BREV TIL: Leonard Bloomfield FRA: Louis Hjelmslev (1934-08-28)

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82 Blegdamsvej. Copenhagen (0 August 28, 1934.

My dear Professor Bloomfield,

1 am indebted to you for the most valuable linguistic papers which you have been so 3cind to send me some time ago; A Set of Postulates for the Science of Lan-

gua-ge. On Recent Work in General Linguisticsf Linguistics as a Science, your review of Kies's book Was 1st ein Satz?. and your necrology of Albert Paul Weiss. I daresay that I agree with you in a great many essential points, and I admire very much your keen endeavours to place linguistics on a rational basis and the force with wmch you maintain the importance of linguistics for human science in general. 1 have just now read your recent book Languaget and I must tell you that I have been filled with enthusiasm by reading it. For the first time we possess a really good, at the same time copious and clear survey of the science of language, equally useful for beginners and for advanced stu- dents. It will take too long to enter upon details here, but I want to tell you that your chapter on Phonetic structure has given me a most pleasant and at the same time curious surprise. In the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen, we had un- dertaken, in connection with the Internat ional Phonological Association, to give a phonological description of Modern Danish; our discussions on the subject have lead us to aban- don a great part of the phonological doctrines of the Prague

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Circlet and we had decided recently to end savour a pure functional description, defining pnoneme« exclusively by their function in language. In a small committee, con- sisting principally ®f rør. H. J. Uldall (who by the way has been in the States and has recently delivered a descrip- tier of the Achnraawi Phonemic system in the International Journal of American Linguistics) and of myself, we have endeavoured to arrange the Danish phonemes according to their possible combinations. What you have written about American English (and some other languages) is almost quite analogous to our own attempt, and your work has indeed been very welcome to us. Uldall and I will try to finish our phonemic description of Danish before the Phonetic Congress at London next year, where we will probably be present both of us.

At the recently established University of Aarhus, where I am now professor of linguistics, I shall have to read a course of general and comparative linguistics for beginners, and the best will be to use your Language as a text-book for this purpose. The only difficulty about this is that the book is rather expensive for our students. Sfc I venture to ask you if it would be possible to admit the students a reduction of the price. I should be extremely thankful to you if you would propose this to the publisher. I do not know exactly h&w many

copies we will need, but it must be Z3 at least, and probably x. more. I begin my lectures on September the 1?

, so I should be very glad to hear from you as soon as possible. As I am not

yet settled in Aarhus, you may write to the above address. With my best regard

Yours sincerely.