Pieter Albertus Maria Seuren (born July 9, 1934 in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

, died 6 November 2021) was a Dutch

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, emeritus professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language at the

Radboud University Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

, and research fellow at the

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located ...

at Nijmegen.

Biography

After finishing the St. Ignatius Gymnasium,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, in 1951, he studied linguistics, together with classical languages and ancient history, at

Amsterdam University The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

from 1951 till 1958. He then taught Classics at a Junior College in Amsterdam till 1963. For a brief period he studied and worked under the guidance of the Amsterdam logician

Evert Beth Evert is a Dutch and Swedish short form of the Germanic masculine name "Everhard" (alternative Eberhard).Evert
at the

. This was followed by an assistantship at

Groningen University The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is the ...

, after which, in 1967, he was appointed as a lecturer in Linguistics at (

Darwin College, Cambridge Darwin College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded on 28 July 1964, Darwin was Cambridge University's first graduate-only college, and also the first to admit both men and women. The college is named after one of the ...

), where he stayed till 1970. In 1969 he obtained his PhD (‘’Operators and Nucleus’’) at the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

. From 1970 till 1974 he was lecturer in Linguistics at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

(

Magdalen College Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

). From there he moved to

as a professor of Philosophy of Language. In 1995 his chair was changed to Theoretical Linguistics. After his retirement in 1999 he was a research fellow at the

at Nijmegen. In 1982 he founded the ‘’ Journal of Semantics’’. In 1988 he was elected member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. In 1996 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by

Glasgow University , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

. During his career he fulfilled visiting professorships in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Penang Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay ...

Bern german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese , neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen , website ...

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's 2 ...

Maceió Maceió (), formerly sometimes Anglicised as Maceio, is the capital and the largest city of the coastal state of Alagoas, Brazil. The name "Maceió" is an Indigenous term for a spring. Most maceiós flow to the sea, but some get trapped and form l ...

Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, twelfth most populous city in the country ...

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Stellenbosch Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronounc ...

Florianópolis Florianópolis () is the capital and second largest city of the state of Santa Catarina, in the South region of Brazil. The city encompasses Santa Catarina Island and surrounding small islands, as well as part of the mainland. It has a populat ...

Academic work

As a linguist, Seuren took an independent position, opposing not only the linguistic ideas of

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

but also possible-world semantics and cognitivist linguistics, all of which he considered to be empirically and methodologically inadequate—the former two because they are overformalized and fail to take into account the natural ecological environment of human language, the third because of its ideologically motivated aversion to any explanation involving underlying rule-governed causal mechanisms. In his view, a grammar was an algorithmic top-down rule system transforming logico-semantic mental (propositional) structures into well-formed surface structures (1996). In a wider methodological perspective, he supported the view that in the study of language a balance should be kept between precise but informal analyses and descriptions on the one hand and full formalization on the other: formalize where you can but be content with less formal theorizing when full formalization is (as yet) impossible (2009). His special fields of research were: the theory of grammar and meaning and their interrelations (1969, 1975, 1996, 2009); the role of

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

(especially

scope Scope or scopes may refer to: People with the surname * Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer * John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution Arts, media, and entertainment * Cinem ...

phenomena in language (1969, 1975, 1985, 2010)); the theory of "Semantic Syntax" (1996); the analysis of the notion of meaning (1975, 2009); the theory of semantic

presupposition In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...

and the trivalent logic required by it (1975, 1985, 2010); the analysis of the context-dependency of sentences in discourse (1985, 2009, 2010); the development of a natural logic on the basis of the natural meanings of logical operators in language (2010). Besides his work in

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...

, Seuren is known as a historian of linguistics (1998). From c. 1980 to c. 1995 he took an active interest in

Creole languages A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. Wh ...

, in particular the English-based

Suriname Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...

Creole Sranan, for which he devised a now legally sanctioned orthography, and the French-based Creole of the Indian Ocean island

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

. In this context, he co-founded, in 1980, together with Herman Wekker, the IBS (Institute for the Advancement of Surinamese Studies) and the still flourishing Dutch-language periodical ''Oso'' (Sranan for ‘house’). His seminal publications include: * ‘’Operators and Nucleus. A Contribution to the Theory of Grammar’’. (diss. Univ. Utrecht) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969. * ‘’Discourse Semantics’’. Blackwell, Oxford, 1985. * ‘’Semantic Syntax’’. Blackwell, Oxford, 1996. * ‘’Western Linguistics. An Historical Introduction’’. Blackwell, Oxford, 1998. * ‘’A View of Language’’. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001. * ‘’Chomsky's Minimalism’’. Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford, 2004. * ‘’Language in Cognition’’. (= ‘’Language from Within’’ Vol. I) Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009. * ‘’The Logic of Language’’. (= ‘’Language from Within’’ Vol. II) Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010. * ‘’From Whorf to Montague: Explorations in the Theory of Language’’. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013.

References

External links

Profile at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seuren, Pieter 1934 births 2021 deaths Linguists from the Netherlands Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Radboud University Nijmegen faculty University of Amsterdam alumni Utrecht University alumni People from Haarlem