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Neogrammarian
The Neogrammarians (German: ''Junggrammatiker'', 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. Overview According to the Neogrammarian hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according to scientific method. Subsequent researchers have questioned this hypothesis from two perspectives. First, adherents of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) believe that some words undergo changes before others. Second, some believe that it is possibl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Diffusion
Lexical diffusion is the hypothesis that a sound change is an abrupt change that spreads gradually across the words in a language to which it is applicable. It contrasts with the Neogrammarian view that a sound change results from phonetically-conditioned articulatory drift acting uniformly on all applicable words, which implies that sound changes are regular, with exceptions attributed to analogy and dialect borrowing. Similar views were expressed by Romance dialectologists in the late 19th century but were reformulated and renamed by William Wang and coworkers studying varieties of Chinese in the 1960s and the 1970s. William Labov found evidence for both processes but argued that they operate at different levels. Neogrammarians and dialectologists A key assumption of historical linguistics is that sound change is regular. The principle was summarized by the Neogrammarians in the late 19th century in the slogan "sound laws suffer no exceptions" and forms the basis of the compar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (phonological change), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Noreen
Adolf Gotthard Noreen (13 March 1854, in Östra Ämtervik, Sunne Municipality – 13 June 1925, in Uppsala) was a Swedish linguist who served as a member of the Swedish Academy from 1919 until his death. Noreen studied at Uppsala University and focused on Swedish dialectology in his earlier works, later shifting to the wider field of historical linguistics. He was a Neogrammarian and supported spelling reform. Biography Noreen was born in Värmland. He became a student at Uppsala University in 1871 and went on to complete his doctorate there in 1877; he became a lecturer at the university in the same year. Noreen spent most of 1879 at the University of Leipzig, the home of the Neogrammarian school of linguistics – a school to which Noreen belonged for his entire literary life. Whilst in Leipzig, Noreen was taught Lithuanian by August Leskien, a pioneer of research into sound laws. Much of Noreen's early output was focused on Swedish dialectology, primarily in his home p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Brugmann
Karl Brugmann (16 March 1849 – 29 June 1919) was a German linguist. He is noted for his work in Indo-European linguistics. Biography He was educated at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. He taught at the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Leipzig, and in 1872-77 was assistant at the Russian Institute of Classical Philology at the latter. In 1877 he was lecturer at the University of Leipzig, and in 1882 became professor of comparative philology there. In 1884 he took the same position at the University of Freiburg, but returned to Leipzig in 1887 as successor to Georg Curtius; for the rest of his professional life (until 1919), Brugmann was professor of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics there. As a young man, Brugmann sided with the emerging Neogrammarian school, which asserted the inviolability of phonetic laws ( Brugmann's law) and adhered to a strict research methodology. As well as in laying stress on the observation of phonetic laws and their operation, it emphasized t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verner's Law
Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law was formulated by Karl Verner, and first published in 1877. Problem A seminal insight into how the Germanic languages diverged from their Indo-European ancestor had been established in the early nineteenth century, and had been formulated as Grimm's law. Amongst other things, Grimm's law described how the Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops ', ', ', and regularly changed into Proto-Germanic ( bilabial fricative ), (dental fricative ), (velar fricative ), and (velar fricative ). However, there appeared to be a large set of words in which the agreement of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Baltic, Slavic etc. guaranteed Proto-Indo-European ', ' or ', and yet the Germanic reflex was not the expected, unvoiced fricatives , , , but rather their v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Osthoff
Hermann Osthoff (18 April 1847, Billmerich – 7 May 1909, Heidelberg) was a German linguist. He was involved in Indo-European studies and the Neogrammarian school. He is known for formulating Osthoff's law, and published widely on Indo-European word-formation and morphology. Life Osthoff studied classical philology, Germanic philology, Sanskrit and comparative linguistics in Berlin, Tübingen and Bonn. In 1869 he obtained his doctorate in Bonn as a student of Hermann Usener. During his time in that city he became a member of the Burschenschaft Alemannia of Bonn. From 1871 onward, he taught classes at the gymnasium in Kassel. In 1875, he successfully completed his postdoctoral habilitation at the University of Leipzig, and in 1877, was named an associate professor of comparative linguistics and Sanskrit at the University of Heidelberg. Shortly afterwards, he was granted full professorship at Heidelberg, where he later served as dean (1894/95) and vice-rector (1899–1900). [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Change
Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of phonemes, or sound change; borrowing, in which features of a language or dialect are altered as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change, in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes a degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged usage. Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such inn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
August Leskien
August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German linguist active in the field of comparative linguistics, particularly relating to the Baltic and Slavic languages. Biography Leskien was born in Kiel. He studied philology at the universities of Kiel and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate from the latter in 1864. He taught Latin and Ancient Greek at the from 1864 to 1866. In 1866, he began studying comparative linguistics under August Schleicher at the University of Jena. He completed his habilitation in 1867 and went on to lecture at the University of Göttingen. He was appointed as the extraordinary professor (außerordentlicher Professor) of comparative linguistics and Sanskrit at Jena in 1868. Two years later, he was named as the extraordinary professor of Slavic philology at the University of Leipzig, where he delivered the first course there in Slavic languages. He was promoted to full professorship (ordentlicher Professor) in 1876 and remained in the positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analogy
Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analog, or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, in which at least one of the premises, or the conclusion, is general rather than particular in nature. The term analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often (though not always) a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving, as well as decision making, argumentation, perception, generalization, memory, creativity, invention, prediction, emotion, explanation, concep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Paul
Hermann Otto Theodor Paul (August 7, 1846, Salbke – December 29, 1921, Munich) was a German philologist, linguist and lexicographer. Biography He studied at Berlin and Leipzig, and in 1874 became professor of German language and literature in the University of Freiburg. In 1893 he was appointed professor of German philology at the University of Munich. He was a prominent Neogrammarian. Works His main work, ''Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte'' (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1st ed. 1880; 3d ed. 1898), has been translated into English: Paul, Hermann 1970. ''Principles of the History of Language'', translated from 2nd edition by H. A. Strong (1888; retranslated with changes by Strong, Logeman, and Wheeler in 1891). College Park: McGroth Publishing Company, . According to Paul, sentences are the sum of their parts. They arise sequentially from individual associations, linked together in a linear form (1886. See also, Blumenthal, 1970). Wilhelm Wundt opposed this theory of sentences, arguing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Braune
Theodor Wilhelm Braune (20 February 1850 in Großthiemig, Province of Saxony – 10 November 1926 in Heidelberg) was a German philologist and Germanist. Biography In 1869 Braune entered the University of Leipzig, where he was approved as an instructor in 1874. In 1877 he was appointed as extraordinary professor at the University of Giessen and became an ordinary professor of German language and literature there in 1880. He later served as a professor at the University of Heidelberg. He is an important representative of the Neogrammarians. Among his most lasting achievements were his works on the history of the Germanic languages. Editions of his grammars and anthologies of Old High German and Gothic are still in use today. In 1873 he also founded, together with Hermann Paul, the Germanic studies journal ''Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur'' often referred to among scholars as ''Pauls und Braunes Beiträge'' (or ''PBB'') and which remains one of the leading ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grundriß Der Vergleichenden Grammatik Der Indogermanischen Sprachen
''Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen'' (German for ''"Outline of the comparative grammar of the Indo-Germanic languages"'') is a major work of historical linguistics by Karl Brugmann and Berthold Delbrück, published in two editions between 1886 and 1916. Brugmann treated phonology and morphology, and Delbrück treated syntax. The grammar of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is reconstructed from those of its daughter languages known in the late 19th century. The work represents a major step in Indo-European studies, after Franz Bopp's ''Comparative Grammar'' of 1833 and August Schleicher's ''Compendium'' of 1871. Brugmann's neogrammarian re-evaluation of PIE resulted in a view that in its essence continued to be valid until present times. First edition *Brugmann **Volume I: Phonology (1886) **Volume II, Part I: Noun (1888) **Volume II, Part II: Numerals and Pronouns, Verb (1892) **Indices (1893) *Delbrück **Volume III: Syntax, Part I (1893) **Volume IV: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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