorism,constructivism,empiricism and structuralism and towards mentalism,nativism,rationalism and generativism,respectively,taking as its main object of study the abstract,inner workings of the human mind related to language acquisition and production.
Jeroen van de Weijer is a Dutch linguist who teaches phonology,morphology,phonetics,psycholinguistics,historical linguistics and other courses at Shenzhen University,where he is Distinguished Professor of English linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages. Before,he was Full Professor of English Linguistics at Shanghai International Studies University,in the School of English Studies.
Integrational Linguistics (IL) is a general approach to linguistics that has been developed by the German linguist Hans-Heinrich Lieb and others since the late 1960s. The term "Integrational Linguistics" as a name for this approach has been used in publications since 1977 and antedates the use of the same term for integrationism,an unrelated approach developed by Roy Harris. Integrational Linguistics continues being developed by an open group of linguists from various countries.
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