Michael Metzeltin

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Michael Metzeltin (born July 8, 1943 in Sorengo , Switzerland ) is a Romance philologist living in Austria . He is an emeritus full professor for Romance studies at the University of Vienna and a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences . Metzeltin is the author of 31 monographs and 259 essays on Romance and textual topics. He is co-founder and co-editor of the Romance Studies Colloquium , the Lexicon of Romance Linguistics and the Cinderella Book Series (19 volumes, since 1996) and editor of the Romance manual Discourse · Text · Language (2002, 2006, 2008). His main research areas include language typology, text theory and discourse analysis with the development of new approaches.

Life

Michael Metzeltin's grandfather was the German railway engineer Erich Metzeltin . After visiting the Ginnasio and Liceo Cantonale of Lugano in Ticino , Switzerland , Michael Metzeltin began his studies at the Universities of Zurich and Basel . In terms of the curriculum, the course was very free at the time, so that in the first semesters he was able to attend a very wide range of courses and, in particular, pursue his linguistic curiosity. He attended events on Latin , Ancient Greek and Modern Greek , Sanskrit , Hittite , Akkadian , Old High German , Old Irish , Old Church Slavonic , Bulgarian , Czech , Spanish , Dutch , but also on comparative literary studies , legal history and Bible exegesis . The focus on Romance studies only crystallized in the course of the course. Therefore, he dealt more intensively with Romance linguistics, Italian literature, French literature and Ibero-Romance philology. Although there was already a tendency at that time to separate the languages ​​curricularly, it seemed to him scientifically important to focus on the one hand on the systematic comparative component and on the other hand on the cooperation between linguistics and literary studies in the form of general text studies. Thanks to his mobility, in addition to his alma mater Basel, he also studied at the universities of Salamanca , Coimbra , Padua , and attended summer courses in Sinaia / Bucharest and Sofia. In 1969 he received his doctorate from the University of Basel in Ibero-Romance philology, French linguistics and Italian literary studies. In 1972 he completed his habilitation at the University of Basel with the Venia legendi "Romance Philology". He was assistant and lecturer at the University of Basel and professor at the universities of Trier , Groningen , Coimbra , Cosenza , Paderborn and Göttingen . From 1989 until his retirement in 2011, Metzeltin was full professor for linguistics and didactics of Romance languages at the University of Vienna ( Institute for Romance Studies ).

Act

The multilingual and comparative component of Metzeltin was already reflected in the first two major scientific papers. In his dissertation he dealt with the contact between Italy and Spain in the field of seafaring language. This is how the etymologically oriented study The Terminology of the Sea Compass in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula up to 1600 (published 1970) came about , in which the outstanding role of the Italians in the development of shipping is also demonstrated in terms of linguistic history. He devoted his habilitation thesis ( The language of the oldest versions of the Libre de Amich e Amat , published 1974) to a comparative study of Old Catalan and Old Occitan, through which he scientifically demonstrated the close linguistic typological relationship between the two languages.

The constant preoccupation with linguistic comparison on the one hand and with texts as a central subject of linguistics and literary studies on the other hand have led to a number of priorities in the course of the academic and didactic career. Encouraged by Hans Peter Althaus in Trier, one of the three editors of the Lexicon of German Linguistics , Metzeltin began to design a similar complete Romanesque work in the early 1970s. The idea could then gradually be realized in cooperation with Günter Holtus (Göttingen) and Christian Schmitt (Bonn). This is how the monumental lexicon of Romance linguistics was created in 12 volumes (Tübingen 1988-2005), which a good hundred years after Gustav Gröber's outline of Romance philology offers a new overview of all Romance major and minor languages ​​from both a linguistic and sociolinguistic point of view. For the first time, languages ​​such as Romanian or Galegian are systematically presented in all their aspects. The work has become trend-setting for other companies and further investigations, such as the Romance language history in the series Handbooks for Linguistics and Communication Studies (Walter de Gruyter). A language-comparative and language-typological synthesis is available u. a. in his book Las lenguas románicas estándar , written in Spanish . Historia de su formación y de su uso , published by the Academia de la Llingua Asturiana in Oviedo in 2004. Here, as in other publications, Metzeltin u. a. a convergent typology of Romance languages.

