Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Schmidt (July 29, 1843 – July 4, 1901) 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. Lingui ...

. He developed the ''Wellentheorie'' (' wave theory') of language development.

Biography

Schmidt was born in

Prenzlau Prenzlau (, formerly also Prenzlow) is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, the administrative seat of Uckermark District. It is also the centre of the historic Uckermark region. Geography The town is located on the Ucker river, about north of B ...

Province of Brandenburg The Province of Brandenburg (german: Provinz Brandenburg) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Brandenburg was established in 1815 from the Kingdom of Prussia's core territory, comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg ...

. He was educated at

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr ...

and at

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...

where 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 ...

( historical linguistics) with

August Schleicher August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...

and specialized in

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, Dutc ...

, especially Slavic, languages. He earned a doctorate in 1865 and worked from 1866 as a teacher at a '' gymnasium'' in Berlin. In 1868 Schmidt was invited by the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

to take a position as professor of German and Slavic languages. In

he published the work ''Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen'' ('The Relationships of the Indo-Germanic Languages', 1872), which presented his ''Wellentheorie'' ('wave theory'). According to this theory, new features of a language spread from a central point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. This should lead to convergence among dissimilar languages. The theory was directed against the doctrine of

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 chang ...

s introduced by 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 change. ...

in 1870. From 1873 to 1876 Schmidt was a professor of philology at the

University of Graz The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria. History The univers ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populou ...

. In 1876 he returned to Berlin, where he worked as a professor at

Humboldt University Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

. He died in Berlin at the age of fifty-seven.

Bibliography

* ''Zur Geschichte des indogermanischen Vocalismus (Part I).'' Weimar, H. Böhlau (1871) * ''Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen.'' Weimar, H. Böhlau (1872) * ''Zur Geschichte des indogermanischen Vocalismus (Part II).'' Weimar, H. Böhlau (1875) * ''Die Pluralbildungen der indogermanischen Neutra.'' Weimar, H. Böhlau (1889) * ''Die Urheimat der Indogermanen und das europäische Zahlsystem'', (1890) * ''Kritik der Sonantentheorie. Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchung.'' Weimar, H. Böhlau (1895) He was joint editor with

Ernst Kuhn Ernst Wilhelm Adalbert Kuhn (7 February 1846, in Berlin – 21 August 1920, in Munich) was a German Indologist and Indo-Europeanist. He was the son of philologist Adalbert Kuhn. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Tübingen, receiv ...

of the '' Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung'' (Journal for Comparative Language Research) from 1875 until 1901.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Johannes 1843 births 1901 deaths People from Prenzlau Linguists from Germany Historical linguists Indo-Europeanists Linguists of Germanic languages Linguists of Indo-European languages Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences People from the Province of Brandenburg University of Bonn alumni University of Jena alumni University of Bonn faculty Academics of the University of Graz Humboldt University of Berlin faculty