Abstract
Hjelmslev introduces the commutation test as an entirely new invention.There is indeed a difference between his commutation test and the commutation test as the London and Prague schools of Phonology have applied it long before him. But that difference is not so much in the test itself as in two secondary features of it, the first of which is Hjelmslev’s extensive definitions of even the most simple procedures and principles, each of which, as he realizes very well and actually says of one of them, “has always implicitly played a role in scientific research, although so far as we know, it has not previously been formulated” (OSG p. 63).
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References
Cf. L. Bloomfield, Language, 1933, p. 139 ff.
Eli Fischer-Jørgensen, Referat af moder i det glossematiske udvalg 1950, (stencilled), p. 18. Translation mine. Kindly put at my disposal by the writer. See for a similar definition of “paradigm” the same author in Remarques sur les principes de l’analyse phonémique, Recherches, p. 216, footnotes; “Un paradigme … est constitue par ses possibilités de relations syntagmatiques avec d’autres classes du même système. (Voyelles et consonnes, consonnes initiales et finales etc., constituent des paradigmes différents). Cette formule correspond done à peu près à ce qu’on désigne d’une manière plus vague comme des éléments qui se trouvent ‘dans la même position‘”.
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© 1955 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Siertsema, B. (1955). The Commutation Test. In: A Study of Glossematics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6671-5_10
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