Date: 22-Jan-2008
From: Alessandro Capone <alessandro.caponeistruzione.it>
Subject: Obituary: Sorin Stati
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Sorin Stati was already a full Professor of Linguistics and had great influence in Rumania where he was often invited to talk to the national TV, when he decided to leave his nation, already plagued by a dictatorship, and start his career from scratch in Italy. You must imagine the difficulties in starting everything abroad. When I was given a contract as Professor of applied linguistics he wrote to me that his first appointment was also in applied linguistics! Anyway he won his professorship in general linguistics in Italy and he remained there to teach until he retired, some years before dying. Some students of his say that he experienced periods of hardship before he obtained his full professorship. His unusual story perhaps explains why he was so tolerant of opinions which were very different from his, why he was always so kind to scholars from the Eastern European countries, and why he always sought and valued what was good in us, pretending not to see defects.
Professor Sorin Stati had an enormous erudition, as he knew both classical and modern languages well. You were surprised to see him converse with scholars at the conferences he organized in some Eastern European languages, almost never using English (which he knew well), unlike current practice. He wrote books and papers in Italian, Rumanian, French and, of course, English. The publishers were always important, such as Il Mulino or PUF, and you wondered how one could manage to write well in so many different languages. Under his influence I started to study French. It is amazing that when you see someone do things, then you find it easy to emulate them.
Professor Sorin Stati wrote widely, as I wrote in my review of his "Fondamenti di analisi argomentativa", and towards the end of his life he proceeded with a strong sense of direction to investigating dialogue analysis (as he and his colleagues called it; his book in his area was "Il Dialogo" (Napoli, Liguori, 1982)), textual linguistics "Cinque miti della parola: lezioni di lessicologia testuale" (Bologna, Patron, 1986) transphrastic uses of language (Le Transprastique, Paris, Puf, 1990) and, finally, "Fondamenti di analisi argomentativa" Bologna, Patron, 2002). He came to such modern disciplines through syntax (La sintassi, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1976) and semantics (Manuale di semantica descrittiva, Napoli, Liguori, 1978).
Perhaps his best book was "La sintassi" (Bologna, Il Mulino). It is a pity that this book is not published in English (but it appears that these ideas were circulated though a Spanish translation). The book deals with macrostructures at the syntactic level.
Reading a book of his was a unique experience, since he showed immense erudition. He always quoted books from America and the English-speaking world and from Europe (also Eastern Europe) and his bibliographic expertise was noteworthy.
He was (together with Henriette Walter) vice-President of the Society of Functional Linguistics, when Professor Martinet was the President. He organized a round table on dialogue analysis at the Prague conference on functional linguistics. He was close to linguists such as Henriette Walter and Milena Srpova. However, he also had many friends from Germany and Western Europe. It was amazing to see all these people feel enchanted when he spoke with kind and affable words at conferences where they were invited to share their experiences with others and build up some kind of unitary project. He was able to command respect and was well loved by all the people who surrounded him.
I cannot forget his speech at a closure party at the conference he organized at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris (he already had some health problems there and some heavy spectacles had accrued to his face). His affability was unparalleled and people liked to be part of a circle of intellectuals where everybody displayed such good will (I remember that in those years I sent a paper to Milena Srpova, which was then finally published in La Linguistique). You could see that the people whom he invited were special.
Professor Stati organized many conferences with Edda Weigand and Franz Hundsurscher. These later became to be known as IADA conferences. Professor Stati was the President of the IADA for many years, until his bad state of health prevented him from going to its meetings. I think the characteristic of this association is to advance scholarly contributions to dialogue analysis without being sectarian. So at this association you would meet scholars from dialogue analysis/conversation analysis, as well as from other perspectives.
Even if I was not a regular participant in these conferences, I corresponded with Sorin Stati, who on the telephone happily informed me of the results of the last conference he presided over, the one in Bucharest. It was and was to be a triumph, since this was the country where he had held his initial professorship and where people knew him very well.
To my knowledge this was the last conference he attended. Then, as his health state deteriorated, he interrupted his various contacts with scholars all over the world. His friends may have been puzzled by this attitude, but his disease was not a common one and had the result of amplifying solitude and self-imposed isolation (not to mention the fact that he could no longer write as he did not see any longer).
Sorin Stati had the gift of understanding people. When he wrote a preface to my book entitled "Tra semantica e pragmatica" (Bologna, Clueb) I was surprised that he could understand my invisible aim: he wrote that I was like a physics professor he once knew who used to say "When I want to understand a theory, I write a book about it".
Sorin Stati was a benevolent, patient and constructive teacher. You almost did not perceive the enormous weight of his erudition, while you always knew that it was there, in his head. He did not like to show off his erudition and his teaching was a mixture of affability and severity. But the severity could be tolerated to a greater extent given his overall positive attitude. As a researcher he always strived to write original books and he was fascinated by originality of thought in his students.
In a sense, he was more severe with himself than with his students. It is amazing that he wrote his final book when he was well into his seventies with great zeal and a wealth of citations from many obscure languages. Surprisingly, his book on Principles of Argumentative Analysis (Bologna, Patron, 2002) was not the last attempt to impress other scholars, but it was a book which he wrote with his usual self-imposed discipline and rigour. I wrote a review of that book for the periodical "Argumentation", not as an homage paid to an old friend, but aware that all those who know of my severity in reviewing books would have understood how much merit was there.
This man had a talent in discovering talents and in valuing people's various strong points. Many of the people he encouraged now have professorships in Europe - some of the Eastern scholars he encouraged now have professorships in Western Europe. Sometimes it is so important to have a word of encouragement for other people! He gave trust to so many of us! I remember the telephone machine saying "I am the secretary friend of the Professor, trust me and leave a message". That telephone machine has now been off duty for years, but I leave a final message to this Journal, which I value so much, and give thanks to Sorin Stati on the part of many young people who met him and were encouraged by him. I hope it is a comfort for Ivonne, Stati's wife, to hear our usual voices, as she accompanied him through his life journey. She was always by him to sustain him by her elegant and strong presence.
There was a beautiful painting of Sorin Stati in one of his rooms in his flat in Bologna (via delle rose, I think). The beauty of his face was remarkable in that painting. But that beauty has remained intact in his old age - a miracle which rarely happens - reflecting the beauty of an inner life.
There are things that remain, that persist, and it is the memory of those who were always there to help us and to advance a discipline. In the face of this death, I must say that young scholars, myself included, are amazed to realize that a great weight has been put on us, a great onus, that of passing on to others the tradition he passed on to us. While we were listening to his words, we never thought this moment would arrive. The privilege of his conversation and the honour of his acquaintance, now that this great void makes itself felt, compel us to transmit his memory, his methods, his books and, which is most difficult of all, his immense erudition and affability.
I think Professor Stati would have liked very much to salute his old friends for thelast time and I take a chance to say "Goodbye" to all on the part of Sorin Stati.
Let all of his friends say a prayer for this man, who was also a devout Christian.
Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable
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