August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German
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 ...
who studied
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 ...
, particularly relating to the
Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
*Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...
and
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
.
Biography
Leskien was born in
Kiel
Kiel ( ; ) is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. With a population of around 250,000, it is Germany's largest city on the Baltic Sea. It is located on the Kieler Förde inlet of the Ba ...
. He studied
philology
Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...
at the universities of
Kiel
Kiel ( ; ) is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. With a population of around 250,000, it is Germany's largest city on the Baltic Sea. It is located on the Kieler Förde inlet of the Ba ...
and
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
, receiving 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 ...
from the latter in 1864. He taught
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 ...
and
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
at the from 1864 to 1866. In 1866, he began studying comparative linguistics under
August Schleicher
August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. Schleicher studied the Proto-Indo-European language and devised theories concerning historical linguistics. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Gr ...
at the
University of Jena
The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany.
The university was established in 1558 and is cou ...
. He completed his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...
in 1867 and then lectured at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
.
He was appointed as extraordinary professor (
außerordentlicher Professor) of comparative linguistics and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
at Jena in 1868. Two years later, he was named as the extraordinary professor of Slavic philology at the University of Leipzig, where he delivered the first course there in Slavic languages. He was promoted to full professorship (
ordentlicher Professor
Academic ranks in Germany are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Overview
Appointment grades
* (Pay grade: ''W3'' or ''W2'')
* (''W3'')
* (''W2'')
* (''W2'', ...
) in 1876 and retained the job until 1915.
In 1884 he became an editor of Ersch and Gruber's
''Realencyklopädie''. Leskien was a founding member of the journal . He died in Leipzig.
Research, writings and thought
Leskien was one of the most important of the group of linguists at Leipzig who became known later as the
Neogrammarians
The Neogrammarians (, , ) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change.
Overview
According to the Neogrammarian hy ...
. The group strove to develop linguistics in a scientific manner; Leskien formulated their main doctrine, namely that phonetic laws do not have exceptions (''Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze''). Leskien's hypothesis was that phonetic shifts do not occur randomly or haphazardly, but instead are the product of directly observable conditions. Among the students that Leskien taught were:
Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay
Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay, also Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay (; 13 March 1845 – 3 November 1929), was a Polish linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations.
For most ...
,
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 ...
,
Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...
,
Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy ( ; 16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morpho ...
,
Karl Verner and
Adolf Noreen
Adolf Gotthard Noreen (13 March 1854 in Östra Ämtervik, Sunne Municipality – 13 June 1925 in Uppsala) was a Sweden, Swedish Linguistics, linguist who served as a member of the Swedish Academy from 1919 until his death.
Noreen studied at Upps ...
. Thus Leskien can be seen as a major developer of modern comparative linguistics, particularly with respect to the Baltic and Slavic languages.
In his 1881 essay '', Leskien formulated
Leskien's law, a
sound law
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic cha ...
devised to describe a particular aspect of sound change in
Lithuanian. According to this principle
long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels.
On one hand, many languages do not d ...
, along with the
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s ''ie'' and ''uo'', with an
acute intonation are shortened in the final
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
of a word. Leskien is also the author of , a guide to the language
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
(3rd ed. 1898; 8th, revised and enlarged edition 1962). Although superseded partly by more recent studies, the book is still in print and remains in use by scholars presently. With
Karl Brugmann
Friedrich Karl Brugmann (; 16 March 1849 – 29 June 1919) was a German linguist. He is noted for his work in Indo-European linguistics.
Biography
Friedrich Karl Brugman was born in Wiesbaden to a middle-class family in 1849.
He was educated a ...
, he edited ''Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen'' (“Lithuanian Folk Songs and Tales”; 1882).
Other works include:
*''Indogermanische Chrestomathie'', with Ebel, Schleicher, and Schmidt (1869)
*''Die Deklination im Slawisch-Litauischen und Germanischen'' (1876)
*''Untersuchungen über Quantität und Betonung in den slawischen Sprachen'' (1885–93)
*''Die Bildung der Nomina im Litauischen'' (1891)
References
*
Walther Killy
Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Götting ...
and Rudolf Vierhaus (eds.) (1997). ''
Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie
The ''Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie'' (''DBE'') is a biographical dictionary published by Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus (from the third to fourth volume), the first edition of which was published from 1995 to 2003 in 13 volumes by K. ...
'' (DBE). Volume 6: Kogel – Maxsein. München (u. a.): K.G. Saur. .
*
Wilhelm Streitberg: "". In: I (1913). .
* Wilhelm Streitberg: "". In: VII (1919). .
* Harald Wiese: , Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007.
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leskien, August
Balticists
1840 births
1916 deaths
Writers from Kiel
People from the Duchy of Holstein
19th-century German linguists
Linguists of Indo-European languages
Linguists of Slavic languages
Leipzig University alumni
Academic staff of Leipzig University
University of Jena alumni
Academic staff of the University of Jena
University of Kiel alumni
Academic staff of the University of Göttingen
Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Great Officers of the Order of St. Sava
Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala
Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts