Henri Wittmann

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Wittmann 2002

Henri Wittmann (* 1937 in Alsace ) is a Canadian linguist from Quebec . Best known is his work on the French language in Quebec .

Education and professional life

After studying with André Martinet at the Sorbonne , Henri Wittmann himself went into exile in North America and initially taught successfully at the University of Colorado at Boulder , the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of Windsor and McGill University in Montreal . Wittmann then taught in the French university system of Quebec at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, the Université du Québec à Rimouski and the Université de Sherbrooke. In 1997 he retired from teaching after giving an extensive series of lectures in France . In the following years he became the first director of the public relations department of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and emeritus researcher at the Center d'Analyse des Littératures Francophones des Amériques (CALIFA) at the Carleton University in Ottawa .

Personal

Politically, Henri Wittmann is known for his sympathy for anarcho-syndicalism and his strong connections to the Confédération des syndicats nationaux , the second largest trade union confederation in Quebec in terms of membership. He is also active in anti-war movements. From 1974 to 1978 he was central to a conflict at the University of Quebec that changed the practice of negotiation in the academic world. A specialist in Quebec's linguistic heritage, he is a strong advocate for Quebec independence.

Wittmann has been a member of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for life since 1962 . In 1965 he founded the linguistics department at McGill University in Montreal with André Rigault and Douglas Ellis . In 1981, together with Normand Beauchemin and Robert Fournier, he founded the Association québécoise de linguistique , for which he was president, general secretary and organizer of the annual meeting for ten years. Also in 1981 Wittmann became the first editor of the Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée and retained this position for 20 years.

Contributions to linguistics

As a representative of comparative literature , Wittmann contributed to the research of the morphology of different languages ​​and language families. Between 1963 and 2002 Wittmann published more than 140 written works on these topics, including:

Works (selection)

  • The Indo-European Drift and the Position of Hittite
  • A Transformational Sketch of old French
  • Le joual, c'est-tu un créole?
  • Règles de Narration dans les Chansons de Geste et le roman courtois
  • Recent developments in diachronic linguistics

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wittmann, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian linguist
DATE OF BIRTH 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Alsace