Theodoro Henrique Maurer Jr.

Theodoro Henrique Maurer Júnior (May 13, 1906 – 1979) was a Brazilian philologist and linguist known for his work on Romance languages. He received his PhD in Latin from the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Languages of the University of São Paulo in 1944, where he was an active professor from 1947 to 1967. From 1945 to 1946 he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study at Yale University, where he did research under linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield, Franklin Edgerton and Edgar Sturtevant.

He was one of the founders of the Brazilian Linguistics Association.

Biography

Early years Maurer was born on May 13, 1906, in the Swiss colony "Campos Sales", in Cosmópolis, at that time a rural region of Campinas, São Paulo. His parents, Henrique Maurer and Rosette H. Maurer, were from Zürich and had come to Brazil in 1898. However, Maurer Júnior spent his childhood, until the age of five, in the countryside of the United States, where his family had temporarily moved.

Higher education and experience at Yale From 1938, he studied Classical Languages and Portuguese at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Languages (FFCL) of the University of São Paulo, where he graduated in 1940. He continued teaching at the José Manuel da Conceição Institute until 1943 and, from this year to 1945, he taught Greek at Colégio Oswaldo Cruz. From 1944 to 1952, he taught philosophy and logic at the Theology Faculty of the Methodist Church of Brazil. Since his graduation from FFCL, he became Assistant Professor and Professor of Latin (initially also of Greek) at the same college. He got his doctorate, in 1944, with the dissertation A Morfologia e a Sintaxe do Genitivo Latino: estudo histórico (The Morphology and Syntax of the Latin Genitive: a historical study).

The Rockefeller Foundation offered him a fellowship at Yale University, and from 1945 to 1946 he took courses in Indo-European, Sanskrit, and Hittite linguistics at Yale with Leonard Bloomfield, Franklin Edgerton, and Edgard Sturtevant. These studies resulted in two articles in Language: "Unity of the Indo-European Ablaut System: The Dissyllabic Roots" (1947, vol. 23, no. 1) and "The Romance Conjugation in -ēscō (-īscō) -īre: Its Origin in Vulgar Latin" (1951, vol. 27, no. 2).

Career at the University of São Paulo In 1949, upon his return from Yale, he was hired as the Chair of Romance Philology at FFCL, where he focused his studies on Romance languages and was also in charge of the Classical Glottology program (which, at his suggestion, was then renamed Indo-European Linguistics). He became a full professor in 1951, with the thesis A Unidade da România Ocidental (The Unity of Western Romance), and, in 1952, he took the Chair Competition with the thesis O Latim Vulgar: Estudo Crítico (Vulgar Latin: A Critical Study), and was approved and appointed Full Professor of Romance Philology.

With such a position, Maurer gave a start to specialized studies in General Linguistics at USP and, when the area was included in the Minimum Curriculum, he also took responsibility for the undergraduate courses, which he did until his retirement. This happened in 1967, but he continued to devote himself to linguistic studies and also to studies on cooperativism and politics.

He died in 1979, in São Paulo.

Selected works

Linguistics

Papers, theses and essays

"Unity of the Indo-European Ablaut System: The Dissyllabic Roots". Language. Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan.-Mar., 1947), pp. 1–22. "A Morfologia e a Sintaxe do Genitivo Latino". São Paulo, 1948 (Boletim nº 55 da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da USP), 96 p. (PhD Thesis). "The Romance Conjugation in -ēscō (-īscō) -īre: Its Origin in Vulgar Latin". Language. Vol. 27, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun., 1951), pp. 136–145. "A Unidade da România Ocidental". São Paulo, 1951 (Boletim nº 118 da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da USP), 232 p. (Full Professor Thesis). "Dois Problemas da Língua Portuguesa". São Paulo, 1951 (Boletim nº 128 da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da USP), 74 p.

Books

Gramática do latim vulgar. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Acadêmica, 1959, 300 p. O problema do latim vulgar. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Acadêmica, 1962, 202 p. O Infinito Flexionado Português. São Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional e Edusp, 1968, XII + 250 p.

Other areas

O Cooperativismo: Um Ideal de Solidariedade Humana na Vida Econômica. São Paulo, 1950, 120 p. A Democracia Integral. São Paulo, 1960, 84 p. O Cooperativismo: Uma Economia Humana. São Paulo, 1966, 330 p.