About AF

History

The beginnings of Axiomatic Functionalism (AF) are all connected with the name of Jan W. F. Mulder, the originator of this approach. His biographies, one written by Sándor G. J. Hervey, another by Robin Thelwall, can be found in the first and second edition of Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Elsevier). In 1950s Mulder studied at the University of Leiden under E. M. Uhlenbeck. At that time he became acquainted with functionalism of André Martinet whose thoughts had considerable influence on AF, though there are many differences between Mulder’s and Martinet’s functionalism, in particular as regards grammatical theory.

During 1960s Mulder worked and studied at the University of Oxford, England. Having found out his previous degrees were not recognized, he set out writing the doctoral thesis Sets and Relations in Phonology – A theory of linguistic description with special reference to Pekingese, finished in 1966 and published in 1968 as Sets and Relations in Phonology: An axiomatic approach to the description of speech. The book offers a detailed exposition of formalized functional phonology and represents the founding stone of AF. In the same year Mulder was appointed a post at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and was charged with establishing a department of linguistics there. The Department was a flourishing place for Mulder and its students until 1983 when it was closed due to the cuts in financing.

At the time of his stay in Oxford Mulder won several people to his new approach, notably Michael A. L. Lamb and Sándor G. J. Hervey. The two had immense influence on AF, in particular Sándor G. J. Hervey who eventually developed the semantic part of the theory. He joined Mulder at the University of St. Andrews and closely cooperated with him. The cooperation resulted in several publications (The Theory of Linguistic Sign in 1972 and The Strategy of Linguistics in 1980). Mulder and Hervey became active internationally thanks to the openness of the Martinet network and of other linguists to their ideas. They joined the newly established Société Internationale de Linguistique Fonctionnelle (SILF), contributed to the journal La Linguistique and participated in the annual colloquia of functional linguistics organized by SILF. They had many students (local and from abroad) who were themselves active at the SILF conferences and in La Linguistique.

Due to financial cuts, the Department of Linguistics at the University of St. Andrews was closed in 1983. Mulder was offered early retirement; he then taught at the University of Freiburg, Germany and at the Mahidol University, Thailand. He was preparing the major manifesto of AF, Foundations of Axiomatic Linguistics, published in 1989. He then settled in Belgium continuing to work, to publish and to participate in conferences. He died at the beginning of 2012.

After the dissolution of the St. Andrews Department of Linguistics Hervey bacame a member of the Social Anthropology Department at the same university and was invited to retrain for the new post. He became interested in translation and translation theory and started a course on translation methodology together with Ian Higgins. It was a great success; it enabled Hervey and Higgins to turn their course into a publication Thinking Translation: A Course in Translation Method: French to English (1992) which eventually became a series of books taking into their scope Spanish, German, Italian and Arabic. A book on Hungarian translation was prepared but never published because of Hervey’s pre-mature death in 1997. His obituary by Mortéza Mahmoudian can be found in La Linguistique 33/2 (1997).

Mulder and Hervey had many students at St. Andrews, some of which have worked in AF ever since. One of them is Paul Rastall, formerly a lecturer at the University of Porthsmouth and at the City University of Hong Kong. He published a number of books either applying AF (A Functional View of English Grammar, 1995) or discussing its philosophical background (A Linguistic Philosophy of Language, 2000; The Power of Speech, 2006). With Mulder they published the book Ontological Questions in Linguistics (2005).

Back in 1960s in Oxford Mulder met with M. A. L. Lamb about whom he wrote: “he often understood what I meant better than I did myself” (Mulder 1998: 155). Lamb has contributed many ideas of his own to AF, though unfortunately has published very little during his career. He resided at the New University of Ulster, Northern Ireland and stayed there until his retirement. His thoughts are reflected in the work of his students whose doctoral theses he supervised, particularly in the work of James Dickins and Barry Heselwood (both currently at theUniversity of Leeds, England). Lamb has gradually developed his version of AF which has become known as Extended Axiomatic Functionalism. A book of the same title was published by James Dickins in 1999. Extended AF features some considerable differences to standard Mulderian AF but both versions are deeply related and to a great extent compatible.

AF is a well-conceived approach that has a lot of offer to all linguists. Its rigor, use of set-theory and functionalist orientation have appealed to Aleš Bičan (Masaryk University - Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) who initiated these web pages and published a collection of AF-oriented papers Readings in Axiomatic Functionalism I & II in Linguistica ONLINE, an online journal of the Department of Linguistics and Baltic Studies, Masaryk University. In 2011 he and Paul Rastall published an edited collection of AF papers in the book Axiomatic Functionalism: Theory and Application.

Sources

Hervey, Sándor G. J.. 1994a. "Functionalism, Axiomatic". The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. III. (eds. Ronald E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson), 1338-40. Oxford – New York: Pergamon Press.
1994b. "Mulder, Johannes Wilhelmus Francismus (1919-)". The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. V (eds. Ronald E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson), 2617. Oxford – New York: Pergamon Press.
Higgins, Ian. 2008. Personal email conversation.
Mahmoudian, Mortéza. 1997. "Sándor Hervey". La Linguistique 33:2.3-7.
Mulder, Jan. W. F.. 1989. Foundations of Axiomatic Linguistics (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 40). Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
----. 1998. "Epistemology and linguistics: Anatomy of an approach". Productivity and Créativity: studies in general linguistics in honour of E. M. Uhlenbeck (ed. Mark Janse), 115-60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
----. 2004. "In memoriam Sandor Hervey". Actes du 22e colloque intenational de linguistique fontionnelle (Évora, Portugal, 5-9 May 1998), 19-21. Universidade de Évora.
Thelwall, Robin. 2006. "Mulder, Johannes W. Franciscus". Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Vol. 8, 2nd edt. (editor-in-chief Keith Brown), 367. Amsterdam et al.: Elsevier.