Above all, the challenge of representing different Romance languages ​​with a special focus on syntax and semantics led Metzeltin to develop a new syntax model on a semantic basis, which can be viewed as a refined instrument for any sentence analysis and therefore also as a basis for new language typologies. More than in other models, the mode of the sender and the propositional content of what is said are made explicit so that the non-biunivocal relationship between language and thought can be shown in a systematic way. The model will u. a. in the monographs Semântica e sintaxe do português (Coimbra 1982), in Language and Thought. A Romance Perspective (Vienna 2004), in Gramática explicativa de la lengua castellana. De la sintaxis a la semántica (Vienna 2009), in Explanatory Grammar of Romance Languages (Vienna 2010) and Gramatică explicativă a limbilor romanice. Sintaxă și semantică (Iași 2011) shown.

According to Metzeltin, Romanian is likely to occupy a special position within the Romance languages, as he has tried several times to show (see, inter alia, the publication Il romeno tra le lingue romze: uno studio di tipologia dinamica , in: Orioles Vincenzo (ed.), Studi in memoria di Eugenio Coseriu, Supplemento a Plurilinguismo, Contatti di lingue e culture 10, 2003 (2004), 279-294 ). The peculiarities of Romanian go back on the one hand to its Latin origin, on the other hand to the embedding in the Balkan language context. Today's Romanian could be seen as the result of the merging of the Romance and Balkan language types, which predestines this language for an important mediating role between the European Occident and the European Orient.

The systematic connection between linguistics and literary studies gave Metzeltin the idea and the necessity of developing a general analysis and interpretation model for all possible text types based on inductively determined macrostructures. Over time, in collaboration with the Slavist Harald Jaksche (Friborg, then Graz), the textoid theory with the suggestion of various descriptive, narrative and argumentative macrostructures ( text semantics. A model for analyzing texts , Tübingen 1983). Together with the Romance scholar Margit Thir, Metzeltin brought this text theory into connection with ritual origins and thus expanded the theory to include the two basic ritual macrostructures of initiation and the appointment of rulers. This globalizing text theory becomes narrative genesis in the works jointly edited by Metzeltin and Thir . An essai on the origin and development of textuality , (Vienna 1998) and in El arte de contar. Un ensayo metodológico y anthropológico acerca de la textualidad (Murcia 2002) shown. Metzeltin presents a semantic theory that integrates the different language levels in the work Theoretical and Applied Semantics. From concept to text (Vienna 2007).

The constant preoccupation with different types of text leads Metzeltin to a closer examination of political and juridical texts from both a discourse-analytical and a conceptual-historical perspective. In the books National Statehood and Identity (Vienna 2000), România: Stat - Națiune - Limbă (Bucharest 2002), and Paths to European Identity (Berlin 2010, together with Thomas Wallmann), he proposes a new model for the explanation of the European and Latin American State formation with the phases “awareness”, “territorialization”, “historicization”, “standardization of a language”, “text canonization”, “institutionalization”, “medialization” and “globalization”. In the book The Development of Civilization Vocabulary in Southeastern Europe in the 19th Century. The Romanian constitutional vocabulary. Metzeltin, together with Petrea Lindenbauer and Holger Wochele, shed a new light on the basic concepts of human rights and the conceptual fields that support the state from a semantic perspective, considering the history of ideas and cultural history (Vienna 2005). Together with Margit Thir he wrote the book El poder. Análisis del discurso político español e hispanoamericano (Vienna 2004) published, which u. a. Methods shows how one can grasp the mediation of power and power structures in texts and, more generally, in semiotic products.

Metzeltin finally expressed his conviction that language can only be understood and analyzed in the larger context of discourse worlds, and that this analysis work can only be carried out in a team, in the book Discourse - Text - Language, which he edited and written by 16 colleagues . A method-oriented introduction to linguistics for Romance scholars (Vienna 2002, 2006, 2008) is shown again.

