Neogrammarian
Encyclopedia
The Neogrammarians were a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 school of linguists
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, originally at the University of Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...

. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...

 sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law
Verner's law
Verner's law, stated by Karl Verner in 1875, describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *s, *h, *hʷ, when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively the fricatives *b, *d, *z,...

 is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...

. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...

 according to scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...

. Today this hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of lexical diffusion
Lexical diffusion
In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items...

 (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested.

Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were:
  • The object of linguistic investigation is not the language system, but rather the idiolect
    Idiolect
    In linguistics, an idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection , grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual. Every individual's language production is in some sense unique...

    , 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
    Language change
    Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...

     of a language.
  • Analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound laws fails, analogy
    Analogy
    Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...

     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
    Otto Behaghel
    Otto Behaghel was a germanist and professor in Heidelberg, Basel, and Gießen.He added theoretical contributions to the German and Middle High German language. He formulated Behaghel's laws...

  • Wilhelm Braune
    Wilhelm Braune
    Theodor Wilhelm Braune was a German Germanist, historical linguist and philologist....

  • Karl Brugmann
    Karl Brugmann
    Karl Brugmann was a German linguist. He is a towering figure in Indo-European linguistics.-Biography:He was educated at Halle and Leipzig. He was instructor in the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Leipzig, and in 1872-77 was assistant at the Russian Institute of Classical Philology at the latter place...

  • Berthold Delbrück
    Berthold Delbrück
    Berthold Gustav Gottlieb Delbrück was a German linguist who devoted himself to the study of the comparative syntax of the Indo-European languages.-Biography:...

  • August Leskien
    August Leskien
    August Leskien was a German linguist active in the field of comparative linguistics, particularly relating to the Baltic and Slavic languages.-Biography:...

  • Adolf Noreen
    Adolf Noreen
    Adolf Gotthard Noreen was a Swedish linguist who served as a member of the Swedish Academy from 1919 until his death.-Biography:...

  • Hermann Osthoff
    Hermann Osthoff
    Hermann Osthoff was a German linguist. He was involved in Indo-European studies and the Neogrammarian school. He is known for formulating the Osthoff's law.- Life :...

  • Hermann Paul
    Hermann Paul
    Hermann Otto Theodor Paul was a German linguist and lexicographer. He was professor for German language and literature in Freiburg in the Breisgau as well as Munich, and he was a prominent Neogrammarian....

  • Eduard Sievers
    Eduard Sievers
    Eduard Sievers was a philologist of the classical and Germanic languages. Sievers was one of the Junggrammatiker of the so-called "Leipzig School"...

  • Karl Verner
    Karl Verner
    Karl Verner was a Danish linguist. He is remembered today for Verner's law, which he discovered in 1875.Verner, whose interest in languages was stimulated by reading about the work of Rasmus Christian Rask, began his university studies in 1864. He studied Oriental, Germanic and Slavic languages,...



Despite their strong influence in their time, the methods and goals of the Neogrammarians have been criticized from various points of view, but mainly 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.

Literature

  • Hermann Paul: Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. (1880).
  • Karl Brugmann und Bertold Delbrück: Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen
    Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen
    Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen is a major work of historical linguistics by Karl Brugmann and Berthold Delbrück, published in two editions between 1886 and 1916...

    .
    (1897–1916).
  • Hugo Schuchardt
    Hugo Schuchardt
    Hugo Ernst Mario Schuchardt was an eminent linguist, best known for his work in the Romance languages, the Basque language, and in mixed languages, including pidgins, creoles, and the Lingua franca of the Mediterranean.-In Germany:Schuchardt grew up in Gotha...

    : „Über die Lautgesetze. Gegen die Junggrammatiker“, in Hugo-Schuchardt-Brevier, ein Vademekum der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft., ed. Leo Spitzer. Halle (Saale) 1922.
  • Harald Wiese: Eine Zeitreise zu den Ursprüngen unserer Sprache. Wie die Indogermanistik unsere Wörter erklärt, Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3832516017.
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