Paleolinguistics
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Paleolinguistics
Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers". Background The controversial hypotheses in question fall into two categories. Some of them involve the application of standard historical linguistic methodology in ways that raise doubts as to the validity of the hypothesis. A good example of this sort is the Moscow school of Nostraticists, founded by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and including Aharon Dolgopolsky, Sergei Starostin, and Vitaly Shevoroshkin, who have argued for the existence of Nostratic, a language macrofamily including the Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Dravidian, and Kartvelian language families and sometimes other languages. They have established r ...
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Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical linguistics involves several key areas of study, including the reconstruction of ancestral languages, the classification of languages into families, ( comparative linguistics) and the analysis of the cultural and social influences on language development. This field is grounded in the uniformitarian principle, which posits that the processes of language change observed today were also at work in the past, unless there is clear evidence to suggest otherwise. Historical linguists aim to describe and explain changes in individual languages, explore the history of speech communities, and study the origins and meanings of words ( etymology). Development Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century, having originally grown o ...
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Linguistics
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 and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ...
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Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri "Frits" Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in other language families. He has also studied ways to associate language families into super-groups such as the controversial Indo-Uralic. Biography Kortlandt was born on 19 June 1946 in Utrecht. Kortlandt, along with George van Driem and a few other colleagues, is one of the proponents of the Leiden school of linguistics, which describes language in terms of a meme or benign parasite. Kortlandt holds five degrees from the University of Amsterdam: * B.A., 1967, Slavic Linguistics and Literature * B.A., 1967, mathematics and economics * M.A., 1969, Slavic linguistics * M.A., 1970, mathematical economics * Ph.D., 1972, mathematical linguistics He obtai ...
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Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen describes him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Early life Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland, to Jens Bloch Jespersen (1813–70) and Sophie Caroline Bentzien (1833–74). He was one of nine children. As a boy, he was inspired by works of the Danish philologist Rasmus Rask and the biography of Rask by ; and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish. Academic life and work Jespersen entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not abandoning his language studies. In his first year at university, he attended a lecture course by on the history of Evolutionism since the Greeks; th ...
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Eugene Helimski
Eugene Arnoldovich Helimski (sometimes also spelled Eugene Khelimski; ; 15 March 1950 – 25 December 2007) was a Soviet and Russian linguist (in the latter part of his life working in Germany). He was a Doctor of Philology (1988) and Professor. Helimski researched Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric languages, problems of Uralic and Nostratic linguistic affinity, language contact, the theory of genetic classification of languages, and the cultural history of Northern Eurasia and of shamanism. He became one of the world's leading specialists in Samoyedic languages. Biography Helimski graduated from the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics of Moscow State University (1972); completed a Dissertation on "Ancient Ugro-Samoyedic Linguistic Ties" (Tartu, 1979); completed the Doctoral Dissertation on "Historical and Descriptive Dialectology of the Samoyedic Languages" (Tartu, 1988); worked at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences T ...
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Harold C
Harold may refer to: People * Harold (given name) Harold is an English personal name. The modern name Harold ultimately derives from the Proto-Germanic *harja-waldaz, meaning 'military-power' or 'army-ruler'. The name entered Modern English via the Old English from Hereweald, which retained the sa ..., including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name * Harold (surname), surname in the English language * András Arató, known in meme culture as "Hide the Pain Harold" Arts and entertainment * ''Harold'' (film), a 2008 comedy film * ''Harold'', an 1876 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson * ''Harold, the Last of the Saxons'', an 1848 book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton * '' Harold or the Norman Conquest'', an opera by Frederic Cowen * ''Harold'', an 1885 opera by Eduard Nápravník * Harold, a character from the cartoon ''The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy'' * Harold & Kumar, a US movie; Harold/Harry is the main actor in the show. Places ;In t ...
