Eduard Sievers (; 25 November 1850 – 30 March 1932) was a German

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 ...

of the classical and

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 ...

. Sievers was one of the '' Junggrammatiker'' of the so-called "Leipzig School". He was one of the most influential

historical linguists Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how language change, languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of language ...

of the late nineteenth century. He is known for his recovery of the poetic traditions of Germanic languages such as

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

and

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

, as well as for his discovery 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 ...

Biography

He was educated at

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 ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, and became professor extraordinarius of Germanic and Romance philology at

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

in 1871, receiving a full professorship there five years later. In 1883 he went to

Tübingen Tübingen (; ) is a traditional college town, university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer (Neckar), Ammer rivers. about one in ...

, and in 1887 to Halle, whence he was called in 1892 to

Sievers's analysis

Sievers' analysis was a system of five patterns which indicated how the poetic line (or, more specifically, the poetic half-line) was to be emphasized or not, e.g. stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed, unstressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed, etc. This seemingly elementary analysis was significant because of the difficulty experienced by previous scholars in identifying where the poetic line began and ended. Germanic poetry, in its written form, rarely indicated the line division. Moreover, even though it was clear that some words were of greater importance than others and were thus supposed to be stressed, there were few limitations on the length of the unstressed sequences, which made the identification of the poetic line even more difficult. In Shakespearean verse, for example, a typical poetic line is: ::''it IS the EAST and JUliET’s the SUN'' Here stressed and unstressed syllables follow one after the other. In Old Saxon, however, a line might read: ::''LIthi an thesaru LOGnu'' In this example, five syllables occur between the stressed syllables ''LI-'' and ''LOG''. Sievers examined these issues in great detail, as well as the questions of relative stress and clashing stresses in poetry. Sievers himself later abandoned this type of analysis in favor of '' Schallanalyse'', or 'sound analysis,' a system which was understood by very few apart from Sievers and those close to him.

Reception

His analysis was widely, though not universally, accepted among philologists. Sievers's work on the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon poetry influenced the poetry of

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

, in particular in poems such as his version of ''The Seafarer'', an

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

poem Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

giving a first-person account of a man alone on the sea.

Works

Original

* ''An Old English Grammar'', translated and edited by Albert S. Cook (1885) * ''Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis'' (" Heliand and the Anglo-Saxon version of Genesis, "1875) * ''Angelsächsische Grammatik'' ("Anglo-Saxon grammar," 3d ed. 1898) * ''Zum angelsächsischen Vokalismus'' ("Anglo-Saxon vowels," 1900) * ''Altgermanische Metrik'', Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte. Ergänzungsreihe. 2 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1893) * ''Metrische Studien'', dealing with

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

metres ("Metrical studies," 1901–02) * ''Grundzüge der Phonetik'', once a standard work on

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

("Foundations of phonetics," 5th ed. 1901)

Editor

Tatian Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, (; ; ; ; – ) was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century. Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the ...

(2d ed. 1892) *'' Heliand'' (1878) *''Die althochdeutschen Glossen'', with Elias von Steinmeyer ("Old high-German glosses," 4 vols., 1879–98) *''Oxforder Benediktinerregel'' ("Oxford

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

regulations," 1887) In 1891 he became an editor of

Paul Paul may refer to: People * Paul (given name), a given name, including a list of people * Paul (surname), a list of people * Paul the Apostle, an apostle who wrote many of the books of the New Testament * Ray Hildebrand, half of the singing duo ...

and Braune's '' Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur'' ("Contributions to the history of the German language and its literature"), and contributed sections on runes, Gothic language and literature, and Germanic metre to Paul's ''Grundriss der germanischen Philologie'' ("Outline of Germanic philology," Strassburg, 1891 et seq.).

References

Select bibliography

* Sievers Eduard.
Rhythmisch-melodische Studien
'. Geneva-Lausanne: sdvig press, 2014.

External links

* *

at www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de (German language) {{DEFAULTSORT:Sievers, Eduard Linguists from Germany Anglo-Saxon studies scholars 1850 births 1932 deaths Germanic studies scholars Linguists of Germanic languages Academic staff of the University of Jena Academic staff of the University of Tübingen Academic staff of the University of Halle Academic staff of Leipzig University Corresponding fellows of the British Academy