Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (; 11 February 1911,

Nakskov Nakskov is a market town on the island of Lolland in south Denmark. The town has a population of 12,200 (1 January 2025) and is the largest town on the island of Lolland. It is located in Lolland municipality in Region Sjælland. Nakskov is situ ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

– 27 February 2010,

Virum Virum is a mostly residential, suburban neighbourhood in Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality, located on both sides of Lyngby Kongevej, approximately 15 km north of central Copenhagen, Denmark. The neighbourhood is bordered by Furesø (lake), Lake F ...

) was a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

and led the Institute for Phonetics. She was a member of the

Danish resistance movement The Danish resistance movements () were an underground insurgency to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the initially lenient arrangements, in which the Nazi occupation authority allowed the democratic govern ...

fighting against the

German occupation of Denmark At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral, but that neutrality did not prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the country soon after the outbreak of war; the occupation lasted until Germany's defeat. The ...

. She began studying French and German at the

in 1929. She specialized in linguistics and her thesis treated "the importance of dialect geography for the perception of sound changes". From 1933 she became a member of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen which evolved around

Louis Hjelmslev Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (; 3 October 189930 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studi ...

and his theory of

glossematics In linguistics, glossematics is a structuralist theory proposed by Louis Hjelmslev and Hans Jørgen Uldall. It defines the ''glosseme'' as the most basic unit of language. Hjelmslev and Uldall eventually went separate ways with their respecti ...

. Tired of the theoretical discussions of Hjelmslev's circle, she took up research in the field of

in which she became an international figure, publishing widely used text books about general phonetics and phonological theory. She also corresponded with

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (, ; 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzk ...

through many years and had met on several occasions. During the German occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945, she worked in the resistance group of Professor

Carsten Høeg Carsten Høeg (15 November 1896 in Aalborg – 3 April 1961) was a Danish professor of classical philology and a Juris Doctor at the University of Copenhagen from 1926. He earned his Ph.D. with an ethnographic study of the Sarakatsani Greeks. H ...

and under great risk helped him assemble a list of Danish nazis to be prosecuted after the liberation. She was a corresponding member of the Danish Academy of the Sciences''Earth Times'' obituary online
/ref> and the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

References

Bibliography

*Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. (1975) ''Trends in phonological theory until 1975'', Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen, C.A. Reitzel (distributor) *Ege, Jens & Eli Fischer-Jørgensen
''Interneringskartoteket: Om Carsten Høeg og hans gruppe under besættelsen''
Museum Tusculanums Forlag, København (2005) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fischer-Jorgensen, Eli 1911 births 2010 deaths Linguists from Denmark Danish resistance members Phoneticians Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Corresponding fellows of the British Academy