Georg Valentin von Munthe af Morgenstierne (2 January 1892 – 3 March 1978) was a Norwegian professor of

linguistics 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 ...

with the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

(UiO). He specialized in

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages) constitute the largest branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers ...

Studies

During the years 1923 to 1971, Morgenstierne carried out fieldwork in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iran. In 1924, he undertook the first of his two major linguistic expeditions. He arrived in

Kabul Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...

with a personal letter of introduction to the King of Afghanistan, from the

King of Norway The Norwegian monarch is the head of state of Norway, which is a constitutional and hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary system. The Norwegian monarchy can trace its line back to the reign of Harald Fairhair and the previous petty king ...

. Together with studying the languages, Morgenstierne collected remarkable scientific materials from the culture of the regional people, like images, movies from pre-

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

ic ceremonial dances and sound recordings from nearly extinct languages. The materials are available in his database at the National Library of Norway.

Writings

His publications
listed in BIBSYS * Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. * Report on a Linguistic Mission to North-Western India by Georg Morgenstierne

References

External links

National Library of Norway

in the National Library of Norway site 1892 births 1978 deaths Academic staff of the University of Oslo Linguists of Indo-European languages Indologists Iranologists Linguists of Iranian languages Linguists of Indo-Aryan languages 20th-century Norwegian linguists Corresponding fellows of the British Academy {{Norway-writer-stub

Studies

Writings

Further reading

References

External links