About Danish Functional Linguistics

Since the structural revolution in early 20th century, linguistics has been divided into approaches based on the autonomy thesis and approaches focusing on language as a medium for cognitive, communicative and social processes. On both sides of the divide there has been a gradual increase in the level of sophistication, theoretically as well as empirically. Among other things, the emergence of the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has sparked off a new development where the description of language is part of an integrated exploration of the overall cognitive potential of the human mind.

Since 1989 a number of Danish linguists based in RUC, CBS, and the University of Copenhagen, have formed a research community that has made a distinctive contribution to the development of linguistics by exploring how morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of language can be integrated into an overall approach based on function. A key interest is to preserve the valid parts of the structural tradition by viewing structure within (rather than outside) an overall functional and cognitive framework: Structural features may present a misleading picture of language when they are artificially isolated from the rest but they have an important role to play if they are seen as ways of structuring and formalizing functional properties of languages. In the bibliography are listed a number of books and articles where Danish linguists associated with the functional linguistic working community have discussed issues in modern linguistics. Among the aims are to make contributions to international discussions without taking part in sectarian warfare, and to emphasize the distinctive properties of individual languages.