Eugenio Coșeriu (, ; 27 July 1921 – 7 September 2002) was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

who specialized in

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellenc ...

, author of over 50 books, honorary member of the Romanian Academy. In 1970 he coined the terms diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic to describe linguistic variation.Kastovsky, D. and Mettinger A. (eds.)
The History of English in a Social Context: A Contribution to Historical Sociolinguistics
', ''Introduction'', p.xiii

Biography

Coșeriu was born on July 27, 1921, in Mihăileni, a small

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

n town that today lies in the

Republic of Moldova Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of and population of 2.42 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised ...

. He attended

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

Bălți Bălți () is a city in Moldova. It is the second-largest city in terms of population, area and economic importance, after Chișinău. The city holds the status of municipiu. Sometimes called "the northern capital", it is a major industrial, cu ...

, where Vadim Pirogan and Sergiu Grossu were his classmates. After his studies at the University of Iași, he went to Italy in 1940 with a scholarship of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and continued to study at

Sapienza University of Rome The Sapienza University of Rome (), formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", abbreviated simply as Sapienza ('Wisdom'), is a Public university, public research university located in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1303 and is ...

, where he earned his PhD in 1944 under the direction of , with a dissertation about the influence of the

Chanson de geste The , from 'deeds, actions accomplished') is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poetry, epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late 11th and early 12th centuries, shortly ...

on the folk poetry of the

South Slavic peoples South Slavs are Slavs, Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs ...

. In 1944–1945 Coșeriu was at the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

, then from 1945 to 1949 at the

University of Milan The University of Milan (; ), officially abbreviated as UNIMI, or colloquially referred to as La Statale ("the State niversity), is a public university, public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Eu ...

, where he a obtained a PhD degree in philosophy, under the supervision of Antonio Banfi. Coșeriu was active at the University of the Republic in

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

as Professor of General and Indo-European Linguistics from 1950 to 1958. He then held visiting positions at the University of Málaga and the

University of Navarra The University of Navarra is a private Catholic research university located on the southeast border of Pamplona, Navarre, Spain. It was founded in 1952 by Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of '' Opus Dei'', as a corporat ...

and a teaching position at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; , ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coimbra in 1537. The university ...

. From 1961 to 1963 he was invited professor at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

and the University of Frankfurt, after which he moved permanently to the

, where he held the Professor of Romance Linguistics position until his retirement in 1991. He was elected honorary member of the

Romanian Academy The Romanian Academy ( ) is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 active members who are elected for life. According to its bylaws, the academy's ma ...

in 1991.

Honours

* Biblioteca Municipală "Eugeniu Coșeriu",

* Colocviul Internațional de științe ale Limbajului "Eugeniu Coșeriu" * "Eugen Coșeriu" High School Mihăileni, Bălți

Selected works

* Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general'', Madrid, 1973 * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Sincronía, diacronía e historia'', Madrid, 1973 * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Principios de semántica estructural'', Madrid, 1978. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''El hombre y su lenguaje: estudios de teoría y metodología lingüística'', Madrid, 1985. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Tradición y novedad en la ciencia del lenguaje'', Madrid, 1977. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Gramatica, semántica, universales'', Madrid, 1978. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, ''Lecții de lingvistică generală'', Chișinău, ARC Publishing House, 2000. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, "Limbaj și politică", in ''Revista de lingvistică și știință literară'', 5/1996. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, „Latinitatea orientală”, in ''Limba Română este patria mea. Studii. Comunicări. Documente'', Chișinău, 1996, pp. 15–31. * Eugeniu Coșeriu, „Unitatea limbii române – planuri și criterii”. Ibidem. p. 205-121. * Eugeniu Coșeriu and Horst Geckeler. ''Trends in structural semantics''. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 158). Tübingen: Narr. 1981.

References

External links

*
Evocare Eugeniu Coșeriu
* Liceul Teoretic „Ion Creangă” din Bălți {{DEFAULTSORT:Coseriu, Eugenio 1921 births 2002 deaths Romanian people of Moldovan descent People from Bălți People from Rîșcani District Alexandru Ioan Cuza University alumni Sapienza University of Rome alumni University of Milan alumni Romanian expatriates in Uruguay Academic staff of the University of the Republic (Uruguay) Romanian expatriates in Germany Academic staff of the University of Tübingen 20th-century Romanian linguists Romanian expatriates in Italy Translation scholars