History |
The Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen was founded
at 8 p.m. on the 24th September, 1931, on the initiative of Louis
Hjelmslev during a private meeting at his home. Prior to this a
preliminary meeting had taken place on the 24th June of the same
year. Present at that meeting where mag. art. Kaj Barr, later
professor of Iranian Philology at the University of Copenhagen;
stud. mag. Detlefsen, later a teacher of the dyslectic; mag. art.
Poul Høybye, later professor of Romance Philology at the University
of Copenhagen; mag. art. and lecturer in Romance languages Hedvig
Olsen; and mag. art. Harry Pihler (from the department of English),
who later became headmaster of the Karoline School on Ingemannsvej,
Frederiksberg, where a number of the Circle’s meetings were later
held. Besides those named above, the following attended the founding
meeting: professor of Romance Philology Viggo Brøndal and his wife
Rosally Brøndal, and Paul Lier, for many years a high school teacher
and later made an honorary member of the Linguistic Circle. These
constituted the circle of members who in Hjelmslev’s report at the
time of the Circle’s 20th anniversary were named as ‘membres
fondateurs’.
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Louis Hjelmslev |
The inspiration to form such a Circle as an
alternative to the more socially orientated lecture clubs and the
like that already existed undoubtedly came from the Prague
Linguistic Circle. Even the titles of the Circle’s publications were
copied from the Prague Circle (thus for example Traveaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Copenhague (TCLC) alongside Traveaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Prague (TCLP)).
The purpose of this founding meeting was to create a study circle of
active members who would develop a new kind of linguistic research -
later called Structuralism.
The Circle quickly acquired a wide membership, among them key
figures in Danish linguistics such as L.L. Hammerich, Eli
Fischer-Jørgensen, Paul Diderichsen and later Knud Togeby and
Henning Spang-Hanssen, and gradually a significant publication
activity was built up. A Bulletin was produced, first in Danish,
later in French and German. In 1937, on the initiative of Hjelmslev
and Brøndal, an international journal for structuralistic research
in language, Acta Linguistica was launched (later called Acta
Linguistica Hafniensia - ALH), and as time went by the Circle
published an irregular series of larger works under the name
Traveaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Both Acta and
Traveaux continue to flourish, and the meetings of the Circle are
now documented in various issues of Acta.
The history of the Circle falls into a number of eras: the period
from the beginning in 1931 until 1934, when Hjelmslev’s original
plan to get the Circle to function as both an alternative and a
supplement to the Prague phonologists broke down; the period from
1934 to 1937, when Viggo Brøndal was the Circle’s leader during
Hjelmslev’s stay in Århus, where he and Hans Jørgen Uldall worked
together on their glossematic project; and the period from 1934 to
1942, after Brøndal died and Hjelmslev overtook the position as
chairman. Hjelmslev continued as chairman until shortly before his
death in 1965, and from 1966 the Circle and its publication
activities were revitalised thanks to the great efforts of Henning
Spang-Hanssen and in particular Eli Fischer-Jørgensen.
The history of the Linguistic Circle has been documented in detail
in Frans Gregersen’s Ph.D. thesis Sociolingvistikkens (u)mulighed
(1991, p. 67ff.), and one can find in Eli Fischer-Jørgensen’s talk
on the occasion of the Linguistic Circle’s 50th anniversary (printed
in Lingvistisk Festival, Sprogvidenskabelige Arbejdspapirer fra
Københavns Universitet 2, 1-12, 1992) a first-hand account of its
meetings. The meetings are also documented in various issues of the
Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague (BCLC) and in
Hjelmslev’s Rapport sur l’activité du cercle linguistique de
Copenhague (1931-51, Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag 1951), which
contains a complete membership list. The Circle’s archives are
located in the Collection of Manuscripts and Archives
of the Royal Library and have been put in order by Anne
Jensen, the former secretary of the Circle.
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