Eli Fischer-Jørgensen

Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (born February 12, 1911 in Nakskov , Lolland ; † February 27, 2010 in Virum , Denmark ) was a Danish linguist .

biography

Studies and professional career

Eli Fischer-Jørgensen was the daughter of a savings bank director. At the age of eight, her family moved to Fåborg in the south of Funen , where she finished her schooling. She then studied German and French between 1929 and 1936 at the University of Copenhagen , where she lived for the last three years from 1933 to 1936 in the newly established women's dormitory ( Kvinderegensen ), and has been the driving force of the Copenhagen linguist circle (Lingvistkredsen) ever since joined this in 1933.

In 1935 she submitted her dissertation on sentence definitions and received the university's gold medal for it. In the following years her interest in abstract discussions on phonetics developed and in the following years she devoted her main focus to this part of phonetics . At the end of the German occupation of Denmark during the Second World War , she was an active member of the resistance movement and also a leading member of the Freedom Council (Frihedsrådet), which set up an archive on the occupation for later legal proceedings .

Because of the friendships established in the women's dormitory, some of which were lifelong, she was a member of the advisory board there for many years and was its chairman from 1957 to 1974.

In 1966 she became the first professor of phonetics in Denmark and later founded the Institute of Phonetics, to which she gave a strong position in international research on phonetics. She also succeeded in making the Danish language known . In 1979, at the height of her academic career, she became President of the International Congress of Phonetics, of which she was also Secretary General for some time.

Publications and Awards

In addition, she was not only a leading figure in the circle of Danish structuralists , but also the author of numerous specialist articles on language theory and phonetics, in which she also provided explanations and criticisms of Louis Hjelmslev's theory.

Her main work "Trends in phonological theory. A historical Introduction", published in 1975, was last reprinted in 1995 and is considered the standard work on language and language description under the sign of structuralism, to which many more recent representations refer. In 1979 she also published an anthology with the title "25 years' phonological comments" and in 2001 with "Tryk i aeldre dansk, Sammensaetninger og afledninger", a specialist book on the old Danish language. Most recently she wrote the book "Interneringskartoteket: Om Carsten Høeg og hans gruppe under besættelsen" together with Jens Ege in 2005 about the work of the Peace Council chaired by Carsten Høeg during the occupation.

For her services to linguistics and phonetics , she received honorary doctorates from the universities of Copenhagen , Lund , Aarhus and Bayreuth . In 1968 she also became the first female member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . In 1995 she was elected a corresponding member of the British Academy . In addition to other awards, three festschrifts were dedicated to her.

Web links

• Literature by and about Eli Fischer-Jørgensen in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Commemorative words: Eli-Fischer-Jørgensen (1911-2010)"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PHONETICA: "The importance of functional language description for phonetics" (1959)
2. ↑ Jörn ALBRECHT: "European Structuralism: an overview of the history of research", p. 138
3. ↑ Antiqbook
4. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 28, 2020 . 
5. ^ "To honor Eli Fischer-Jørgensen-Festschrift on the occasion of her 90th birthday, February 11th, 2001"