Progress in Language, first published in 1894, dates from fairly early in Otto Jespersen's (1860-1943) academic career; it already contains many of the essentials of his argument against the prevailing mode of 19th-century linguistic thought which he maintained until the end of his life. As James D. read more
This paper deals with the notions and terminology that figure in the syntactic works of Bloomfield, Fries, Hockett, Gleason, and early Chomsky. Notwithstanding Bloomfield’s commitment to constituent structure and his profound influence on syntactic research in the United States, constituency had… read more
Central ideas of Darwin’s theory of natural selection figure prominently in the work of Otto Jespersen (1860–1943). As early as 1886, Jespersen treated linguistic change in Darwinian terms: variation in the pronunciation and meaning of the various units, and factors that raise or lower a… read more
