The Neogrammarians (, , ) were a German school of linguists, originally at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of

sound change 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 chan ...

Overview

According to the Neogrammarian hypothesis, a

diachronic Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach - from ,("together") + ,("time") - considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. In contrast, a ''diac ...

sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to

Grimm's law Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or First Germanic Sound Shift, is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the first millennium BC, first d ...

. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of

falsifiability Falsifiability (or refutability) is a deductive standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses, introduced by the Philosophy of science, philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). ...

according to the scientific method. Subsequent researchers have questioned this hypothesis from two perspectives. First, adherents of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) believe that some words change others. Second, some believe that it is possible for sound changes to observe grammatical conditioning. Nonetheless, both of these challenges to exceptionlessness remain controversial, and many investigators continue to adhere to the Neogrammarian doctrine. Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were: * The object of linguistic investigation is not the language system, but rather the idiolect, that is, language as it is localized in the individual, and therefore is directly observable. * Autonomy of the sound level: being the most observable aspect of language, the sound level is seen as the most important level of description, and absolute autonomy of the sound level from syntax and semantics is assumed. * Historicism: the chief goal of linguistic investigation is the description of the historical change of a language. * Analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound laws fails,

analogy Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

can be applied as an explanation if plausible. Thus, exceptions are understood to be a (regular) adaptation to a related form. Leading Neogrammarian linguists included: * Otto Behaghel (1854–1936) *

Wilhelm Braune Theodor Wilhelm Braune (20 February 1850 in Großthiemig, Province of Saxony – 10 November 1926 in Heidelberg) was a German philologist and Germanist. Biography In 1869 Braune entered the University of Leipzig, where he was approved as an ins ...

(1850–1926) * Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) * Berthold Delbrück (1842–1922) * August Leskien (1840–1916) * Adolf Noreen (1854–1925) *

Hermann Osthoff Hermann Osthoff (18 April 1847 – 7 May 1909) was a German linguist. He was involved in Indo-European studies and the Neogrammarian school. He is known for formulating Osthoff's law and published widely on Indo-European word-formation and m ...

(1847–1909) * Hermann Paul (1846–1921) * Eduard Sievers (1850–1932) Despite their strong influence in their time, the methods and goals of the Neogrammarians have been criticized for reducing the object of investigation to the idiolect; restricting themselves to the description of surface phenomena (sound level); overvaluation of historical languages and neglect of contemporary ones.

Overview

See also

Notes

References

Further reading