Alf Sommerfelt (November 23, 1892October 12, 1965), was a Norwegian

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and the first professor of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

in Norway, working at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

from 1931 to 1962.

Personal life

Sommerfelt was born in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

, Norway. He married the

young adult literature Young adult literature (YA) is typically written for readers aged 12 to 18 and includes most of the themes found in adult fiction, such as family dysfunction, substance abuse, alcoholism, and sexuality. It is characterized by simpler world build ...

writer Aimée Sommerfelt. He died in Nes, Norway, aged 72.

Linguistics work

Sommerfelt was a central figure in the introduction of

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

in Norway. He had studied in

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, and held lectures on Saussure, glossematics, the

Prague school The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

and American structuralism. People at the Nordic institutes, on the other hand, didn't subscribe to Sommerfelt's methods, and there was little contact between them and the structuralists until the 1960s. Together with the Slavicist Olaf Broch, Sommerfelt founded the ''Norwegian association for linguistics'' in 1924, an association that would play an important part in the introduction of new linguistic theories to Norway. Sommerfelt wrote several popular introductions to linguistics. He also wrote an introductory book on general linguistics (1947), a book read by all the linguistics students at the university of Oslo, and reprinted ten years later. Sommerfelt was also one of the editors of ''Norsk riksmålsordbog'' (the Norwegian

Riksmål (, also , ) is an unofficial written Norwegian language form or spelling standard, meaning the ''National Language'', closely related and now almost identical to the dominant form of Bokmål, known as . Both Bokmål and Riksmål evolved from t ...

dictionary).

Selected bibliography

* Sommerfelt, Alf 1921: ''Le Breton parlé a Saint-Pol-de-Leon : Phonétique et morphologie'' * Sommerfelt, Alf 1922: ''The dialect of Torr Co. Donegal.'' Videnskapsselskapets skrifter II. Hist.-filos. kl. 1-2 * Sommerfelt, Alf 1934:''Hvordan sproget blir til : en oversikt over sprogets rolle i samfundene'' Oslo : Cappelens forlag. * Sommerfelt, Alf 1947: Almen språkvitenskap : (det propedeutiske kursus).

References

* Hovdhaugen, Even, Fred Karlsson, Carol Henriksen and Bengt Sigurd 2000: ''The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries.'' Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sommerfelt, Alf 1892 births 1965 deaths People from Trondheim Academic staff of the University of Oslo Structuralists Norwegian people of World War II Road incident deaths in Norway 20th-century Norwegian linguists