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The linguistics encyclopedia 252
ideas about language and by his demand for a stringent method and definitions of the
terms employed.
Outside Denmark glossematics was often discussed in the years following the
publication of OSG, and particularly after the publication of Whitfield’s English
translation, e.g. by E. Coseriu (1954) and B.Malmberg (1964 and other publications). It
has further had a strong influence on the theories of Sidney Lamb (1966) (see
STRATIFICATIONAL SYNTAX) and S.K.Šaumjan (1962, English translation 1968). In
the 1960s, the interest in glossematics was overshadowed by the success of
transformational grammar, but from the end of the 1960s and, particularly, in the 1980s,
there has been a renewed interest in glossematics, not only in the young generation of
Danish linguists, but also outside Denmark, particularly in France and in southern
Europe, especially Italy and Spain. Special volumes of the periodicals Langages (1967)
and Il Protagora (1985) have been devoted to glossematics, and treatises concerned
particularly with glossematics have been published (C.Caputo, 1986) or are in
preparation.
This renewed interest is not in the first place concerned with the glossematic
procedures or definitions of linguistic categories, which were the main subjects of
discussion in the Linguistic Circle in Hjelmslev’s lifetime (see, e.g., Recherches
structurales 1949 and Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 1941–65), but
mainly with Hjelmslev’s general ideas on content and expression, form and substance,
and his system of semiotics and metasemiotics, i.e., with the epistemological implications
of the theory. Moreover, Hjelmslev’s demand for a structural analysis of the content has
inspired the French school of semantics (see, e.g., Greimas, 1966), and the problem of
levels in the substance described in ‘La Stratification du langage’ has also been taken up.
In this connection, a large number of translations of glossematic works into various
languages have been undertaken. Thus glossematics is still a source of inspiration for
linguists, semanticists, and philosophers.
E.F.-J.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Hjelmslev, L. (1973), ‘A causerie on linguistic theory’, in Essais linguistiques Il Travaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Copenhague, vol. XIV, trans. C.Hendriksen, Copenhagen, Nordisk Sprog- og
Kulturforlag, pp. 101–17.
Hjelmslev, L. (1947), ‘Structural analysis of language’, Studia Linguistica, pp. 69–78. Also in
(1959) Essais linguist iques II: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, vol. XIV,
Copenhagen, Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag, pp. 69–81.
Malmberg, B. (1964), New Trends in Linguistics, (Bibliotheca Linguistica, no. 1), Stockholm,
Bibliotheca Linguistica.
Martinet, A. (1946), ‘Au Sujet des fondements de la théorie linguistique de Louis Hjelmslev’,
Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 42(1):19–42.
Whitfield, F.J. (1954), ‘Glossematics’, in A. Martinet and U.Weinreich (eds), Linguistics Today:
Publication on the Occasion of Columbia University Bicentennial, New York, Linguistic Circle
of New York, pp. 250–8.