Luis Jorge Prieto

Luis Jorge Prieto (born November 28, 1926 in Argentina , † March 31, 1996 in Geneva ) was an Argentine linguist and Romance scholar .

life and work

Prieto's father was from Spain, his mother from Italy. For a short time he was a student of Fritz Krüger at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. After graduating, Prieto taught in Córdoba , Argentina. There he married Helvecia Girard in 1950. He graduated in 1952 and in the same year met André Martinet through correspondence , who became his mentor. He published the results of his Argentine dissertation on the phonology of Spanish in the magazine Word . In 1956 he moved to France, Paris, as a scholar and member of the Société de linguistique on a scholarship. From 1960 to 1966 he was Professor of General Linguistics at the National University of Cordoba . After the coup in 1966, he taught in Algiers in 1968 and briefly at the University of Paris VIII in 1969 . From 1969 to 1996 Prieto was Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Geneva . In 1990, Prieto discovered a tumor, but this did not prevent him from continuing to work on his projects.

Prieto is one of the lesser known people from the milieu of structural semiotics in the middle of the 20th century. However, since 1966 he has been known for his studies in the field of semiotics. Some of his ideas and works were important references for authors such as Umberto Eco , Georges Mounin , Thomas Sebeok and many others. Prieto is to be regarded as a supporter of structuralism, but cannot be assigned to any school. He has a theoretical relationship with other important structuralists such as Ferdinand de Saussure , Nikolai Sergeevič Trubeckoj , Louis Trolle Hjelmslev, É ric Buyssens and Roland Barthes .

Research / goals

He began his research by studying the function of the signified in the system of linguistic signs. He quickly reached the field of Ferdinand de Saussure 's semiotics and went through a special kind of structural semantics. Prieto followed the model of J. Cantineau and was inspired by Nikolai Sergeevič Trubeckoj 's principles. Prieto developed meaningful opposites to the principles of Trubeckoj. Prieto had basic goals which he pursued steadily. From 1954 to 1975 he wanted to create a model that analyzes the meaning analogously to functional phonology. This was founded by the Prague School . Another aim was to create a semiology of communication. From 1975 to 1996 his goals were the development of a semiology of signification, the development of a cognitive theory based on phonology, the development of his theory of relevance and his subject theory.

Subject theory

Prieto concretized his concept of subject in his work Pertinence et pratique. He writes that the subject always belongs to a "social group". In addition, Prieto writes:

"The cognition of a material reality is ideological when the subject regards the limits and the identity of the object to which this reality has become for him as being in reality itself, that is, when the subject ascribes the idea to reality itself has constructed from it. The subject of an ideological knowledge is then not aware of this construction (...) "

Theory of relevance

The concept of relevance is an important concept of structuralism and was further developed by the Prague School . Prieto has considerably expanded the scope of the concept of abstractive relevance . He uses the explanatory model not only for linguistic communication, but for all types of perception. "On the other hand, he also applies it to the level of updating the invariant structures". In addition to the relevant properties of an object and the relevant objects, according to Pietro there are also material forms of practice ("pratiche materiali"):

"(...) we have defined as theoretical knowledge that which one possesses, one knows that if there is an object (...) which has certain properties (...) it is in a certain relation to other objects. " (Prieto)

Theory of objects

In his theory of objects, Prieto distinguishes material objects ("oggetti materiali") from mental objects ("oggetti mentali"). As a material object, e.g. B. denotes a tomato, a football game or the utterance of a sentence. In contrast, material objects are the species / tomato /, the theory of relativity or the meaning of a sentence. Prieto gives the following determination of the material object in the context of a semiotic theory:

"(...) a material object is a spatially and / or temporally determined fragment of material reality that is recognized by a subject as such - i.e. as a spatially and / or temporally determined fragment of material reality" (Prieto)

The subject of his Prieto's theory is "construction of the object through perception depending on the interests of the subject". Nevertheless, Prieto assumes that "reality also exists independently of the subject and therefore determines perception".

"Every material object has an identity in the sense that it is one, or in the sense that it is an object determined as an individual and therefore not another object - and no other object is therefore the object in question. That is the numerical identity that every material object has (Prieto)

In turn, Prieto divides material objects into spatial and temporal objects.

Works

• Principes de noologie. Fondements de la théorie fonctionnelle du signifié , The Hague 1964 (foreword by André Martinet , Italian: Principi di noologia. Fondamenti della teoria funzionale del significato , Rome 1967, foreword by Tullio de Mauro)
• Que es la lingüística funcional? , Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo 1965
• Messages et signaux , Paris 1966 (Spanish: Mensajes y señales , Barcelona 1967; Polish 1970; Italian: Lineamenti di semiologia. Messagi e segnali , Bari 1971; German: Nachrichten und Signals , translated by Gerd Wotjak, Berlin East / Munich 1972; Portuguese São Paulo 1973; Japanese 1979; Modern Greek 1986)
• Études de linguistique et de sémiologie générales , Geneva 1975 (Spanish Mexico 1977, 1978)
• Pertinence et pratique. Essai de sémiologie , Paris 1975, 1978, 1986 (Italian: Pertinenza e pratica. Saggio di semiotica , Milan 1976)
• Saggi di semiotica , 3 vols., Parma 1989-1991-1995
  • 1. Sulla conoscenza
  • 2. Sull'arte e sul soggetto
  • 3. Sul significato

• Le mythe de l'original , in "Poétique", trad. Il mito dell'originale. L'originale come oggetto d'arte e come oggetto di collezione , Aracne, Rome 2015

literature

• Anna Maria Porciatti, Arte e conoscenza. Note al seminario tenuto tenuto da Luis Jorge Prieto , Florence 1983
• Blanke, Börries. From image to meaning: the iconic symbol between semiotics and analytical philosophy, Berlin 2003
• Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 45, 1991 (Festschrift with biography and list of publications); 50, 1997; 60, 2007
• Christidou, Simonidou. As Analysis of Features of Meaning by Prieto
• Le Monde April 3rd 1996
• Semiotica 122, 3–4, 1998, pp. 165–388 (Luis J. Prieto, edited by Pierre Pellegrino)
• Zima, Peter V. What is theory ?: Theory concept and dialogical theory in the cultural and social sciences, 2004

Web links

• Literature by and about Luis Jorge Prieto in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.eu/f/index.php?sp=livAut&auteur_id=1632 (with picture)