Johannes Schmidt (linguist)
Johannes Schmidt (July 29, 1843 – July 4, 1901) was a German linguist. He developed the Wellentheorie (wave theory) of language development.
Johannes Schmidt was born in Prenzlau (Kingdom of Prussia). He was a pupil of August Schleicher and studied philology (historical linguistics), specializing in Indo-European, especially Slavic, languages. He earned a doctorate in 1865 and worked from 1866 as a teacher at a gymnasium in Berlin.
In 1868 Schmidt received a call from the University of Bonn to the position of professor of German and Slavic languages. In Bonn he published the work Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen (The relationships of the Indo-European languages), which contained his Wellentheorie (wave theory). According to this theory, new features of a language spread from a certain point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. This should lead to convergence amongst dissimilar languages. The theory was directed against the doctrine of sound laws introduced by the Neogrammarians in 1870.
From 1873 to 1876 Schmidt was a professor of philology at the University of Graz, Austria. In 1876 he returned to Berlin, where he would work as a professor at the Humboldt University. He died at the age of 57 in Berlin.
Bibliography
- Zur Geschichte des indogermanischen Vocalismus (Part I). Weimar, H. Böhlau (1871)
- Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1872)
- Zur Geschichte des indogermanischen Vocalismus (Part II). Weimar, H. Böhlau (1875)
- Die Pluralbildungen der indogermanischen Neutra. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1889)
- Kritik der Sonantentheorie. Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Weimar, H. Böhlau (1895)
Categories
1843 births | 1901 deaths | German linguists | Indo-Europeanists