奥托·耶斯佩森

Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (Danish: [ˈʌtˢo ˈjespɐsn̩]; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen describes him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Early life

Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland, to Jens Bloch Jespersen (1813–1870) and Sophie Caroline Bentzien (1833–1874). He was one of nine children. After his father died the family moved to Hillerød, where his Jutland accent was ridiculed.

As a boy, Jespersen was inspired by works of the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask and the biography of Rask by Niels Matthias Petersen; and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish.

Academic life and work

Jespersen's father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been lawyers, and the same was expected of him. He entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not abandoning his language studies. In his first year at university, he attended a lecture course by Sophus Heegaard on the history of Evolutionism since the Greeks; this introduced him to the ideas of Herbert Spencer, and later in life he looked back on the course warmly.……

Travels and honours

Jespersen visited the United States twice: he lectured at the Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis in 1904, and in 1909–1910 at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University (New York), the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts).

After his retirement in 1925, Jespersen remained active in the international linguistic community.……

Books by Jespersen

Even Hovdhaugen et al. describe Jespersen's output:

[Jespersen's] textbooks and numerous other books gave readers balanced, although not uncritical, information on what was going on in the field of linguistics. Jespersen had a broad theoretical orientation, was interested in all subsystems of language, and invoked examples from many different languages in a way that made him a precursor of language typology.

Fransk Læsebog efter Lydskriftsmethode ("A French reader using the phonetic method"). Copenhagen, 1889.

Political and other views

Jespersen was "an idealist and a pacifist"; and "It is no surprise that Jespersen, with his communicative view of language, his work in foreign language teaching, and his pacifism, should have been attracted to the idea of an international language."

He was "a rationalist and a radical". And "typical of his approach" was Jespersen's application of:

Personal life

As a student, Jespersen enjoyed chess and reading French and English literature.

Jespersen married Ane Marie Djørup on 13 April 1897; the couple, later together with their son (Frans), lived in Frederiksberg (administratively outside Copenhagen but geographically part of it), until their move in 1901 to Ermelundsly, a large house in Jægersborg, near Gentofte. In 1934 they again moved, to Lundehave, a large house in the outskirts of Helsingør, provided by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters for a distinguished academician.

Ane Marie died on 30 March 1937. Jespersen became ill in December 1942;……