Adolphe Pictet (11 September 1799 – 20 December 1875) was a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

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 ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

and

ethnologist Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

. Pictet, the cousin of the biologist Francois Jules Pictet, is well known for his research in the field of

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aim ...

. He played a crucial formative role in the development of

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...

; "it was Pictet who introduced the thirteen-year-old Saussure to the theoretical foundations of Indo-European linguistics." But he was also "a dedicated champion of

German Romanticism German Romanticism () was the dominant intellectual movement of German-speaking countries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, influencing philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and criticism. Compared to English Romanticism, the German vari ...

and idealist philosophy":

Like French, English, and Russian Romantics since the beginning of the century, he made a journey to Germany, where he became acquainted with A. W. Schlegel (with whom he maintained an important correspondence over the course of many years),
Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
,
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
,
Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; ; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional ...
, and Schelling. ... In the spirit of earlier wars between “romantics” and “classics” (a little outmoded by the 1850s), Pictet envisioned Romanticism, with its embrace of pluralism and freedom of invention, as standing in sharp opposition to Classicism, the embodiment of systemic compactness and uniformity.

Pictet "represented the first, Romantic generation of historical linguists, for whom the history of language went hand in hand with the history of the material and spiritual being of the people who spoke it"; his magnum opus was ''Origines indo-européennes: Essaie de paléontologie linguistique'' (1859–63), a "monumental attempt, in the tradition of

Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( ; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Roma ...

and Jakob Grimm, to reconstruct the whole world of the proto-Indo-Europeans."

Life

He was born in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

on 11 September 1799 the son of Charles Pictet de Rochemont.

Notes

Works

* ''De l'affinité des langues celtiques avec le Sanscrit'' (1837) * ''Du beau dans la nature'' (2nd ed. 1875) * ''Les origines indo-européennes ou les Aryas primitifs : essai de paléontologie linguistique''. 3 vols. Paris: Joël Cherbuliez, 1859–1863 (republished 1878).

External links

*
Biography in the Pictet Family Archives
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pictet, Adolphe 1799 births Linguists from Switzerland 1875 deaths Scientists from Geneva 19th-century Swiss philosophers Writers from Geneva

Adolphe ''Adolphe'' is a classic French novel by Benjamin Constant, first published in 1816. It tells the story of an alienated young man, Adolphe, who falls in love with an older woman, Ellénore, the Polish mistress of the Comte de P***. Their illici ...