Paul Kretschmer (2 May 1866 – 9 March 1956) 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. Lingu ...
who studied the earliest history and interrelations of the
Indo-European languages
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, D ...
and showed how they were influenced by non-Indo-European languages, such as
Etruscan.
Biography
Kretschmer was born in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
, where he studied classic and Indo-European philology under
Hermann Diels.
His epochal study of pre-Greek elements in
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
was his 1896 ''Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache'' (''Introduction to the History of the Greek Language''). Comparing Greek place names with their foreign counterparts in ancient Anatolia, he concluded that a non-Greek, Mediterranean culture had preceded the Greeks there, leaving extensive linguistic traces. The discoveries of the archaeologist Sir
Arthur Evans
Sir Arthur John Evans (8 July 1851 – 11 July 1941) was a British archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age. He is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete. Based on ...
at
Knossos
Knossos (also Cnossos, both pronounced ; grc, Κνωσός, Knōsós, ; Linear B: ''Ko-no-so'') is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city.
Settled as early as the Neolithic period, the na ...
, Crete, around 1900 tended to confirm Kretschmer's views.
Following a professorship at the
University of Marburg
The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...
in Germany (1897–99), Kretschmer occupied the chair in
comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Genetic relatedness ...
at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hi ...
, where he remained until 1936. An adherent of the
Neogrammarian
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 chang ...
school of linguistics, which stressed rigorous comparative methodology, he also contributed to
Modern Greek dialectology and furthered the study of
German linguistic geography.
He died in
Vienna
en, Viennese
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, registration_plate = W
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, timezone_DST ...
in 1956.
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kretschmer, Paul
1866 births
1956 deaths
People from Berlin
Linguists from Germany
Historical linguists
Linguists of Germanic languages
Linguists of Indo-European languages
Scholars of Ancient Greek
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
University of Marburg faculty
Academics of the University of Vienna