An overview of the Semiolinguistics of Per Aage Brandt

Abstract

The sudden death of semiotician, linguist, poet, and jazz pianist Per Aage Brandt on November 11, 2021, motivated the author to reread and rethink his contribution to Semiotics and Linguistics for half a century. He chose three books representative of three phases of his semiotic and linguistic work: L’analyse phrastique: introduction à la grammatique [Sentence Analysis: Introduction to Grammatics] (1973); La charpente modale du sens: pour une sémio-linguistique morphogénétique et dynamique [The modal framework of meaning: for a morphogenetic and dynamic Semio-linguistics] (1992) and Spaces, Domains, and Meaning: Essays in Cognitive Semiotics (2004). The three books refer to different intellectual contexts. In 1973, it was the dispute between different grammar formats and above all the controversy between dependent grammars (for example that of Tesnière), formal syntax (Chomsky and others), lexical and case semantics (Lakoff, Fillmore). Per Aage Brandt resorts to the Danish tradition of Jespersen and Hjelmslev, introduces the notion of logical relation from Šaumjan's grammar, and proposes his system of dependency graphs. In 1992 (after his Thesis in Paris in 1987), it was the structuralism of the Semiotic School of Paris (around Greimas) and the innovation brought by René Thom and his topological semantics (introduced into the group of Greimas by Jean Petitot) – which motivated a new approach. The book of 2004 contributes to the paradigm of cognitive semantics initiated by Lakoff, Langacker, and Talmy and elaborated in interaction with Per Aage Brandt at his Center for Semiotics in Aarhus. Per Aage Brandt spent the last years of his career as a professor in Cleveland (USA) and major chapters of his book are the result of his consideration of Fauconnier's mental spaces and Turner's blending operation.