Lucien Tesnière

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Lucien TesniÃÆ'¨re ( French: Ã, [lysj? t? nj ??] 13 May 1893 - December 6, 1954) was a prominent and influential French linguist. He was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on May 13, 1893. As a professor in Strasbourg (1924), and later in Montpellier (1937), he published many papers and books on Slavic languages. However, its importance in linguistic history is primarily based on the development of an approach to the syntax of natural languages ​​to be known as grammatical dependencies. He presented his theory in his book The Structural Elements Syntaxe Structural Element, published posthumously in 1959. In this book he proposed the formalization of a sophisticated syntactic structure, supported by many examples from various languages. TesniÃÆ'¨re died in Montpellier on December 6, 1954.

Many central concepts that acceptable modern syntactical studies are developed and presented at ÃÆ'â € lÃÆ'Â ¢ lents . For example, TesniÃÆ'¨re develops the concept of valence in detail, and the main difference between the argument (aktan) and the extra ( circumstances French circus ), most if not all syntax theories now acknowledge and build, is the center of understanding TesniÃÆ'¨re. TesniÃÆ'¨re also strongly argues that the syntax is autonomous of morphology and semantics. This attitude is similar to generative grammar, which takes the syntax to be a separate component of the human faculty for the language.

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Biography

Lucien TesniÃÆ'¨re was born on May 13, 1893 in Mont-Saint-Aignan, now a suburb of Rouen (northwest of France). He studied Latin, Greek, and German at school. He spent time abroad as a youth in England, Germany, and Italy. He enrolled at Sorbonne University and Leipzig University studied German when World War I broke out. He was mobilized on August 12 and sent ahead on October 15th. He became a prisoner of war on February 16, 1915. He was interned at the camp in Merseburg with 4000 other prisoners from all nations. During his 40-month period of detention, he continued intense language lessons. He also worked for the German authorities as a French-English-Russian-Italian-German translator.

He continued his studies at the Sorbonne after the war. He studied with Joseph Vendryes, and at CollÃÆ'¨ge de France he was under the care of Antoine Meillet, a prominent linguist at the time. TesniÃÆ'¨re was later invited as a lecturer to the University of Ljubljana (now the capital of Slovenia), where he wrote his doctoral thesis on double disappearance in Slovenian. He married Jeanne Roulier in Zagreb and became the father of three with him.

In February 1924, TesniÃÆ'¨re became a professor of Slavic language and literature at the University of Strasbourg (capital of Alsace on the border into Germany), where he taught Russian and Old Slavs. TesniÃÆ'¨re was promoted to professor of grammaire comparà © e at Montpellier University (in southern France) in 1937.

During World War II TesniÃÆ'¨re worked as a cryptographic officer for Military Intelligence, called the DeuxiÃÆ'¨me Bureau. He became very ill after the war of 1947 and his health remained poor until he died on December 6, 1954. His main oeuvre, the méthesis de syntaxe structurale, was published five years later in 1959 because constant efforts of his wife Jeanne and the help of colleagues and friends.

Maps Lucien Tesnière

The central idea in the TesniÃÆ'¨re concept of syntax

The following subsections consider some central ideas and concepts in the TesniÃÆ'¨re approach to syntax. The following areas are addressed: (1) connections, (2) autonomous syntax, (3) verb centralization, (4) stemmas, (5) centripetal (head-start) and centrifugal (head-end) language, (6) ) valence, (7) actants and circonstants, and (8) transfers.

