FIFTY YEARS OF LINGUISTICS - FOUR EXAMPLES

• Published in: Folia linguistica 1986-01, Vol.20 (3-4), p.251-264
• Main Author: HEGER, KLAUS
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0165-4004; 1614-7308
• DOI: 10.1515/flin.1986.20.3-4.251

Presidential address given at the annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Manchester, 1984. An acknowledgment of indebtedness to four figures of twentieth-century linguistics: Walther von Wartburg, Karl Buhler, Erwin Koschmieder, & Lucien Tesniere. Salient achievements by these linguists are noted, eg, Wartburg's pioneering work on Romance conjugation, a work that has since inspired much research on lang typology; Buhler's multiplication of two paired parameters - lower/higher abstraction (reminiscent of Ferdinand de Saussure's langue/parole) & speaker dependence/nondependence, & his recognition of the need for a common frame of reference for contrasting any two natural langs; Koschmieder's attention to aspect - a phenomenon that has contributed substantially to confusion in various linguistic schools, & his application of Saussurean synchrony/diachrony in explaining Slavic aspect; & Tesniere's ideas that were later extended in current actant models, a kind of very abstract case grammar whose immediate - but not very close - neighbor would be Charles Fillmore's theory of deep cases. 16 References. Modified AA