Lucien Tesni%C3%A8re

Lucien Tesnire was a prominent and influential French linguist. He was born in MontSaintAignan on May 13, 1893. As a professor in Strasbourg , and later in Montpellier , he published many papers and books on Slavic languages. However, his importance in the history of linguistics is based mainly on his development of an approach to the syntax of natural languages that would become known as dependency grammar. He presented his theory in his book lments de syntaxe structurale , published posthumously in 1959. In the book he proposes a sophisticated formalization of syntactic structures, supported by many examples from a diversity of languages. Tesnire died in Montpellier on December 6, 1954.

Lucien Tesnire was born on May 13, 1893 in MontSaintAignan, now a suburb of Rouen . He studied Latin, Greek, and German in school. He spent time abroad as a young man in England, Germany, and Italy. He was enrolled at the University of Sorbonne and the University of Leipzig studying Germanic languages when WWI broke out. He was mobilized on August 12th and sent to the front on October 15th. He became a prisoner of war on the 16th of February 1915. He was interned in the camp at Merseburg with 4000 other prisoners from all nationalities. During hismonths of captivity, he continued his intense study of languages. He also worked for the German authorities as a FrenchEnglishRussianItalianGerman interpreter.

Source: Wikipedia