Harm Pinkster

Harm Pinkster (born March 5, 1942 in Emmen ) is a Dutch classical philologist with a focus on Latin linguistics . He is a professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam .

life and work

After attending high school, Pinkster studied Classical Philology at the University of Amsterdam, where he also received his doctorate in 1971, under the supervision of Anton Daniel Leeman and the linguist Simon C. Dik . In the same year he became Associate Professor there , in 1980 Professor of Latin Language and from 1986 until his retirement in 2004 he taught Latin Language and Literature there. Harm Pinkster has been visiting professor at the University of Chicago for several years.

Pinkster is a member of many national and international bodies and academies, a member of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (the Dutch Academy of Sciences), the Academia Europaea and the British Academy . In addition to his work as vice-president of the "Nederlandse Organizatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek" (NWO, the Dutch Science Foundation), he was co-editor of the international journal Mnemosyne until 2007 . He lectured at numerous important universities, was visiting professor in Bologna, Aix-en-Provence, Philadelphia, Pavia, Venice and Oxford and is still at the University of Chicago.

Internationally known was Pinkster as the founder of the International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics in Amsterdam 1981. With Anton Daniel Leeman he wrote an extensive commentary work to Cicero's rhetorical writing De oratore . In 1972 he wrote a notable dissertation on the syntax of the Latin adverb , entitled On Latin Adverbs . In 1989, with Caroline Kroon, he designed an introduction to Latin, which was also translated into German. He wrote countless essays on all central areas of Latin syntax (e.g. on tense and aspect theory , case syntax and word order). His best known book, the Latijnse Syntaxis en Semantiek (1984), has been translated into four languages: German, English, Italian and Spanish. Pinkster is considered the world's leading authority on Latin linguistics .

In 2015 the first volume of the Oxford Latin Syntax (OLS) was published, which describes the simple sentence ("The Simple Clause"). The second volume will have the compound sentence ("The Complex Sentence") and the word order to the content. Prof. Pinkster has been working on this syntax for over 15 years. It is intended to replace the theory of syntax by Raphael Kühner and Carl Stegmann , a manual from the 19th century that is still in use today and contains a lot of evidence, but a linguistic approach that is coherent in itself, but long outdated. Like the Kühner-Stegmann, the OLS is a descriptive grammar; as a theoretical approach has as its Functional Grammar of Simon C. Dik based, so that not only the syntax, but also the semantics and Pragmatics be included in the description of the Latin phrase. Since it evaluates a great deal of evidence from the main phase of the Latin language, but also from Old and Late Latin, and uses and critically evaluates the most important international research literature of the last 150 years, the OLS promises to become a fundamental handbook for researching Latin syntax. Due to its clear conception, this syntax will also be a valuable reference work that will also be of great importance for more philological work.

The University of Chicago awarded Harm Pinkster, "the world's leading authority on Latin linguistics", an honorary doctorate in autumn 2006 for his services to Latin studies .

Pinkster lived with A. Machtelt Bolkestein , who died in 2001, and had two daughters, Fenne and Akke.

Fonts (selection)

• 1972: On Latin Adverbs , Amsterdam: North-Holland.
• 1980: "Naamvallen in een valentiegrammatica": Lampas 13: pp. 111-129.
• 1983: "Tempus, Aspect and Aktionart in Latin". In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World 29.1, pp. 270-320
• 1983: Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics , ed. By Harm Pinkster, Amsterdam (= Studies in Language Companion Series; 12)
• 1984: Latijnse Syntaxis en Semantiek , Amsterdam: Grüner (as English online version )
• 1985: "The discourse function of the passive", in: Bolkestein, AM ea (eds). Syntax and Pragmatics in Functional Grammar , Dordrecht. Foris, pp. 107-118
• 1987: "Strategy and Chronology of the Development of Future and Perfect Tense Auxiliaries in Latin", in: M. Harris & P. ​​Ramat (eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 193-223
• 1989: Latijn - Een eerste kennismaking , 1989, Muiderberg (German as Latin - an introduction , translated by R. Hoffmann, Heidelberg: Winter 2006)
• 1990: Unity in diversity: Papers presented to Simon C. Dik on his 50th birthday , ed. By Harm Pinkster & I. Grenee, Holland: Foris.
• 1991: "Evidence for SVO in Latin?" In: R. Wright (ed.): Latin and the Romance languages ​​in the early Middle Ages . London: Routledge, pp. 69-82
• 1995: On Latin. Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Harm Pinkster , ed. By R. Risselada ea Amsterdam: Gieben
• 2002: Theory and description in Latin linguistics , ed. By HP ea Amsterdam: Gieben.
• 2004: "Attitudinal and illocutionary satellites in Latin", in: Aertsen, H., M. Hannay & RJ Lyall, Words in their places. A festschrift for J. Lachlan Mackenzie . Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 2004, pp. 191–198
• 2005a: "Latin linguistics in Machtelt's way", In: Calboli, Gualtiero (ed.): Lingua Latina! , Roma, Herder, I, pp. 1–11 (Proceedings of the twelfth international colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Bologna 2003 = Papers on Grammar IX.1)
• 2005b: "The language of Pliny the Elder", in: T. Reinhardt, M. Lapidge & JN Adams (eds), Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Proceedings of the British Academy; 129), Oxford: OUP, p. 239-256
• 2005c: "The ancient grammarian's concept of the adverb: the failure to make a distinction between a verb and a sentence": Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage 27, pp. 179-180.
• 2009: "De Laijnse voegwoorden quia en quoniam (en Nederlands aangezien)", in: Beyk, Egbert et al. (eds) Fons verborum. Feestbundel Fons Moerdijk , Leiden, INL, pp. 313-320.
• 2011a: "The use of the dative in Latin compounds", in: Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (STUF) 64 (Festschrift Lehmann), pp. 126–135
• 2011b: "Les adverbes de fréquence en latin", in: Fruyt, Michèle et Olga Spevak (éds), La quantification en latin , Paris, Harmattan, pp. 183-201
• 2012: "Relative clauses in Latin: Some problems of description", in: Da Cunha Corrêa, Paula et al. (eds) Hyperboreans: Essays in Greek and Latin Poetry, Philosophy, Rhetoric and Linguistics , São Paulo, Humanitas CAPES, pp. 377–393.
• 2015: Oxford Latin Syntax. Volume I: The Simple Clause . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Web links

• Literature by and about Harm Pinkster in the catalog of the German National Library
• Page from Harm Pinkster (there also photo and all literature from HP)