Renward Brandstetter (29 June 1860 – 17 April 1942) was a
Swiss 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 th ...
and
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 ...
who published about medieval and modern
Swiss dialects language and the older Swiss theatre history and studied the insular
Malayo-Polynesian languages
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeas ...
(now considered a subgroup of
Austronesian languages).
Work
Brandstetter reconstructed the sound system and a preliminary dictionary of what he called "Original Indonesian". In his observations he was the first to develop a theory of Austronesian
root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
s.
He observed that the predominantly disyllabic
lexemes of the languages under consideration contain a recurrent -CVC element (or, less often, -CV) which carries a somewhat consistent meaning. He indexed his manuscript lexicons of the principal languages of the region by their root, and then produced a list of hypothetical shared roots by comparing these lists across languages. His conclusions were considered problematic, and little attention was paid by later scholars of the language group,
Otto Dempwolff
Otto Dempwolff (25 May 1871 in Pillau, Province of Prussia – 27 November 1938, in Hamburg) was a German physician, linguist and anthropologist who specialized in the study of the Austronesian language family.
Initially trained as a physician, ...
and
Otto Dahl, in their reconstructions of the protolanguage.
His papers are collected at the
Haus zum Dolder, his library at the
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern (English: ''Lucerne Central and University Library''), the largest library of Central Switzerland
Central Switzerland is the region of the Alpine Foothills geographically the heart and historically the origi ...
.
Selected writings
* ''Ein Prodromus zu einem vergleichenden Wörterbuch der malaio-polinesischen Sprachen für Sprachforscher und Ethnographen''. Lucerne, 1906.
* ''
An Introduction to Indonesian linguistics'', trans. by C. O. Blagden, 1–65. London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1916. (collection of four essays)
* ''Wie Menschen der indonesischen Erde'', 11 volumes, Luzerne, 1921-1937
Literature and bibliography
''Renward Brandstetter (1860–1942). Beiträge zum 150. Geburtstag des Schweizer Dialektologen und Erforschers der austronesischen Sprachen und Literaturen. Mit seiner Autobiographie.''Ed. by Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Berne, 2012 (Sprache und Kulturen).
lso containing a complete bibliography of Brandstetter's publications.* Blust, Robert & Schneider, Jürg (edd.): ''A World of Words. Revisiting the Work of Renward Brandstetter (1860–1942) on Lucerne and Austronesia.'' Wiesbaden 2012 (Frankfurter Forschungen zu Südostasien 8).
References
* ''Austronesian languages.'' (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 30, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9109806
*
Blust, Robert. (1988). ''Austronesian Root Theory''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brandstetter, Renward
Linguists from Switzerland
1860 births
1942 deaths
Linguists of Austronesian languages