Alf Sommerfelt

Alf Sommerfelt

Prof. Dr Alf Sommerfelt
Born	1892
Died	1965
Residence	Villa Sandbakken, Alnabru, nr Oslo, Norway [1949]
Occupation	linguist
Society Membership membership Guest Fellow Hon. Fellow left 1965 deceased elected_AI 1942.03.24

Notes

House Notes

1942.03.24 nominated as election as a guest member of the Insitute and elected forthwith
Proceedings jan-jun 1942. the election of ...Dr Alf Sommerfelt (Director-General of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Education) as a guest member for the duration of the war

1965.10 death reported

Notes From Elsewhere

Alf Sommerfelt (November 23, 1892 – October 12, 1965), was a Norwegian linguist and the first professor of linguistics in Norway, working at the University of Oslo from 1931 to 1962.
Sommerfelt was born in Trondheim, Norway. He married the young adult literature writer Aimée Sommerfelt. He died in Nes, Norway, aged 72.
Sommerfelt was a central figure in the introduction of structuralism in Norway. He had studied in Paris, and held lectures on Saussure, glossematics, the Prague school 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 dictionary).

Publications

External Publications

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 Hvordan sproget blir til : en oversikt over sprogets rolle i samfundene Oslo : Cappelens forlag.
Sommerfelt, Alf 1947: Almen språkvitenskap : (det propedeutiske kursus).

House Publications

1942.06.16 Dr. Alf Sommerfelt read his paper on " The Social Origin of Linguistic Categories."