Franz Nikolaus Finck (26 June 1867 – 4 May 1910) was a German

philologist 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 ...

, born in

Krefeld Krefeld ( , ; li, Krieëvel ), also spelled Crefeld until 1925 (though the spelling was still being used in British papers throughout the Second World War), is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, i ...

. He was a professor of General Linguistics at the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (german: link=no, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick Will ...

. Finck visited the

Aran Islands The Aran Islands ( ; gle, Oileáin Árann, ) or The Arans (''na hÁrainneacha'' ) are a group of three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the west coast of Ireland, with a total area around . They constitute the historic barony of Aran ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, where he lived with speakers of Irish Gaelic. His research on the phonology of Irish resulted in the book '' Die araner mundart: ein beitrag zur erforschung des westirischen'' (The Aran Dialect: A Contribution to the Exploration of Western Irish). This work was characteristic of Finck's emphasis on the study of remote dialects of languages. He went on to work on a broad variety of languages, but was best known to his colleagues for his work on

languages of the Caucasus The Caucasus, Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Comparative method, Li ...

. He also worked extensively on the

Armenian language Armenian ( classical: , reformed: , , ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian Highlands, today Armenian is widely spoken th ...

, compiling a grammar of that language. Die araner mundart

Finck held the belief (now known to be mistaken) that all of the languages of the Caucasus were related. Among his students was John Peabody Harrington.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finck, Franz Nikolaus 19th-century German people German philologists Linguists from Germany 1867 births 1910 deaths