Edgar Howard Sturtevant (March 7, 1875 – July 1, 1952) was an American

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. Linguis ...

Biography

Sturtevant was born in

Jacksonville, Illinois Jacksonville is a city in Morgan County, Illinois, Morgan County, Illinois, United States. The population was 19,446 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Morgan County. It is home to Illinois College, Illinois School for the Deaf, and the ...

, the older brother of

Alfred Sturtevant Alfred Henry Sturtevant (November 21, 1891 – April 5, 1970) was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1911. Throughout his career he worked on the organism ''Drosophila melanogaster'' with ...

and grandson of educator Julian Monson Sturtevant. He studied at

Illinois College Illinois College is a private liberal arts college in Jacksonville, Illinois. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA). It was the second college founded in Illinois, but the first to grant a degree ( ...

, where his grandfather was president, and obtained an A.B. from

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

, then the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

receiving there in 1901 a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

with a dissertation on

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the 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 the power of the ...

case forms. He became an assistant professor of classical philology at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

before joining the linguistics faculty at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1923. In 1924, he was a member of the organizing committee for the founding, with

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 distributionalism ...

and George M. Bolling, of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

(LSA). Besides research on Native American languages and field work on the Modern American English dialects, he is the father of the

Indo-Hittite In Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite (also Indo-Anatolian) refers to Edgar Howard Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages may have split off a Pre-Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separat ...

hypothesis, first formulated in 1926, based on his seminal work establishing the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

character of Hittite (and the related

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. ...

), with Hittite exhibiting more archaic traits than the normally reconstructed forms for

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

. He authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a

chrestomathy A chrestomathy ( ; from the Ancient Greek (, “desire of learning”) = (, “useful”) + (, “learn”)) is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language ...

and a glossary, formulated the so-called Sturtevant's law (the doubling of consonants representing Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops) and laid the foundations to what later became the Goetze- Wittmann law (the spirantization of palatal stops before ''u'' as the focal origin of the

centum-satem isogloss Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

). The 1951 revised edition of his grammar (co-authored with E. Adelaide Hahn) is still useful today, although it was superseded in 2008 by Hoffner and Melchert's ''Grammar of the Hittite Language''. Sturtevant died in

Branford, Connecticut Branford is a shoreline New England town, town located on Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, New Haven County, Connecticut, about east of downtown New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven. The population was 28,273 at the 2020 United Sta ...

. His son, Julian M. Sturtevant, was a chemist and molecular biophysicist at

Bibliography

*Sturtevant, Edgar H. (1931). ''Hittite glossary: words of known or conjectured meaning, with Sumerian ideograms and Accadian words common in Hittite texts''. ''Language'', Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 3–82., ''Language Monograph'' No. 9. * *Sturtevant, Edgar H. A. (1933, 1951). ''Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language''. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951 (with E. Adelaide Hahn). First edition: 1933. *Sturtevant, Edgar H. A., & George Bechtel (1935). ''A Hittite Chrestomathy''. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America. *Sturtevant, Edgar H. (1940)
''The pronunciation of Greek and Latin''
2d. ed. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America, 1940. Review at Whatmough, J.
"The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin by Edgar H. Sturtevant"
''Classical Philology'', Vol. 36, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), pp. 409–411.

*Sturtevant, Edgar H. (1942). ''Linguistic Change: An Introduction to the Historical Study of Language''. New York: Stechert. *Sturtevant, Edgar H. A. (1942). ''The Indo-Hittite laryngeals''. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America.

References

"Sturtevant, Edgar Howard"
''

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya en ...

'', 3rd Edition (1970–1979). * Hoffner, Harry and Melchert, H. Craig, 2008. ''A Grammar of the Hittite Language'', Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sturtevant, Edgar 1875 births 1952 deaths People from Jacksonville, Illinois Columbia University faculty Linguists from the United States Hittitologists Paleolinguists Linguists of Anatolian languages Linguistic Society of America presidents Illinois College alumni Indiana University alumni