Andrew Littleton Sihler (born 25 February 1941 in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

) is an American

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 ...

and comparative Indo-Europeanist.

Biography

Sihler received his

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

'' in 1962 from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, where he studied

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

, and linguistics. He earned his

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

in 1965. Taking his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in 1967, Sihler trained in general linguistics but with a concentration in historical-comparative linguistics — Indo-European in particular — studying under

Warren Cowgill Warren Crawford Cowgill ( ; December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics. Two separate Indo-Europea ...

and Stanley Insler, among others. Upon graduation, he joined the faculty of the Department of Linguistics at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

, from which he retired in the spring of 1999. Sihler has contributed to Indo-European linguistics by showing that Edgerton's Law (an extension of

Sievers' Law Sievers's law in Indo-European linguistics accounts for the pronunciation of a consonant cluster with a glide ( or ) before a vowel as it was affected by the phonetics of the preceding syllable. Specifically, it refers to the alternation be ...

) is untenable when all the evidence is taken into account. In addition, he has written a comparative grammar of

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

intended to replace the one written by Carl Darling Buck some sixty years previously. Andrew's brother William W. Sihler is a professor of finance in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The Sihler brothers are the grandnephews of

Ernest Gottlieb Sihler Ernest Gottlieb Sihler (1853–1942) was a professor of classics at New York University. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he was the son of Lutheran missionary Wilhelm Sihler and great-uncle to Andrew Sihler. Sihler's professional name was Ernest ...

and great-grandsons of Wilhelm Sihler. Gottlieb was a classics scholar whose works show little interest in historical linguistics. Wilhelm's university training was in philosophy, though he early was drawn to theology instead. He published short works on a variety of subjects.Bente, F
American Lutheranism, Volume I
St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 1919, 116, ''Retrieved 2022-01-30''.

Major works

*''New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin'' (Oxford University Press, 1995; ) *''Language History: An Introduction'' (John Benjamins, 2000; ) *''Edgerton's Law: The Phantom Evidence'' (Carl Winter, 2006; )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sihler, Andrew Linguists from the United States Linguists of Indo-European languages American people of German descent Harvard College alumni Yale University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty 1941 births Living people