Erich Berneker (3 February 1874 – 15 March 1937) was a German linguist,

Slavicist Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was prim ...

and Balticist, follower of the Neogrammarian school. He was born in

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was name ...

. He studied in Leipzig under

August Leskien August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German linguist active in the field of comparative linguistics, particularly relating to the Baltic and Slavic languages. Biography Leskien was born in Kiel. He studied philology at the ...

, receiving a doctorate in 1895 with a thesis on

Old Prussian language Old Prussian was a Western Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages, which was once spoken by the Old Prussians, the Baltic peoples of the Prussian region. The language is called Old Prussian to avoid con ...

, covering its texts, grammar and an

etymological dictionary An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and ''Webster's'', will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology. E ...

. Afterwards he went to Russia for a one-year study period. He habilitated in 1899 with a paper on

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

(Berlin, 1900). He worked as a private assistant professor in Berlin from 1902, as an associate professor in Prague, as a full professor since 1908 in

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

(German Breslau), and since 1911 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. He is best known as the author of a Slavic etymological dictionary (letters ''A''-''Mor'', 1908-1913). In it he collected the inherited Slavic vocabulary, put it into the context of the Indo-European language family, and discussed the most important

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s in Slavic languages. Although incomplete, this dictionary was of essential influence on the future work in the Slavic etymological studies. He died in

References

Balticists Linguists from Germany 1874 births 1937 deaths Writers from Königsberg Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities {{Germany-linguist-stub