Witold Mańczak (12 August 1924 – 12 January 2016) was a Polish

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 ...

. He was a member of

Polish Academy of Learning The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences or Polish Academy of Learning ( pl, Polska Akademia Umiejętności), headquartered in Kraków and founded in 1872, is one of two institutions in contemporary Poland having the nature of an academy of scien ...

and the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of ...

. He is best known for his

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

work on identifying, via statistical methods focusing especially on well-studied European languages, overarching tendencies in analogical change.Hock, Hans Henrich (1988). ''Principles of Historical Linguistics''. Page 210: "the question whether there are any natural tendencies or directionalities in analogical change... Two Polish scholars, Jerzy Kuryłowicz and Witold Mańczak, have dealt most comprehensively with this change. . Mańczak... based his obeservations on a statistical investigation of the analogical changes postulated in standard handbooks on... various European languages" He has also argued that

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

is closer to German than to Scandinavian, and suggests

Goths The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe ...

originally hailed from somewhere around present day Austria, rather than from Scandinavia."Kortlandt, "The origin of the Goths"
/ref>

Publications

* Witold Manczak, ''The Method of Comparing the Vocabulary in Parallel Texts''. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 10(2): 93–103 (2003

* Witold Mańczak (1999). Wieża Babel. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. . *Witold Manczak: "Lingwistyka a Prehistoria". BULLETIN DE LA SOCIÉTÉ POLONAISE DE LINGUISTIQUE, fasc. LV, 1999
pdf
*Folia Linguistica Historica, Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae . Vol. XXI / 1–2 (200

*WM: Criticism of naturalness: Naturalness or frequency of occurrence? *WM: Damaris Nübling, Prinzipien der Irregularisierung. Ein kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen *WM: O Odcyfrowaniach pism. BULLETIN DE LA SOCIÉTÉ POLONAISE DE LINGUISTIQUE, fasc. LX, 2004, *PRAOJCZYZNA SŁOWIA

References

External links

*http://bazy.opi.org.pl/raporty/opisy/osoby/59000/o59610.htm Linguists from Poland 2016 deaths Place of birth missing 1924 births 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Polish Academy of Sciences faculty Members of the Polish Academy of Learning {{Poland-linguist-stub

Publications

See also

References

External links