Henry Sweet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry Sweet

Henry Sweet (born September 15, 1845 in London , †  April 30, 1912 in Oxford ) was a British philologist , linguist and one of the founders of phonetics .

Sweet received his education at King's College London , at the University of Heidelberg (later Dr. phil. Hc) and at Balliol College , Oxford. Sweet specialized in Germanic languages , especially the Anglo-Saxon language , a pre-form of English , Old Icelandic and West Saxon . Sweet also published on important problems in phonetics and grammar , and some of his ideas are still debated today, as are some of his publications still in use today in university lectures. His History of English Sounds is considered a milestone in phonetics.

Sweet became a lecturer at Oxford in 1901 . He edited numerous books for the Early English Text Society . Despite his influential and very successful publications, he never held a chair at the university, which annoyed him very much. He may have been denied the position because he did not have a good degree (he was more interested in his private projects even then) and had turned many people against him with his blunt language.

George Bernard Shaw portrayed Sweet in the character of Professor Higgins in his play Pygmalion , later known as My Fair Lady . From 1895 Sweet was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and from 1901 a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

Publications

  • A History of English Sounds (1874)
  • To Anglo-Saxon Reader (1876)
  • A Handbook on Phonetics (1877)
  • First Middle English Primer (1884)
  • An Icelandic Primer (1895)
  • The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon (1896)
  • The History of Language (1900; 1995: ISBN 8-185-23104-4 ; 2007: ISBN 1-432-66993-1 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Anthony Philip Reid Howatt, Henry George Widdowson: A History of English Language Teaching . Oxford University Press (2004), pp. 198-201. ISBN 0-194-42185-6 ( online text )
personal data
SURNAME Sweet, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philologist and co-founder of modern phonetics
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1912
Place of death Oxford