Jespersen
Jespersen, Otto
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Contributions to phonetics and linguistic theory
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
16 July 1860, Randers, Denmark
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
30 April 1943, Roskilde, Denmark. Aged 83
DISCIPLINE:
Linguist
FIELD:
Linguistics, phonetics
LANGUAGE:
Danish
PARENTS:
Father: name???
Mother: name???
SIBLINGS:
??????
SPOUSE:
Ane Marie Djorup
CHILDREN:
1 son
EDUCATION:
Frederiksborg Grammar school
University of Copenhagen
MAJOR WORK:
"Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin" (1922)
"A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles" (1909-1949)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Jespersen was fascinated by languages as a schoolboy and studied Icelandic, Italian and Spanish both in class and in his spare time. At university he reluctantly read law to please his family. To keep solvent, he also worked as a private tutor and a shorthand reporter in Parliament.
After four years of legal studies he sold all his law books and took up languages. He argued unsuccessfully against compulsory Latin (which he was later instrumental in abolishing) and chose French and English as his subsidiary subjects.
He bought a book on phonetics by the English linguist Sweet* and from then began to promote the idea of the importance of speech sounds in language study.
Largely to due to Sweet, phonetics was beginning to be a serious subject of study, and in the commercial world, the shorthand developed by Pitman* was found in all English-speaking countries.
Jespersen's first publication, on phonetic laws, was written while he was still a student, and he began to make a reputation as a reforming teacher of modern languages. He finally got his degree in 1887. Because of his short sightedness, he was exempt from military service and he spent the next year travelling in England, Germany and France. On his return, he taught English language and literature at Copenhagen and in 1893, while still young, was appointed professor of English.
In addition to his interest in phonetics, he was also interested in the evolution of language and in 1894 wrote "Progress in Language, with Special Reference to English". He led a movement to link the teaching of a language to the general culture of its country of origin, and to the thoughts and emotions of the user. This meant basing teaching on the use of everyday speech rather than on grammar and vocabulary learned by repetition from textbooks.
In his English primer (1895), for example, he included English nursery rhymes, and the text of the primer was given in ordinary letters and in phonetic script. In 1895 he gave a speech to the teachers' association of Danish grammar schools saying that in teaching any language it was essential to be familiar with phonetics and be able to link the making of a sound with how it was heard.
During the 1890's he wrote a number of textbooks on phonetics, and the terminology of Danish phonetics is largely his invention. Jespersen disliked any idea of making education mysterious and elite, and used a simplified spelling which is similar in many respects to the current Danish spelling. In 1901 he wrote "How to Teach a Foreign Language" and always maintained that the book had a special atmosphere because most of it was written in the garden of the house outside Copenhagan where he lived with his wife and son.
From 1904-6 he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Copenhagen. Many of his works were written in English, the two most important being "Growth and Structure of the English Language" (1905) and his seven-volume "Modern English Grammar" (1909-49). His 1913 "The Logic of Language" was a valuable contribution to grammatical theory. In 1913 he gave a series of lectures on Ido, an artificial international language.
His increasing eminence did nothing to mellow Jespersen and in 1914 he wrote a controversial article arguing that in a modern university there was no place for a Faculty of Divinity, and proposed that there should be more than one university in Denmark, more professorships, and less old men on the governing bodies.
He wanted more money for libraries and for encouraging post-graduate studies, and said
that exams took too much time and energy. 1920-21 he served as Vice-Chancellor and in his welcoming speech to new students told them that criticism of their professors was the sign of a true academic.
In another speech, he declared that language 'consisted of human acts'. In 1922 he published his major work on linguistic evolution: "Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin". In 1925 he retired from the University.
He was the first to take advantage of the right to retire at the age of sixty-five and he told his students that at that age, professors ought to give way to younger men.
In his retirement, Jespersen invented another artificial international language which he called Novial and for which he produced a dictionary.
ASSESSMENT: Jespersen was one of the key players in the modernization of language
teaching.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS:
His funeral service was attended by Bohr*.
Met Passy*
ONELINER: Otto Jespersen, great early philologist
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Juul, Arne and Nielsen, Hans F, Otto Jespersen, Eds., Facets of His Life and Work, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1989
Asher, RE and Henderson, Eugenie JA, Towards a History of Phonetics, University Press, Edinburgh, 1981