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Vladimir Dybo
Vladimir Antonovich Dybo (; 30 April 1931 – 7 May 2023) was a Soviet and Russian linguist, Doctor Nauk in Philological Sciences (1979), Professor (1992), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011). A specialist in comparative historical linguistics and accentology, he was well-known as one of the founders of the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics. Biography Dybo graduated from the Department of Russian language and Literature of the Faculty of History and Philology of State University of Gorky (1954) and undertook postgraduate studies at the department of common and comparative linguistics of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. From 1958, he worked at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (RAS): senior scientific and technical research fellow, junior research fellow, senior research fellow, leading research fellow. In addition, he was the chief researcher at the Department of Slavic Linguistics. In 1962, h ...
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Igor Diakonov
Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, ; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East and its languages. His brothers were also distinguished historians. Life and career Diakonoff was brought up in Norway. He graduated from Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University) in 1938. In the same year he joined the staff of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). In 1949, he published a comprehensive study of Assyria, followed in 1956 by a monograph on Media. Later on, he teamed up with the linguist Sergei Starostin to produce authoritative studies of the Caucasian, Afroasiatic, and Hurro-Urartian languages. Diakonoff was honored in 2003 with a festschrift volume published in his memory, edited by Lionel Bender, Gábor Takács, and David Appleyard. In addition to articles on Afro-Asiatic languages, it contains a five-page list of his p ...
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Albert Cuny
__NOTOC__ Albert Cuny (16 May 1869 – 21 March 1947) was a French linguist known for his attempts to establish phonological correspondences between the Indo-European and Semitic languages and for his contributions to the laryngeal theory. He was a student of the French Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet ( Faral 1947:277). From 1910 until his formal retirement from teaching in 1937 he was a professor of Latin and comparative grammar at the University of Bordeaux (ib. 278). He continued teaching Sanskrit at the University however for the rest of his life (ib.). He was a correspondent of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (ib. 277). Cuny's place in the development of the laryngeal theory is described as follows by Émile Benveniste (1935:148): See also *Hermann Möller * Indo-Semitic languages *Laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in historical linguistics positing that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language included a number of laryngeal conson ...
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Björn Collinder
Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder (22 July 1894 – 20 May 1983) was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University. Biography Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden on 22 July 1894. After gaining a licentiate in Nordic philology at Uppsala University, Colinder developed a strong interest in Finno-Ugric languages. Since 1929, Collinder was a docent in Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University. He subsequently succeeded his mentor K.B. Wiklund as Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University. Collinder retired as Professor Emeritus in 1961, and was succeeded by his protégé Bo Wickman. Collinder specialized in the Germanic loanwords in Finnic and Sami. He was a highly productive author of scholarly literature, and also conducted fieldwork among the Sámi people. He is also noted as the translator of a number of works, including Beowulf, the Poetic Edda, the Kalevala, and many of the works of William Shakespeare. Un ...
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Matthias Castrén
Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castrén is known for his research in the linguistics and ethnography of the Northern Eurasian peoples. Early life Castrén was born at Tervola, in northern Finland. His father, Christian Castrén, the parish priest and vicar in Rovaniemi, died in 1825. Castrén passed under the protection of his uncle, Matthias Castrén. At the age of twelve, he was sent to school at Oulu. On entering the Alexander University in Helsinki (now the University of Helsinki) in 1828, he first devoted himself to Greek and Hebrew with the intention of entering the church, but his interest was soon excited by the Finnish language, and even before his course was completed, he began to lay the foundations of a work on Finnish mythology. He received his bachelor's degr ...
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Robert Caldwell
Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a British missionary and linguist. A missionary for the London Missionary Society, he arrived in Company Raj, British India at age 24, and studied the local language to spread the word of the Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a text on comparative grammar of the South Indian languages. In his book, Caldwell proposed that there are Dravidian languages, Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the archaic Greek language, and the places named by Ptolemy. Caldwell married Eliza Mault, the daughter of another missionary Rev. Charles Mault posted in India. He served as assistant bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. The Government of Tamil Nadu has created a memorial in his honor and a postage stamp has been issued in his name. A statue of Caldwell was erected in 1967 near to Marina Beach, Chennai, as a gift of the Church of South India. Early life Robert Caldwell was born at Clady, County Tyrone ...
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