Image by Bergadder on Pixabay · Pixabay License
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1899-10-03 ) 3 October 1899, Copenhagen , Denmark
- Died
- 30 May 1965 (1965-05-30) (aged 65), Ordrup , Denmark
- Alma mater
- University of Copenhagen
- Known for
- Work in the field of semiotics Hjelmslev's law
- Spouse
- Vibeke Mackeprang
- Fields
- Linguistics , semiotics , comparative linguistics
- Institutions
- University of Copenhagen
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Louis
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Danish Realm
- Place of birth
- Copenhagen
- Place of death
- Ordrup
- Father
- Johannes Hjelmslev
- Position held
- docent
- Employer
- Aarhus University
- Languages spoken
- French
- Doctoral advisor
- Holger Pedersen
- Student of
- Holger Pedersen
- Doctoral student
- Jacob L. Mey
- Field of work
- structuralism
- Work location
- Copenhagen
Show 4 more facts
- date of birth
- 1899-10-03
- date of death
- 1965-05-30
- interested in
- Baltic
- member of
- Linguistic Society of America
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~10 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Louis Trolle Hjelmslev ( Danish: [ˈjelˀmsle̝w]; 3 October 1899 – 30 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studied comparative linguistics in Copenhagen, Prague and Paris (with Antoine Meillet and Joseph Vendryes, among others). In 1931, he founded the Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Together with Hans Jørgen Uldall he developed a structuralist theory of language which he called glossematics, which further developed the semiotic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Glossematics as a theory of language is characterized by a high degree of formalism. It is interested in describing the formal and semantic characteristics of language in separation from sociology, psychology or neurobiology, and has a high degree of logical rigour. Hjelmslev regarded linguistics – or glossematics – as a formal science. He was a pioneer of formal linguistics. Hjelmslev's theory became widely influential in structural and functional grammar, and in semiotics.
Early biography
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Louis Hjelmslev” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.