Awards

Fonts

Monographs

  • The terminology of the sea compass in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula until 1600, Basel, Apollonia-Verlag, 1970, XI - 363 pp. (Dissertation)
  • Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics, Romance Workbooks 9, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1973, XII, 79 pp.
  • The language of the oldest versions of the Libre de Amich e Amat. Studies on the contrastive graphetics, phonetics and morphology of Catalan and Provencal, Studia Romanica et Linguistica 1, Bern / Frankfurt a. M., P. Lang, 1974, IX - 217 pp. (Habilitation thesis)
  • O signo, o comunicado, o código: Introdução à linguística teórica, Colecção Almedina, Coimbra, Almedina, 1978, 162 pp.
  • Old Spanish elementary book. I. The Old Castilian, Collection of Romanesque Elementary and Handbooks, Series I, Grammars, Volume 9, Heidelberg, C. Winter-Universitätsverlag, 1979, XVI - 130 pp.
  • La linguistica teorica, Biblioteca Linguistica, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1983, V - 135 pp.
  • Introdução à leitura do Romance da Raposa. Ciência do texto e sua aplicação, Coimbra, Almedina, 1981, 154 pp.
  • Spaanse Letterkunde, De Achttiende en negentiende eeuw, in: JL Alonso Hernández / HLM Hermans / M. Metzeltin / H. Th. Oostendorp, Spaanse Letterkunde, Aula 697, Utrecht / Antwerpen, Het Spectrum, 1981, 243 - 334 pp .; tweede, herziene druk, 1988
  • Semântica e sintaxe do português, Colecção Novalmedina, Coimbra, Almedina, 1982, 291 pp.
  • Text semantics: A model for the analysis of texts, TBL 224, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1983, 208 pp. (in cooperation with H. Jaksche)
  • Lingüística textual y análisis de textos hispánicos, Murcia, Universidad, Colección Maior 10, 1988, 133 pp.
  • Semántica, pragmática y sintaxis del español, pro lingua 5, Wilhelmsfeld, Egert, 1990, XI + 194 pp; 2nd edition 1993
  • The Romance Languages: An Introductory Overview, pro lingua 20, Wilhelmsfeld, Egert, 1994, VII + 168 pp .; 2nd edition 1995 (together with P. Lindenbauer and M. Thir)
  • The other and the stranger. A linguistic-cognitive investigation. With the participation of I. Chatzipanagioti, P. Lindenbauer, Ch.Lutter and M. Thir, Vienna, 3 Eidechsen, 1996, 127 pp., 2nd edition 1997
  • Narrative genesis. An essai on the origin and development of textuality, Vienna, 3 Eidechsen, 1996, 232 pp., 2nd edition 1998 (together with M. Thir)
  • Language structures and thought structures. With special consideration of the Romance syntax, Vienna, 3 Eidechsen, 1997, 190 pp.
  • "Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías", de Federico García Lorca. Una guía de lectura, Barcelona, ​​Península, 1998, 174 pp. (in cooperation with M. Meidl)
  • Nation statehood and identity. An essay on the invention of nation states. With an epilogue by Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Vienna, 3 Eidechsen, 2000, 173 pp.
  • Cognitive, overall media, political anthropology . A new approach to cultural anthropology, Vienna, 3 Eidechsen, 2001, 159 pp.
  • El arte de contar. Un ensayo metodológico y antropológico acerca de la textualidad, Murcia, Universidad, 2002, 233 pp. (in cooperation with M. Thir)
  • România. Stat - Naţiune - Limbă . Editura Univers Enciclopedic, Bucharest 2002. 149 pp.
  • Testualità. Teoria e pratica , 3 lizards / Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Vienna 2005. 220 p. (Together with D. Giovanella, M. Thir)
  • Las lenguas románicas estándar. Historia de su formación y de su uso . Academia de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu 2004. 300 p. Online version
  • Language and thought. A Romanist perspective, Vienna, 3 lizards, 2004, 188 pp.
  • The development of the vocabulary of civilization in Southeastern Europe in the 19th century. The Romanian constitutional vocabulary. A consideration of the history of ideas and cultural history, Vienna, 3 lizards / Ministerul Afacerilor Externe al României / Institutul Cultural Român, 2005; 313 pp. (together with P. Lindenbauer and H. Wochele)
  • Theoretical and applied semantics. From concept to text . Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2007, 304 pp.
  • Gramática explicativa da língua portuguesa. Sintaxe . AnaPress, Bratislava 2007, 109 pp.
  • Gramática explicativa de la lengua castellana. De la sintaxis a la semántica . Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2009. 168 pp.
  • Explanatory grammar of the Romance languages .Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2010. 192 pp.
  • Paths to European Identity. Individual, nation-state and supranational identity constructs . Frank & Timme , Berlin 2010. 285 pp. (Together with Thomas Wallmann), ISBN 978-3-86596-297-3
  • Gramatică explicativă a limbilor romanice. Sintaxă și semantică . Editură Universității Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iași 2011
  • Identity. Variations on a theme . Praesens, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7069-0687-6
  • Text anthropology (together with Margit Thir). Praesens, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7069-0702-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ FIS Erich Metzeltin , accessed on December 1, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Metzeltin, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Sorengo , Switzerland