Edgar Howard Sturtevant (March 7, 1875 – July 1, 1952) was an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Biography

Sturtevant was born in

Jacksonville, Illinois Jacksonville is a city and the county seat of Morgan County, Illinois, United States. The population was 17,616 at the 2020 census, down from 19,446 in 2010. It is home to Illinois College, Illinois School for the Deaf, and the Illinois Sc ...

, the older brother of

Alfred Sturtevant Alfred Henry Sturtevant (November 21, 1891 – April 5, 1970) was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1911. Throughout his career he worked on the organism ''Drosophila melanogaster'' with ...

and grandson of educator Julian Monson Sturtevant. He studied at

Illinois College Illinois College is a private liberal arts college in Jacksonville, Illinois. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA). It was the second college founded in Illinois but the first to grant a degree (in ...

, where his grandfather was president, and obtained an A.B. from

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

, then the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

receiving there in 1901 a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Latin

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

forms. He became an assistant professor of classical philology at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

before joining the linguistics faculty at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1923. In 1924, he was a member of the organizing committee for the founding, with

Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...

and George M. Bolling, of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

(LSA). Besides research on Native American languages and field work on the Modern American English dialects, he is the father of the

Indo-Hittite In Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite (also Indo-Anatolian) refers to Edgar Howard Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages split off a Pre-Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separation o ...

hypothesis, first formulated in 1926, based on his seminal work establishing the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

character of Hittite (and the related

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...

), with Hittite exhibiting more archaic traits than the normally reconstructed forms for

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

. He authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a

chrestomathy A chrestomathy ( ; from the Ancient Greek 'desire of learning', from 'useful' + 'learn') is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language assembled for stu ...

and a glossary, formulated the so-called Sturtevant's law (the doubling of consonants representing Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops) and laid the foundations to what later became the Goetze– Wittmann law (the spirantization of palatal stops before ''u'' as the focal origin of the

centum-satem isogloss Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

). The 1951 revised edition of his grammar (co-authored with E. Adelaide Hahn) is still useful today, although it was superseded in 2008 by Harry A. Hoffner and

Craig Melchert Harold Craig Melchert (born April 5, 1945) is an American linguist known particularly for his work on the Anatolian branch of Indo-European. Biography He received his B.A. in German from Michigan State University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Lingui ...

's ''Grammar of the Hittite Language'', for which a second edition was published in 2024. Sturtevant was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1939 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1940. Sturtevant died in

Branford, Connecticut Branford is a shoreline New England town, town located on Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, about east of downtown New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven. The town is part of the South Central Connecticut Planning Regi ...

. His son, Julian M. Sturtevant, was a chemist and molecular biophysicist at

Bibliography

* *Sturtevant, E. H. (1920, 1940). ''The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin: The Sounds and Accents''
First edition
Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, September 1920
Second edition
Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America, University of Pennsylvania, 1940. * * * *Sturtevant, Edgar H. A. (1933, 1951). ''A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language]''. New Haven: Yale University Press
First edition
1933
Revised edition
co-authored with E. Adelaide Hahn: 1951. * * * Digital object identifier, doibr>10.2307/j.ctt1x76d2x

References

"Sturtevant, Edgar Howard"
'' The Great Soviet Encyclopedia'', 3rd Edition (1970–1979). Published online by

The Free Dictionary ''The Free Dictionary'' is an American online dictionary and encyclopedia that aggregates information from various sources. It is accessible in fourteen languages. History The Free Dictionary was launched in 2005 by Farlex. In the same year, ...

. *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sturtevant, Edgar 1875 births 1952 deaths People from Jacksonville, Illinois Columbia University faculty Linguists from the United States Hittitologists Historical linguists Linguists of Anatolian languages Linguistic Society of America presidents Illinois College alumni Indiana University Bloomington alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society