Wolfgang U. Dressler

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Wolfgang U. Dressler (b. 22 December 1939) is an Austrian professor of linguistics at the university of Vienna. Dressler is an eminent scholar who has contributed to various fields of linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, text linguistics, clinical linguistics, and child language development. He is one of the most important representatives of the so-called 'naturalness theory'.

1 Career
2 Publications
3 Linguistic research
4 External links

[edit] Career

After studying linguistics and classical philology in Vienna (1957-1962), Dressler spent time in Rome and Paris, works both at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Linguistics of the University of Vienna, finishing his habilitation in 1968. In 1970, he went to the USA working as associate professor, and returned to Vienna in 1971, when he was appointed professor for general and applied linguistics at the University of Vienna. Since then, Dressler is based there, while still travelling and teaching at other universities all the time.

[edit] Publications

Dressler has authored (until now) more than 400 publications, some of which were groundbreaking for various subdisciplines of linguistics. To name a few, the following selection of some of his monographs may give some insight:

Dressler, W.U. & R. de Beaugrande 1981: Introduction to Text Linguistics. London, Longman 1981. Einführung in die Textlinguistik. Tübingen, Niemeyer.

Dressler, W.U. 1985: Morphonology. Ann Arbor, Karoma Press.

Dressler, W.U. & W. Mayerthaler, O. Panagl, W.U. Wurzel 1988: Leitmotifs in Morphology. Amsterdam, Benjamins.

Dressler, W.U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi 1994: Morphopragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 1994.

[edit] Linguistic research

In the beginning of his career, Dressler is working on Indo-European topics. After 1969, he starts to publish on text linguistics; after few publications within the then new framework of generative grammar, he permanently turns away from this model and becomes a very profound critic with a strong science-theoretical and semiotic background.

At the same time, Dressler is working on Breton language, from a phonological, text linguistic, and sociolinguistic perspective ('language death'). At that time also, morphology, phonology, and morphonology are in the focus of his interest. Since 1972, what is later called 'sociophonology' is developed, first as 'fast speech rules', later in a refined model on 'casual speech' and competing phonological processes and rules.

From 1973 onwards, in search of 'external evidence' for linguistic theoretical assumptions (as opposed to generative models, but as an important science-theoretical background for theoretical arguments), Dressler gets interested in the disturbed speech of aphasia. Similarly, he starts to work with psychologists on a model of psychological '(de)activation' for phonological processes, and, with his background in IE studies, he compares historical evidence with his phonological theory, concluding about rules, processes, and the boundaries of phonological theory towards morpho(no)logy.

In his contributions about morphonology, Dressler defines a subtype of morphology which in generative phonology is often mistaken as a phonological phenomenon. In morphology, Dressler innovatively describes both word formation and inflection, also often contradicting assumptions of generative morphology. Contrary to one-sided explanations, Dressler handles complicated situations; therefore, in morphology, Dressler coins the term 'polycentristic theory' for morphology (1977), then (1983) as a 'polycentristic language theory'. He also reacts to the generative assumption of 'split morphology' with a model pondering similarities and differences between derivation and inflection.

Due to his science-theoretical interests, Dressler introduces a semiotic model (following Charles S. Peirce) into linguistic theory. This 'semiotic model' reappears in Dressler's publications time and again as prerequisites for theoretical assumptions in various fields.

Dressler finally adopts the model of 'Natural Phonology' as developed by David Stampe and Patricia Donegan, but refines it with his semiotic science-theoretical considerations. This might appear as an unnecessary addition, but in fact firmly puts the model on a very solid meta-theory. Following this new trend, together with Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl, and Wolfgang U. Wurzel, Dressler coins the term 'Natural Morphology' for their way to look at morphological processes. Here again, a semiotic foundation of the model strongly influences his explanations, much more than with the other authors.

Since Dressler's model has universal claims, he has to be named a [[linguistic typology|typologist]. Both in phonology and morphology, he sees the common ground of languages in more general principles of how signs can be used (= semiotics).

Then, Dressler turns towards morphopragmatics, i.e., the pragmatic uses of morphological elements. He investigates the uses of diminutives and similar phenomena, again creatively combining formal and semantic (or pragmatic) aspects in innovative ways.

Finally, Dressler develops a new model of language development which, in morphology, is called the model of pre- and proto-morphology. Dressler assumes that language is self-organising in the child, thereby passing through a stage 'before' morphology, and then through a stage of a very simple morphology, until finally the child learns to adapt to the adult target model of grammar. In other words, a child does neither inherit nor learn a grammatical function, but is able to gradually derive the full morphological meaning from fewer and more concrete functions which are developed and discovered first.

As this ('short') enumeration of his research interests show, Dressler is one of the most eminent linguistic scholars of the 20th century, as far as theory-building is concerned. From a theoretical viewpoint, Dressler's work is close to functionalist and cognitive models of language.