Obituary: Peter Hans Nelde (1942-2007)

摘要

Peter Hans Nelde, Professor of German and Linguistics at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel, Director of the Research Centre on Multilingualism there, and a long-time member of the editorial board of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, died on 31 August 2007 after a lengthy illness. He was a very well-known scholar of multilingualism and more specifically of languages in contact. Because such contact often involves groups of unequal status, Nelde's Law holds that 'there is no contact without conflict', and the maxim underpinned Peter's deep concern with linguistic minorities, language rights and policies. The Research Centre that he founded in 1977 hosted international conferences under the title Contact + Conflict, and became an important centre for scholarship in the area. Also important was his Plurilingua series of publications; this began in 1983 and the thirtieth volume appeared in 2007. Involved in many scholarly undertakings, Peter was unable to bring to fruition his last and most ambitious project an investigation of the social aspects of European linguistic diversity, led by the Research Centre in association with academic organisations in seven countries.