Franz Nikolaus Finck (26 June 1867 – 4 May 1910) 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 ...

, born in

Krefeld Krefeld ( , ; ), also spelled Crefeld until 1925 (though the spelling was still being used in British papers throughout the Second World War), is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, its c ...

. He was a professor of General Linguistics at the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

. Finck visited the

Aran Islands The Aran Islands ( ; , ) or The Arans ( ) are a group of three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the west coast of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, with a total area around . They constitute the historic barony (Ireland), barony of Aran in ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, where he lived with speakers of

Irish Gaelic Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigeno ...

. His research on the phonology of Irish resulted in the book '' Die Araner Mundart: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des Westirischen'' (The Aran Dialect: A Contribution to the Study of Western Irish). This work was characteristic of Finck's emphasis on the study of remote dialects of languages. He went on to work on a broad variety of languages, but was best known to his colleagues for his work on

languages of the Caucasus The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows t ...

. He also worked extensively on the

Armenian language Armenian (endonym: , , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the sole member of the independent branch of the Armenian language family. It is the native language of the Armenians, Armenian people and the official language of ...

, compiling a grammar of that language. Die araner mundart

Finck held the belief (now known to be mistaken) that all of the languages of the Caucasus were related. Among his students was John Peabody Harrington.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finck, Franz Nikolaus 19th-century German people German philologists 19th-century German linguists 1867 births 1910 deaths Expatriates from the German Empire German expatriates in the United Kingdom