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René de Saussure (17 March 1868 – 2 December 1943) was a Swiss
Esperantist
An Esperantist () is a person who speaks, reads or writes Esperanto. According to the Declaration of Boulogne, a document agreed upon at the first World Esperanto Congress in 1905, an Esperantist is someone who speaks Esperanto and uses it for ...
and professional mathematician who composed important works about the linguistics of Esperanto
Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
and interlinguistics
Interlinguistics, also known as cosmoglottics,
is the science of planned languages that has existed for more than a century. Formalised by Otto Jespersen in 1931 as the science of interlanguages, in more recent times, the field has been more fo ...
.
Biography
He was born inGeneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland. René's father was the scientist Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure
Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure (; ; 27 November 1829 – 20 February 1905) was a Swiss people, Swiss mineralogist, taxonomist and entomologist specialising in studies of hymenopteroid and Polyneoptera, orthopteroid insects.
Education, ca ...
. His brothers were linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...
and Sinologist Léopold de Saussure.
He defended a doctoral thesis on a subject in geometry at the Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
in 1895 and until 1899 he was professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and later in Geneva and Bern.
His main work is an analysis of the logic of word construction in Esperanto, ''Fundamentaj reguloj de la vortteorio en Esperanto'' ("Fundamental rules of word theory in Esperanto"), defending the language against several Idist
Ido () is a constructed language derived from a reformed version of Esperanto, and designed similarly with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse languages. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary ...
critiques. He developed the concept of ''neceso kaj sufiĉo'' ("necessity and sufficience") by which he opposed the criticism of Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido.
Life and education
Born in Paris. In 1887 he entered École Normale S ...
that Esperanto lacks recursion
Recursion occurs when the definition of a concept or process depends on a simpler or previous version of itself. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in m ...
.
In 1907, de Saussure proposed the international currency spesmilo
The ''spesmilo'' (, plural ''spesmiloj'' ) is an obsolete decimal international currency, proposed in 1907 by René de Saussure and used before World War I by a few British and Swiss banks, primarily the Ĉekbanko Esperantista.
The ''spesmilo'' ...
(₷). It was used by the Ĉekbanko esperantista
The Ĉekbanko Esperantista (Esperantist Checking Bank) was a bank founded in 1907 by H. F. Höveler in London.
Deposits and withdrawals were based on the Spesmilo. Transactions were "readily available and inexpensive". On 30 April 1914, there wer ...
and other British and Swiss banks until the First World War.
Beginning in 1919, de Saussure proposed a series of Esperanto reforms, and in 1925, he renounced Esperanto in favor of his artificial language Esperanto II
Esperanto II or Esperanto 2 was a reform of Esperanto proposed by René de Saussure in 1937, the last of a long series of such proposals beginning with a 1907 response to Ido with a project called Lingwo Internaciona, later called Antido 1.
. He later became a consultant for the International Auxiliary Language Association
The International Auxiliary Language Association, Inc. (IALA) was an American organisation founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together wi ...
, the linguistic research body that standardized and presented Interlingua
Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...
.Esterhill, Frank, ''Interlingua Institute: A History''. New York: Interlingua Institute, 2000. He died on 2 December 1943 in Bern
Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...
, Switzerland.
Legacy
A new silver Esperanto coin for 100Stelo
The stelo ("star"; Esperanto, plural: ''steloj'') was from 1945 to 1993 a monetary unit of Esperantists, one of whose aims was to achieve a single world currency. Attempts at an earlier currency, the Spesmilo, speso, were cut short by the World ...
j was struck in 2018 for the 150th birthday of René de Saussure.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saussure, Rene De 1868 births 1943 deaths Swiss Esperantists Swiss mathematicians Morphologists Writers from Geneva De Saussure family