Esa Itkonen (born January 3, 1944) is a Finnish

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 ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and language theorist. He is professor emeritus of

general linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics that, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to the theory of language, or the branch of linguistics that inquires into the ...

at the University of Turku. Itkonen has authored several publications on linguistic

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

, philosophy of linguistics, history of linguistics, and

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

. He has defended a humanist approach to linguistics, criticising

sociobiology Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within the study of ...

generative grammar Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists (), ...

, and

Cognitive Linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are cons ...

Career

Esa Itkonen earned his PhD at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

in 1974. He was Professor of general linguistics at the University of Turku from 1982 to 2012 and Docent of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of Jyväskylä A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". U ...

from 1988 to 2012.

Linguistic theory

In his 2005 book ''Analogy as Structure and Process'', Itkonen argues that

analogy Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

is the most central concept in language formation. He proposes a distinction between ''analogy as structure'', referring to a static relation between different systems; and ''analogy as process'', or a dynamism which produces analogical structures. According to Itkonen, various forms of analogical reasoning are hidden behind other terminology in the study of language and other cognitive domains.

Books in English

* (1975) Concerning the Relationship between Linguistics and Logic. University of Helsinki. * (1976) Linguistics and Empiricalness : Answers to Criticisms. University of Helsinki. * (1978) Grammatical Theory and Metascience : A Critical Investigation into the Methodological and Philosophical Foundations of "Autonomous" Linguistics. John Benjamins. * (1983) Causality in Linguistic Theory : A Critical Investigation into the Philosophical and Methodological Foundations of 'Non-Autonomous Linguistics'. Indiana University Press. * (1991) Universal History of Linguistics : India, China, Arabia, Europe. John Benjamins. * (2003) Methods of Formalization beside and inside Both Autonomous and Non-autonomous Linguistics. University of Turku. * (2003) What Is Language? : A Study in the Philosophy of Linguistics. University of Turku. * (2005) Analogy as Structure and Process : Approaches in Linguistic, Cognitive Psychology, and Philosophy of Science. John Benjamins. * (2005) Ten Non-European Languages : An Aid to the Typologist. University of Turku.

References

External links

Personal home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Itkonen, Esa Linguists from Finland 1944 births Syntacticians Living people Philosophers of linguistics Academic staff of the University of Turku