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Jespersen, Otto
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen describes him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Early life Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland, to Jens Bloch Jespersen (1813–70) and Sophie Caroline Bentzien (1833–74). He was one of nine children. As a boy, he was inspired by works of the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask and the biography of Rask by ; and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish. Academic life and work Jespersen entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not abandoning his language studies. In his first year at university, he attended a lecture course by on the history of Evolutionism since the Greeks; this i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Randers
Randers () is a city in Randers Municipality, Central Denmark Region on the Jutland peninsula. It is List of cities and towns in Denmark, Denmark's sixth-largest city, with a population of 64,511 ().BY3: Population 1st January by urban areas, area and population density The Mobile Statbank from Statistics Denmark Randers is the municipality's main town and the site of its municipal council. By road it is north of Aarhus, east of Viborg, Denmark, Viborg, and northwest of Copenhagen. Randers became a thriving market town in medieval times, and many of its 15th-century half-timbered houses remain today, as does St Martin's Church, Randers, St Martin's Church, also from that period. Trade by sea was facilitated through the Gudenå River, entering Randers Fjord. During industrialization, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vilhelm Thomsen
Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Denmark, Danish linguistics, linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintsev in 1889. Early life and education Vilhelm Thomsen was born in Copenhagen. He was the son of Chamber Councillor (''kammerråd'') Ludvig Frederik Thomsen and the elder brother of painter and illustrator Carl Thomsen (1847–1912). He studied at the University of Copenhagen in 1859, graduating in 1867 and earning a PhD in 1869 with a dissertation on Germanic loanwords in Finnic. Career He taught Greek at the Borgerdyd school in Copenhagen before becoming a professor at the University of Copenhagen. From 1875, he was an associate professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1887 he was appointed professor. In 1876 he was invited to give the Ilchester Lectures at the University of Oxford, which were late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jón Stefánsson (academic)
Jón Stefánsson (1862-1952) was an Icelandic scholar. He wrote many books, articles and contributions to periodicals. Jón was born in Grundarfjordur in 1862 and went on to study at Reykjavík Grammar School and then the University of Copenhagen. At Copenhagen he produced a doctoral thesis (1891) on Robert Browning. Shortly after he left Copenhagen for London where he was to spend much of the next 50 years. In 1897 he took the British artist and scholar W. G. Collingwood on a tour of Iceland. Jón and Collingwood co-authored ''A pilgrimage to the saga-steads of Iceland'' with illustrations by Collingwood. They also collaborated on a translation of one of the sagas. In October 1918 he married a widowed French Mauritian woman, Adrienne de Chazal. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Mauritius but Jon became ill and returned to Iceland and then back to London. In London he spent much of his time in the British Museum writing but he was also an acquaintance of a wide range of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Stephens (philologist)
George Stephens (13 December 1813 – 9 August 1895) was an English archeologist and philologist, who worked in Scandinavia, especially on interpreting runic inscriptions. Born at Liverpool, Stephens studied at University College London. In 1834, he married Mary Bennett and moved to Sweden, studying Scandinavian medieval literature and folklore. His collection of fairy tales together with Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius was often reprinted. Stephens moved to Denmark, became a lecturer in English at Copenhagen University in 1851, and a professor in 1855. He published regularly in ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. In 1860, he published the first edition of the Waldere fragments. In 1877, Uppsala University made him doctor honoris causa. His brother was the Methodist minister Joseph Rayner Stephens. He died at Copenhagen in 1895. He was the grandfather of Florence Stephens. Bibliography * ''Conversational outlines of English grammar: intended as an easy introduction to that language... ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific ''A Treatise on the Astrolabe'' for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in public service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament, having been elected as Knight of the shire, shire knight for Kent. Among Chaucer's many other works are ''The Book of the Duchess'', ''The House of Fame'', ''The Legend of Good Women'', ''Troilus and Criseyde'', and ''Parlement of Foules''. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman Fren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nominal groups consisting of a noun and its modifiers belong to one of a few such categories. For instance, in English language, English, one says ''I see them'' and ''they see me'': the nominative case, nominative pronouns ''I/they'' represent the perceiver, and the accusative case, accusative pronouns ''me/them'' represent the phenomenon perceived. Here, nominative and accusative are cases, that is, categories of pronouns corresponding to the functions they have in representation. English has largely lost its inflected case system but personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative (including functions formerly handled by the Dative case, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Passy
Paul Édouard Passy (; 13 January 1859, Versailles21 March 1940, Bourg-la-Reine) was a French linguist, founder of the International Phonetic Association in 1886. He took part in the elaboration of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Early life Paul Passy was born into a notable French family: his father Frédéric, a noted economist and politician, was the first recipient (along with Henry Dunant) of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. Passy mastered English, German, and Italian as a child, and studied Sanskrit at the École des Hautes Études. He graduated from university at 19 and spent ten years as a language teacher (English and German) in public schools as an alternative to military service. Around this time he also became a committed Christian. Career Passy was largely self-taught in phonetics; his interest was prompted by his dissatisfaction with the methods of language teaching at the time. In 1886, Passy founded the Phonetic Teachers' Association, which later became the Int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Sweet
Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Old English and Old Norse. In addition, Sweet published works on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language and the teaching of languages. Many of his ideas have remained influential, and a number of his works continue to be in print, being used as course texts at colleges and universities. Life and work Henry Sweet was born in St Pancras, London. He was educated at Bruce Castle School and King's College School, London."SWEET, Henry MA, PhD, LLD", in '' Who Was Who 1897–1915'' (London: A. & C. Black, 1988 reprint, ) In 1864, he spent a short time studying at Heidelberg University. Upon his return to England, he took up an office job with a trading company in London. Five years later, aged twenty-four, he w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empiricism, the Enlightenment was concerned with a wide range of social and Politics, political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity (philosophy), fraternity, constitutional government, and the formal separation of church and state. The Enlightenment was preceded by and overlapped the Scientific Revolution, which included the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton, among others, as well as the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and John Locke. The dating of the period of the beginning of the Enlightenment can be attributed to the publication of René Descartes' ''Discourse on the Method'' in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot initially studied philosophy at a Society of Jesus, Jesuit college, then considered working in the church clergy before briefly studying law. When he decided to become a writer in 1734, his father disowned him. He lived a Bohemianism, bohemian existence for the next decade. In the 1740s he wrote many of his best-known works in both fiction and non-fiction, including the 1748 novel ''The Indiscreet Jewels, Les Bijoux indiscrets'' (The Indiscreet Jewels). In 1751 Diderot co-created the ''Encyclopédie'' with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It was the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors and the first to describe the mechanical arts. Its secular tone, which included articles skepti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
