The Philosophy of Grammar

Abstract

This study grew out of a series of lectures Jespersen gave at ColumbiaUniversity in 1909-10, called “An Introduction to English Grammar.”It is the connected presentation of Jespersen's views of the generalprinciples of grammar based on years of studying various languagesthrough both direct observation of living speech and written andprinted documents.“[The Philosophy of Grammar and Analytic Syntax] setforth the most extensive and original theory of universal grammarprior to the work of Chomsky and other generative grammarians of thelast thirty years.”—Arne Juul and Hans F. Nielsen, in Otto Jespersen: Facets of His Life and Work“Besides being one of the most perceptive observers and originalthinkers that the field of linguistics has ever known, Jespersen wasalso one of its most entertaining writers, and reading The Philosophy of Grammar is fun. Read it, enjoy it.”—James D.McCawley, from the IntroductionOtto Jespersen (1860-1943), an authority on the growth and structureof language, was the Chair of the English Department at the Universityof Copenhagen. Among his many works are A Modern English Grammar and Analytic Syntax, the latter published by theUniversity of Chicago Press.