Gustave Guillaume

Gustave Guillaume ( born December 16, 1883 in Paris, † February 3, 1960 in Paris) was a French linguist.

Throughout his life Gustave Guillaume has remained largely unrecognized. This is probably because that the science of language, which he developed, was too new for the era. In the history of all the sciences, it sometimes happens that great innovator first go unheard. What do they bring new knowledge, just come early. His contemporaries, and especially their immediate colleagues, it still can not understand - sometimes they do not even want to hear it. Nowadays there are more and more linguists, who are of the opinion that Guillaume 's been such innovators worldwide. In the meantime, have taken place since his death also eleven international conventions that deal with the psychological mechanism of human speech - have employed - the new, which he founded in linguistics.

Life

His path to linguistics is been an outsider. A famous professor and internationally renowned linguist, Antoine Meillet (1866-1936), who was a pupil and friend of Saussure, met in 1909 in the Parisian bank, where he had his account, know a twenty-six bank apprentice named Gustave Guillaume, not only in financial affairs was gifted, but also knowledgeable about mathematics, physics, philosophy, could speak both older and newer literature, although he had never attended a university. Meillet longer held regular meetings with the young man who was very interested in language and grammar. He eventually invited him to his own lectures as well as the other philologists at the École pratique des hautes études and visit at the Collège de France. Guillaume followed this advice and was initiated into the secrets of historical grammar and language- comparative method. So you could say that he has come to speak " over the bank counter " to linguistics. In 1919 he received his doctorate with a groundbreaking study on Le problème de l'article et sa solution dans la langue française ( "The problem of the article and its solution in French" ). Followed in 1929 another book: Temps et verbe. On Meillet initiative, he got at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1938 a modest teaching, which included three hours a week. There he taught until his death (1960 ) in front of a small first, but then ever-expanding circle of listeners. His final resting he found on the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

Services

The essays he published in scientific journals, were acknowledged with either silence or violently " refuted " by people who did not even give himself the trouble to understand them. It is part of the paradox of Guillaume's life that he has met repeatedly with incomprehension, although the best and most intelligent minds of contemporary linguistics had already recognized the importance of his work. Aside from his teacher Meillet, who has always supported and encouraged him to have such outstanding scientists such as Louis Havet, Joseph Vendryes, Paul Imbs, Robert Leon Wagner ( in collaboration with Jacqueline Pinchon one of the best grammars wrote of French) his discoveries welcomed. Your support, however, has apparently not sufficient to preserve the Guillaume'sche linguistics misunderstandings. As late as the 1970s it was dangerous in certain linguistic institutes to mention the name of Guillaume in a doctoral thesis.

After Guillaume's death in 1960 one of his students, the Quebec Roch Valin, all his manuscripts has ( 60,000 sheets) inherited. After returning to his home, he became professor and head of the Institute of linguistics at Laval University ( Quebec City ). He also founded the fund Gustave Guillaume, a foundation on which the manuscripts of the linguists are kept. Throughout his career, valine younger French and English scientists trained by the methods of psycho- mechanics of human speech. After he has squandered a couple of years to let fade the ruling in the official Linguistics guillaumefeindliche mood, he has 1964 in Langage et du langage science already out of print essays by Guillaume reissued. In 1971, he has also started with the release of held at the Ecole Pratique 1938-1960 Courses: To date in this series are already sixteen volumes have been published ( it thirty volumes will be provided ). Meanwhile, under the guidance of the Successor of valine, Mr. Ronald Lowe, since 2003 a new series, " Essais et mémoires de Gustave Guillaume ," edited. In this new series are already the two volumes of an important work of Guillaume: been Prolégomènes à la linguistique structurale published.

Not only linguists and grammarians have appreciated the thought Guillaume. Other scholars, such as the philosopher Paul Ricoeur have alerted early on psycho mechanics. And already in the 1960s had another philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, to the importance of Guillaume's work down, and called on them to "discover" it ( cf. Différence et Répétition, 1968, p 265). Today, Guillaume is clearly " coming ": the psycho mechanics of human speech is always more resonance inside and outside the francophone language area. It should be noted that an increasing number of linguists - are interested in this new flow within the modern linguistics - in countries as diverse as Russia, Belgium, Korea, Spain, the United States, Canada, Croatia, etc.. And the Principes de linguistique théorique de Gustave Guillaume, a collection of texts that were compiled by valine and its employees in order to facilitate its entry into the ideas of linguists, have now been translated into many languages ​​of culture - including the German under the title " outlines of a theoretical linguistics ".

Works

• Guillaume, Gustave: Fundamentals of theoretical linguistics. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-484-73050-1

• Guillaume, Gustave: Four essays for a new linguistics. With contributions by Robert Leon Wagner, Roch Valin and Denise Sadek -Khalil. Edited by Pierre Blanchaud. Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2006. ISBN 3-8300-2071-6