Jens Holt (1904-1973), who succeeded Hjelmslev in Aarhus in 1937, is commonly regarded as a loyalbut uninteresting disciple ofHjelmslev.Hjelmslev was a lecturer in Aarhus 1934-37, where hesucceeded the professorship inJens Holt (1904-1973)Comparative Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen when Holger Pedersen left.
After Hjelmslev, Holt was employed in the linguistics department as a lecturer in 1938. Holt taught Sanskrit, Indo-European sound and form theory and all the general and basic disciplines within linguistics.
Holt made use of Hjelmslev's and Uldall's creative vocabulary, which we especially see in Rational Semantics (1946), which deals exclusively with pleremics.In the correspondances between Holt and Hjelmslev, we sense a mutual professional respect as well as a mutual loyality to each other.
It turns out that within this professional respect, a warm friendship unfolds between the authors over the years, in which we find caring notes to each other and little jokes. These are intertwined their academic discussions which are rooted in their common interest in structural linguistics and their wish to immortalize languages (especially Indo-European languages).
“His linguistic thinking cannot be written off and can only be used when you yourself create something new from it. Anything else would be abuse.”
Additionally, Holt and Hjelmslev's discussions were typically quite friendly, in comparison to Eli Fischer-Jørgensen and Paul Diderichsen whose critical comments would feed a somewhat tense written discussion. Holt and Hjelmslev’s approach to language was the same, and they wanted the same for linguistics as a discipline and as a science. This particular correspondence contains interesting and practical contributions to the solution of analytical issues within structuralism.
