Otto Dempwolff (25 May 1871 in

Pillau Baltiysk ( ); ; Old Prussian: ''Pillawa''; ; ; is a seaport town and the administrative center of Baltiysky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the northern part of the Vistula Spit, on the shore of the Strait of Baltiysk separ ...

Province of Prussia The Province of Prussia (; ; ; ) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1824 to 1878. The province was established in 1824 from the provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia, and was dissolved in 1878 when the merger was reversed. König ...

– 27 November 1938, in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

) was a German

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

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

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

who specialized in the study of the

Austronesian language family The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

. Initially trained as a

, Dempwolff began his linguistic research while serving as medical doctor in the German colonies

German New Guinea German New Guinea () consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups, and was part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called , became a German protectorate in 188 ...

and

German East Africa German East Africa (GEA; ) was a German colonial empire, German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, the Tanzania mainland, and the Kionga Triangle, a small region later incorporated into Portugu ...

. Under the mentorship of

Carl Meinhof Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages. Early years and career Meinhof was born in Barzwitz near Rügenwalde in the Province of Po ...

, he began his academic career at the

Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen''), the Hamburg Coloni ...

, which later became part of the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

. In 1931, he founded the "Seminar für indonesische und Südseesprachen", which he headed until his death in 1938. He was also appointed to the "Königlich Preußische Phonographische Kommission" (Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission) for his expertise in medicine, as well as African and Indonesian languages. The purpose of the commission was to record the approximately 250 languages spoken by the prisoners of German WWI PoW camps. His magnum opus ''Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes'' (Comparative phonology of Austronesian vocabularies) (1934–1937) was the first systematic and comprehensive reconstruction of the

Proto-Austronesian Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify in ...

sound system and vocabulary. P. 528–543.

Notes

Bibliography

*Dempwolff, Otto (1916). ''Die Sandawe, Linguistisches und ethnographisches Material aus Deutsch Ostafrika, Abhandlungen des Hamburger Kolonialinstituts.'' Band XXXIV/Heft 19, L. Friederichsen, Hamburg 1916, 180 Seiten. *Dempwolff, Otto (1920) ''Die Lautentsprechungen der indonesischen Lippenlaute in einigen anderen austronesischen Sprachen, Habilitationsschrift.'' ZfES 2.Beiheft, Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1920, 96 Seiten. *Dempwolff, Otto (1934). ''Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes, Band 1: Induktiver Aufbau einer indonesischen Ursprache.'' Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen 15. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. *Dempwolff, Otto (1937). ''Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes, Band 2: Deduktive Anwendung des Urindonesischen auf austronesische Einzelsprachen.'' Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen 17. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. *Dempwolff, Otto (1938). ''Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes, Band 3: Austronesisches Wörterverzeichnis.'' Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen 19. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. * Dempwolff, Otto (1939). ''Grammatik der Jabêm-Sprache auf Neuguinea.'' Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslandskunde, vol. 50. Hamburg: Friederichsen de Gruyter.

External links

Otto Dempwolff (1871-1938), Sprachwissenschaftler
(in German) 1871 births 1938 deaths People from Pillau People from the Province of Prussia Linguists from Germany Linguists of Austronesian languages University of Königsberg alumni University of Marburg alumni Leipzig University alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni University of Tübingen alumni Academic staff of the University of Hamburg German people in German East Africa German people in German New Guinea {{Germany-linguist-stub

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links