Carl-Georg Christoph Freiherr von Brandenstein (10 October 1909 – 8 January 2005) was a German linguist who took up the study of
Australian Aboriginal languages
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
.
Life
Born in 1909 in
Hannover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...
to ,
Carl-Georg finished high school in Weimar,
and studied oriental languages and the history of religion at Berlin University (1928–1934), and Leipzig (1938–1939).
His doctoral thesis was a dissertation on the iconography of Hittite gods. He did war service in France and Russia. In 1941
the Canaris spy network dispatched him on an intelligence mission to Persia, where he was picked up by the British. He spent the last 4 years of the war as a
prisoner of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...
in Australia, in
Loveday camp in South Australia and 1945, at
Tatura camp in
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
.
Australian work on Aboriginal languages
Brandenstein's field work lasted some three decades, beginning in the 1960s. He initially concentrated on the languages of Aboriginal groups in the
Pilbara
The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...
area of
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
, and then gathered recordings and made analyses of southern tribal languages such as
Ngadjumaya and
Noongar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
.
His major contribution consisted in challenging the use of the term and concept of
totem
A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
While ''the wo ...
adopted throughout anthropology from an original
Ojibwa
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
word, and widely used in kinship analysis. For Brandenstein, an etymological approach indicated that the majority of 'totemic' terms could be traced back to the vocabulary for human and animal bodies, and temperamental qualities. In short, identity was not reducible to belonging to one or another segmentary division of a tribe, but involved far more concrete traits. Throughout the Australian totemic system he believed he could isolate a logic, which in its fullest form, evinced 8 combinations of three paired terms of primary properties. Two totems in a binary tribal
moiety
Moiety may refer to:
Chemistry
* Moiety (chemistry), a part or functional group of a molecule
** Moiety conservation, conservation of a subgroup in a chemical species
Anthropology
* Moiety (kinship), either of two groups into which a society is ...
could be shown to each involve a set of up to 20 features that could be distributed as traits over all human and non-human members of each of the two groups.
Criticism
One of his most startling ideas was his claim that he had isolated and identified some sixty
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...
loanwords in several indigenous languages of Australia's far north. Australian linguists have generally dismissed these conclusions, except perhaps for the word ''tartaruga''.
Nick Thieberger
Nick may refer to:
* Nick (given name)
Nick is a masculine given name. It is also often encountered as a short form (hypocorism) of the given names Nicholas, Nicola, Nicolas, Nikola, Nicolai or Nicodemus. It may refer to:
Given name
...
, a
Melbourne University
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
linguist, argues that Brandenstein's approach was still strongly influenced by an outdated nineteenth-century linguistic thinking.
See also
*
Theory of the Portuguese discovery of Australia
The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board the who is ...
Works
* (with A. F. Thomas) ''Taruru: Aboriginal song poetry from the Pilbara.'' 1969
* (editor) ''Narratives from the north-west of Western Australia in the Ngarluma and Jindjiparndi languages'' / narrated by R. Churnside.
* ''The Phoenix Totemism'' 1972
''Names and substance of the Australian subsection system.''University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
.
* ''Nyungar Anew: phonology, text samples and etymological and historical 1500-word vocabulary of an artificially recreated Aboriginal language in the south-west of Australia.'' 1988
* (with
Arthur Capell
Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages.
Early life
Capell was born in Newtown, New South Wales ...
,
Kenneth L. Hale) ''Papers in Australian linguistics.''
* ''Early history of Australia:the Portuguese colony in the Kimberley.'' 1994
* ''A partial vocabulary of the Ngalooma Aboriginal tribe by H.A. Hall, with concordance and commentary by C.G. von Brandenstein.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brandenstein, Carl Georg von
1909 births
2005 deaths
German emigrants to Australia
Linguists of Australian Aboriginal languages
People from Hanover
People from Albany, Western Australia