Connection

TesniÃÆ'¨re started his theoretical presentation of syntax with connections . Connection is between words of sentence. They group words together, creating meaningful units. TesniÃÆ'¨re writes:

"Every word in a sentence is not as isolated as in a dictionary.The mind feels the connection between words and neighbors.This connection totality forms a sentence scaffold.This connection is not indicated by anything, but it is very important that they are considered by the mind, without they sentence is incomprehensible......, the sentence of type Alfred speaks does not consist of only two elements Alfred and speaks , but more than three elements, the first Alfred , the second speaking , and the three connections that unify them - without which there will be no sentence.) To say that a sentence of type Alfred speaks only consists of two elements is to analyze it superficially, purely morphological, while ignoring the important aspects that are syntactic links. "

The connection that TesniÃÆ'¨re describes in this section is now more widely called dependency , hence the term grammar dependency. Two words connected by dependency do not have the same status. , but one word is the boss, and the other is his subordinate. TesniÃÆ'¨re is called the superior governor , and the inferior word subordinate . By acknowledging the totality of connections between sentence words, TesniÃÆ'¨re is in a position to establish the sentence of a syntactic concrete structure, which he does in terms of stemma (see below).

Autonomous syntax

TesniÃÆ'¨re rejects the influence of morphology in the field of syntax. Thus, it promotes a break from tradition in linguistics that focuses on concrete forms such as affixes and the inflexional paradigms associated with the study of ancient languages ​​(Latin and Greek). TesniÃÆ'¨re argues that the study of syntax should not be limited to the examination of concrete forms, but we must recognize and explore connections (as described above). He pointed to the key concept of innere Sprachform 'inner form' founded by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Since innere Sprachform (ie connection) is abstract, one can not admit it and explore the central role it plays in syntax by focusing only on concrete forms. TesniÃÆ'¨re is arguing, in other words, the syntax is largely independent of morphology; it is an autonomous component of a natural language.

TesniÃÆ'¨re also looks at syntax and semantics as separate language domains. To illustrate this separation, it produces an absurd sentence Le silence vertà ©  © bral indispose la voile licite 'Vertebral silence defines the legitimate screen'. He emphasized that although the sentence does not make sense, it is well formed from a syntactic point of view, because the words and sequences are correct. Noam Chomsky made the same points with his famous phrase The green idea without the color of sleeping angrily .

Verb centrality

TesniÃÆ'¨re strongly opposes the binary division of clauses into the subject and predicate that has been and is prevalent in syntactical studies, and he replaces this division with the centrality of the verb. He claims that the division comes from logic and has no place in linguistics. He positions the verb as the root of all clause structures, in which all other elements in the clause directly or indirectly depend on the verb. TesniÃÆ'¨re illustrates the difference with the representation of the diagram (stemmas) of the French sentence Alfred parle lentement Alfred speaks slowly and the Latin phrase Filius is very patrem '(The) boy loving (the) father ':

The above French sentence diagram illustrates the binary division of which TesniÃÆ'¨re is rejected; the clause is divided into two parts, the subject is Alfred and the predicate parle lentement . The Latin sentence below illustrates the centrality of the verb that TesniÃÆ'¨re adhered to; the verb very is the root of the clause and the subject of filius and the patrem object is the dependent. The importance of this difference lies in understanding the overall sentence structure that emerges from these competing views. A syntax theory that starts with binary division tends to be a grammar of a structural phrase (constituent grammar), whereas the syntax theory that begins with the centrality of the verb tends to be a dependency grammar.

Stemma

TesniÃÆ'¨re relies heavily on tree-like diagrams to represent the understanding of sentence structure and the syntax he pursues. He calls this diagram stemmas - which contains over 350 of them. This base indicates the connection and the way in which the connection connects the sentence words into the structure hierarchy, for example

These diagrams show some of the main features of the TesniÃÆ'¨re conception of syntactic structure. Verb centrality is clear, because the verb is the highest word in stemma (root). The syntactic unit is present; constituents and phrases identified; they correspond to the complete subtrees. An important aspect of this stemm is that they are "irregular", ie they do not reflect the actual sequence of words. For TesniÃÆ'¨re, the structural order (hierarchical order) precedes a linear sequence in the mind of a speaker. A speaker first understands what he wants to say, in which the conception consists of words that are arranged hierarchically in relation (structural sequence). The act of speaking involves transforming the structural order into the linear order, and conversely, the act of hearing and understanding involves the transformation of the linear order into the structural order. The strict separation of this ordering dimension is the point of contention between the modern grammar of dependence. Some grammatical dependencies, ie multilevel ones (eg the theory of meaning-text and functional generative descriptions) are built upon the strict separation of the structural order and the linear order, while other dependency grammars (eg the Kata grammar) are monostratal (in syntax) and hence reject separation.

Centrifugal (head -initial) and centripetal (head-final) language

Given the hierarchical organization of the syntactic unit he positions (and is represented by using stemmas), TesniÃÆ'¨re identifies the centripetal and centrifugal structures. The modern term for these concepts is head-start (centrifugal) and head-end (centripetal). The centrifugal structure sees the governor (head) precedes their dependents, while the situation is reversed for centripetal structures, dependents that precede their heads, for example

TesniÃÆ'¨re does not really produce a "regular" stemmas like the two on the right here. But if one chooses to reflect the order of words in stemmas, then the difference between the centrifugal vs. centripetal structure established by TesniÃÆ'¨re is obvious. The following two trees of the English sentence Stop trying to do that and The effort of the sister succeed illustrates the difference:

The trunk clearly shows how the centrifugal structure extends to the right, and the centripetal structure to the left. TesniÃÆ'¨re classified the language according to whether they are more centrifugal than centripetal, or vice versa. The difference has since become the mainstay of language typology. Languages ​​are classified according to their head-directionality parameters: such as head-start or end-of-life. Semitic languages ​​(eg Hebrew, Arabic), for example, are much more centrifugal than centripetal, and certain East Asian languages ​​are much more centripetal than centrifuges (eg Japan, Korea). English is the language minus by TesniÃÆ'¨re, which means that it contains a good mix of centrifugal and centripetal structures.

Valence

With its "valence" metaphor, TesniÃÆ'Ârere contributes to our understanding of the lexicon nature. He compared verbs with molecules. Like oxygen atoms O draws two hydrogen H atoms to make molecules H ₂ O, the verb draws act to create a clause. Therefore the verb has valence. TesniÃÆ'¨re distinguishes between verbs avalent (no actant), monovalent (one actant), divalent (two actants), and trivalent (three actants). Sample English follows:

Avalent's verb: It rain . - The verb rain is avalent (pronounced it semantically without content).

Monovalent verb: Sam goes to sleep . - The verb sleep is monovalent; needed one act

Divalen verb: Susan know Sam . - verb know divalen; It takes two acting, the actor of the subject and the acting object

Trivalent verb: Sam give a Susan earrings. - The verb provided is trivalent; It takes three actors, the subject actors, and two acting objects.

The valence characteristics of the verb play a role in the exploration of various syntactic mechanisms. In particular, various diathesis phenomena (active, passive, reflexive, reciprocal, recessive) are sensitive to the underlying verb valence. The concept of valence is now widely recognized in the study of syntax, in fact most of the grammar phrase structure recognizes predicate valence.

Actants vs. circonstants

In addition to acting, TesniÃÆ'¨re recognizes the state (French circus ). While acting with verbs is important to complement verbal meaning, circumstances add optional content, for example

Tomorrow Alfred will go noon . - Condition tomorrow and during the day add optional content.

Someone often sees it a lot of time anywhere . - The state of many , all the time , and everywhere adds optional content.

The number of actants appearing in the clause is limited by the valence characteristics of the clause verb, whereas the number of states that can appear in the clause is theoretically unlimited, since the state is not limited by the valence verb. The modern syntax acknowledges the actant and the state of course too, although using different terminology. The actor is known as the argument , and the state as adjuncts , so again, TesniÃÆ'¨re identifies and explores key concepts that are now a mainstay in modern syntactical studies.

