Dwight Le Merton Bolinger

Dwight Le Merton Bolinger also Dwight Bolinger (born August 18, 1907 in Topeka ( Kansas ), † February 23, 1992 in Palo Alto ( California )) was an American Hispanic , linguist and professor at Harvard University .

Live and act

He was the son of a lawyer , attorney and later farmer, Arthur Joel Bolinger (* 1881) and his wife Nellie Gertrude Bolinger, born Ott (1883-1915). After the early death of his mother, who is said to have been very musical, his father married again and the family moved to Versailles , Missouri , where he and his two half-siblings grew up. His family situation was marked by tension with his stepmother and so at the age of sixteen he moved to live with his grandparents in Topeka and later to Springfield , Ohio . He graduated from high school in Springfield in 1925 . Bolinger studied Spanish at the College of Washburn University in his hometown and graduated in 1930 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) . Further studies at the University of Kansas at Lawrence followed . Then, in 1932, he earned his MA and in 1936 his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin . He worked here from 1936 as an instructor for Spanish. Both works had the Spanish writer Pío Baroja , a representative of the Generación del 98, as the subject of his considerations. For a short time in 1937 he went to the University of Kansas where he also worked as an instructor for Spanish.

He started teaching at Washburn University in Topeka, where he was Associate Professor of Spanish from 1937 to 1943. Bolinger became known in academic circles with the publication of a feature "Among the New Words" in the linguistic journal, American Speech . During these early academic years at the University of Wisconsin, he also worked intermittently with William E. Bull . During the years of the Second World War , in 1944, he moved to the American West Coast , where he taught at the University of Southern California, initially in the position of "Assistant Professor" from 1944 to 1946 and then from 1947 to 1948 " Associate Professor of Spanish ”. After that he was a full professor until 1960 teaching, researching and publishing. From 1947 to 1959 he was Head of Department for Spanish , Italian and Portuguese there in California . At the same time he did research at the University of Colorado , from 1956 to 1957, as a research fellow for the Haskin Laboratories . At Harvard, Bolinger was Professor of Romance Languages ​​and Literatures . From here he retired from teaching in 1973. Other places of instruction were the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1963 to 1973. Furthermore, the Kansas City Junior College, the Colegio de San Luis in Cartago ( Costa Rica ), a visiting professorship in 1956 at the University of Michigan in Detroit and at Stanford University in 1978 as Note intermediate stages in his work as a university professor. From 1978 onwards, Bolinger was temporarily visiting professor at Stanford University.

His book The Phrasal Verb in English , published in 1971, took up the subject of particle verbs and thereby gave the scientific treatment of verbs with prepositions more attention among linguists. Particle verbs or phrasal verbs are word formations around a complex verb that is formed with a non-verbal part (e.g. a preposition , adjective , noun , etc.).

Dwight Bolinger married Louise Schrynemakers on July 1, 1934, and the couple had two children. He had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1973 and a corresponding member of the British Academy since 1990 .

Works (selection)

• The philosophy of Pío Baroja with special reference to the influence of Nietzsche. University of Kansas, Romance Language and Literature, Lawrence 1932
• Pío Baroja: a critique. University of Wisconsin, Madison 1936.
• Modes of Modality in Spanish and English. 1970

Spanish language

• Intense Spanish. Philadelphia, Russell Press, 1948.
• Spanish Review Grammar. New York, Holt, 1956
• Modern Spanish. Harcourt, Brace & World, New York 1960 (with J. Donald Bowen, Agnes M. Brady, Ernest F. Haden, Lawrence Poston, Jr. and Norman P. Sacks); 2nd edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1966 (with Joan E. Ciruti and Hugo H. Montero).
• Essays on Spanish: Words and Grammar. Joseph H. Silverman, (Ed.), Newark, Delaware, Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 1991.

English language

• Interrogative Structures of American English. Publications of the American Dialect Society, 28, University, Ala., University of Alabama Press, 1957.
• Generality, Gradience, and the All-or-None. The Hague, Mouton, 1961.
• Forms of English: Accent, Morpheme, Order. Isamu Abe; Tetsuya Kanekiyo (ed.), Cambridge, Harvard University Press, Tokyo, Hokuou 1965.
• Aspects of Language , New York, Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968; 2nd ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975; 3rd ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1981 (with Donald A. Sears).
• The Phrasal Verb in English. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1971.
• That's that . Mouton, The Hague 1972
• Degree Words Mouton, The Hague 1972
• Intonation: Selected Readings. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1972
• Meaning and Form . Longman, London / New York 1977
• Language: The Loaded Weapon. Longman, London / New York 1980.
• Intonation and Its Parts: Melody in Spoken English. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1986
• Intonation and Its Uses: Melody in Grammar and Discourse. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1989

literature

• Frederick J. Newmeyer: Grammatical Theory: Its Limits and Its Possibilities. University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1983 ISBN 0-226-57719-8 , p. 113

Web links

• Dwight Bolinger 1907-1992 Writings and Biographical Information
• Photography by Dwight Le Merton Bolinger
• Dwight Bolinger, 1907-1992 Writings and Biographical Information

Individual evidence

1. ^ The New York Times. Dwight L. Bolinger, 84, English Linguistics Expert by Bruce Lambert Published: March 1, 1992
2. ↑ Geoffrey Nunberg (1992). LINGUIST List 3.255, Mon 16 Mar 1992, FYI: Online Spanish, Hayakawa & Bolinger
3. ^ Dwight L. Bolinger: Language. Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 99-112 published in the Linguistic Society of America
4. ^ Jan Onofrio: Kansas Biographical Dictionary. North American Book Dist LLC, 2000, ISBN 0-403-09313-9 , p. 43
5. ^ Robert P. Stockwell: Dwight L. Bolinger. Language, 69 (1993) no. 1, 99-112. ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Algeo, John and Adele, "Among the New Words," American Speech, 66 (1991), 71-81. (History of the column written by Dwight Bolinger, James B. McMillen, and Anne B. Russell. Part of this article, "I. Among the New Words: Looking Back." Was written by Bolinger.)
7. ^ EFK Koerner: First Person Singular II: Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences. Vol. 61, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, John Benjamin Publishing, 1991, ISBN 90-272-7770-2 , p. 22
8. ^ Official website of the Haskin Laboratories