Lambert ten Kate (23 January 1674 – 14 December 1731) was a
Dutch
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* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
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People E ...
linguist. Specialised in comparative historical linguistics, he was also a well-known art collector.
Early life
Ten Kate was born in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
to
Mennonite
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...
parents.
He studied at the Haarlem Collegium Physicum and was a pupil of
Adriaan Verwer.
Career
Early in his career, ten Kate was a merchant, as a partner with his father, Herman ten Kate (1644–1706). The ten Kates engaged in the business of trading in corns, but it was not a preference for the younger man. He eventually left the family business, giving his attention to linguistics, especially, historical-comparative work, etymology, methodology and the standard language. An early
phonetician
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
,
he wrote linguistic and theological treatises on Dutch and other Germanic languages. His first published work on linguistics was at the instigation of Verwer. In his ''Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het verhevene deel der Nederduitsche sprake'' (1723), he made scientific comparisons of older language stages. By observation of the written and spoken language of his own time, he developed linguistic rules to detect and capture language changes. As his publications were all in his native Dutch and not in Latin, he was not known internationally.
His notable work, ''Geméénschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche'' ('Affinities and Similarities between the Dutch and Gothic Languages) was published anonymously in 1710. Thirteen years later, his magnum opus was a two-volume ''Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het verhevene deel der Nederduitsche sprake'' ('Introduction to the Knowledge of the Most Important Part of the Dutch Language').
Death
He died of a lingering illness in Amsterdam in 1731,
and was buried in the
Noorderkerk
The Noorderkerk ("northern church") is a 17th-century Protestant church in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A number of other towns in the Netherlands also have a Noorderkerk church, including The Hague, Hoorn and Kampen. History
The church was built i ...
.
See also
*
Canon of Dutch Literature
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western can ...
References
External links
Lambert ten Kate at The Digital Library of Dutch Literature(in Dutch)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kate, Lambert ten
1674 births
1731 deaths
17th-century linguists
18th-century linguists
Linguists from the Netherlands
Writers from Amsterdam
Phoneticians
Art collectors from Amsterdam