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August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
active in the field of
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
, particularly relating to the
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...
and
Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
.


Biography

Leskien was born in
Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...
. He studied
philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...
at the universities of
Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...
and
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, receiving his
doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
from the latter in 1864. He taught
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
and
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
at the from 1864 to 1866. In 1866, he began studying comparative linguistics under August Schleicher at the
University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The ...
. He completed his
habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...
in 1867 and went on to lecture at the
University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
. He was appointed as the extraordinary professor ( außerordentlicher Professor) of comparative linguistics and
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
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 position until 1915. In 1884 he became an editor of Ersch and Gruber's ''Realencyklopädie''. Leskien was a founding member of the journal . He died in Leipzig.


Research, writings and thought

Leskien was a central figure in the group of linguists at Leipzig who later became known as the
Neogrammarians 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 chang ...
. The group strove to approach linguistics in a scientific manner; Leskien formulated their main doctrine, namely that phonetic laws have no exceptions (''Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze''). Leskien's hypothesis was that phonetic shifts do not occur randomly or haphazardly, but instead are the product of directly observable conditions. Among the students that Leskien taught are: Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay,
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wide ...
,
Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...
,
Nikolai Trubetzkoy Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy ( rus, Никола́й Серге́евич Трубецко́й, p=trʊbʲɪtsˈkoj; 16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague Schoo ...
,
Karl Verner Karl Adolph Verner (; 7 March 1846 – 5 November 1896) was a Danish linguist. He is remembered today for Verner's law, which he published in 1876. Biography Verner's interest in languages was stimulated by reading about the work of Rasmus Chris ...
and Adolf Noreen. Thus Leskien can be seen as a key founder of modern comparative linguistics, particularly in the fields of Baltic and Slavic languages. In his 1881 essay '', Leskien formulated Leskien's Law, a
sound law 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 cha ...
devised to describe a particular aspect of sound change in Lithuanian. According to this law long vowels, along with the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
s ''ie'' and ''uo'', with an acute intonation are shortened in the final
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
of a word. Leskien is also the author of , a guide to
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...
(3rd ed. 1898; 8th, revised and enlarged edition 1962). Although superseded in places by more recent studies, the book is still in print and remains in use by scholars to the present day. With Karl Brugmann, he edited ''Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen'' (“Lithuanian Folk Songs and Tales”; 1882). Other works include: *''Indogermanische Chrestomathie'', with Ebel, Schleicher, and Schmidt (1869) *''Die Deklination im Slawisch-Litauischen und Germanischen'' (1876) *''Untersuchungen über Quantität und Betonung in den slawischen Sprachen'' (1885–93) *''Die Bildung der Nomina im Litauischen'' (1891)


Notes


References

*
Walther Killy Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Göttinge ...
and Rudolf Vierhaus (eds.) (1997). '' Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie'' (DBE). Volume 6: Kogel – Maxsein. München (u. a.): K.G. Saur. . *
Wilhelm Streitberg Wilhelm August Streitberg (23 February 1864, in Rüdesheim am Rhein – 19 August 1925, in Leipzig) was a German Indo-Europeanist, specializing in Germanic languages. Together with Karl Brugmann he founded the ''Indogermanische Forschungen'' j ...
: "". In: I (1913). . * Wilhelm Streitberg: "". In: VII (1919). . * Harald Wiese: , Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007. *


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leskien, August Balticists 1840 births 1916 deaths Writers from Kiel People from the Duchy of Holstein Linguists from Germany Slavists Linguists of Indo-European languages Leipzig University alumni Leipzig University faculty University of Jena alumni University of Jena faculty University of Kiel alumni University of Göttingen faculty Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Great Officers of the Order of St. Sava Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala