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Lucien Tesnière (; May 13, 1893 – December 6, 1954) was a prominent and influential French linguist. He was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on May 13, 1893. As a professor in Strasbourg (1924), and later in Montpellier (1937), he published many papers and books on Slavic languages. However, his importance in the history of linguistics is based mainly on his development of an approach to the syntax of natural languages that would become known as dependency grammar. He presented his theory in his book ''Éléments de syntaxe structurale'' (Elements of Structural Syntax), published posthumously in 1959.〔Due to sickness at the end of his life, Tesnière did not manage to see his central work published. The actual publication of the Éléments was due in part to the work of friends, family (especially Madame Tesnière), and former students of his. These admirers of the linguist ensured that the manuscript he left was organized and put into book form in the years after his death.〕 In the book he proposes a sophisticated formalization of syntactic structures, supported by many examples from a diversity of languages. Tesnière died in Montpellier on December 6, 1954. Many central concepts that the modern study of syntax takes for granted were developed and presented in Tesnière's book (i.e. in the Éléments). For instance, Tesnière developed the concept of valency in detail, and the primary distinction between arguments (actants) and adjuncts (''circumstants'', French ''circonstants''), which most if not all theories of syntax now acknowledge and build on, was central to Tesnière's understanding. Tesnière also argued vehemently that syntax is autonomous from morphology and semantics. This stance is similar to generative grammar, which takes syntax to be a separate component of the human faculty for language. ==Biography== Lucien Tesnière was born on May 13, 1893 in Mont-Saint-Aignan, now a suburb of Rouen (north-west of France). He studied Latin, Greek, and German in school. He spent time abroad as a young man in England, Germany, and Italy.〔 The biographical information here is an abbreviated version of the biography produced in the Translators' introduction to the English version of the ''Éléments''. See Kahane and Osborne (2015).〕 He was enrolled at the University of Sorbonne and the University of Leipzig studying Germanic languages when WWI broke out. He was mobilized on August 12th and sent to the front on October 15th. He became a prisoner of war on the 16th of February 1915. He was interned in the camp at Merseburg with 4000 other prisoners from all nationalities. During his 40 months of captivity, he continued his intense study of languages. He also worked for the German authorities as a French-English-Russian-Italian-German interpreter. He continued his studies at the Sorbonne after the war. He studied with Joseph Vendryes, and at the Collège de France he was under the tutelage of Antoine Meillet, a prominent linguist at the time. Tesnière was then invited as a lecturer to the University of Lubjana (now the capital of Slovenia), where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the disappearance of the dual in Slovenien. He married Jeanne Roulier in Zagreb and fathered three children with her. In February 1924, Tesnière became associate professor of Slavic language and literature at the University of Strasbourg (the capital of Alsace on the border to Germany), where he taught Russian and Old Slavic. Tesnière was promoted to professor of ''grammaire comparée'' at the University of Montpellier (in the south of France) in 1937. During WWII Tesnière worked as a cryptography officer for the Military Intelligence, the so-called Deuxième Bureau. He became very sick after the war in 1947 and his health remained poor until he died on December 6th, 1954. His primary oeuvre, ''Éléments de syntaxe structurale'', was then published five years later in 1959 due to the constant efforts of his wife Jeanne and the help of colleagues and friends. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lucien Tesnière」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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