Transfer

The second part of the Element (300 pages) focuses on the theory of transfers (French translation ). Transfer is a component of the TesniÃÆ'¨re theory that discusses the syntactic categories. TesniÃÆ'¨re interested in keeping the number of categories of syntax principle to a minimum. He recognizes only four basic categories of content words: nouns (O), verbs (I), adjectives (A), and adverbs (E). The abbreviations he uses for these words (O, I, A, E) correspond to the last letter of the corresponding Esperanto designation. In addition to these four basic content words, it also presents two types of function words, index and translative . He takes articles (definite and uncertain) and clitoral pronouns are indexed, and the typical translation is subordinator (subordinate conjunction) and preposition. The main task of translation is to transfer content words from one category to another. For example, a preposition usually transfers a noun to an adjective or an adverb, and the subordinator usually transfers the verb to a noun. For example, in the phrase "i le livre de Pierre " Peter's book, Peter's book, the preposition de works to transfer the noun Pierre to adjectives that can modify the noun livre . In other words, the noun Pierre , although technically not an adjective, comes to function like an adjective with the addition of a translation de i. Transfers are represented in stemmas using custom conventions. The following stemmas represent the phrase de Pierre 'Peter' and the sentence ÃÆ' â € ° crivez dans le livre de votre ami 'Write in your friends' book:

The translative word and the word being transferred are placed at the same level and the vertical divider line separates them. The target category, the category that is the result of the transfer, is shown above the horizontal line. In the first stemma above, A indicates that Pierre has been transferred (by de ) to the adjective. The stemma below shows two examples of transfers, where the first indicates that the dans livre de votre ami is transferred to the adverb, and the second that de votre ami is transferred to the adjective.

For TesniÃÆ'¨re, the ability to transfer one category to another as desired in a fluid speech is the primary tool that enables truly productive speech. The syntactic categories alone are not able to combine with each other can be immediately united by translative transferring effects.

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Legacy

The relics of TesniÃÆ'¨re mainly lie in the widespread view that sees its foothold as a starting point and a drive for the development of grammatical dependencies. Thus the framework of dependency-dependent syntax and grammar (eg, Kata's grammar, text-meaning theory, functional generative description) generally cites TesniÃÆ'¨re as the father of modern dependency grammar. An interesting side note in this regard is that TesniÃÆ'¨re itself is not set to produce dependency grammars, since the distinction between dependency-dependent grammars and constituents (grammatical phrase phrases) is unknown to linguistics while TesniÃÆ'¨re is alive. The first difference became established during the acceptance of the TesniÃÆ'¨re idea.

The legacy of TesniÃÆ'¨re is not limited to the development of dependency grammar, however. As stated above, a number of key concepts he developed (eg valence, additional vs. argument, head start vs. end language) are the pillars of most modern work in the field of syntax. Interestingly though, TesniÃÆ'¨re does not receive full credit that he may be eligible for his contribution to the field of syntax. TesniÃÆ'¨re died shortly before the initiation of generative grammar, and his works remain not translated into English until recently (2015). Thus the influence is greater in Europe than in English-speaking North Americans.

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See also

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Note

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Main works

• 1934. Petite grammaire russe, Henri Didier, Paris.
• 1938. Cours ÃÆ'Â © lÃÆ'Â © mentaire de syntaxe structurale.
• 1943. Cours de syntaxe structurale.
• 1953. Esquisse d'une syntaxe structurale, Klincksieck, Paris.
• 1959. ÃÆ' â € ° lÃÆ' Â © ments de syntaxe structurale, Klincksieck, Paris. ISBNÃ, 2-252-01861-5
• 1966. ÃÆ' â € ° lÃÆ' Â © ments de syntaxe structurale, Klincksieck, Paris. Preface by Jean Fourquet, professor at the Sorbonne. The second edition was revised and improved. ISBNÃ, 2-252-02620-0
• 2015. Structural syntax element [English translation of TesniÃÆ'¨re 1966]. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

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Secondary works

• Kahane and Osborne 2015. Introductory translator. In: Structural syntactic elements [English translation of TesniÃÆ'¨re 1966]. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Source of the article : Wikipedia