Alfredo Trombetti

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Portrait of Alfredo Trombetti

Alfredo Trombetti (born January 16, 1866 in Bologna , † July 5, 1929 in Lido di Venezia ) was an Italian linguist . For many years he taught at the University of Bologna .

Life

His father Alfredo Trombetti sen. was a hemp worker and rope maker , cordaio and his mother Viola Mingozzi worked in a textile factory. Trombetti came from a simple background and had to interrupt his school career due to the lack of financial means. He continued his self-taught as early as elementary school on and was extraordinarily gifted in languages , he learned about the French language , who studied German language and visited Spanish monks in a monastery of which he his Spanish learned. At times he worked as an apprentice goldsmith and hairdresser. One of his clients, Giosuè Carducci , spoke out on behalf of the dignitaries in his hometown. More precisely, he was invited on April 18, 1883 to Messrs. Gino Rocchi (1844–1936), the aforementioned Giosuè Carducci, Giovanni Battista Gandino (1827–1905) and Teodorico Landoni (1819–1886) so that he could prove his language skills . His skills were convincing. With the support of the city of Bologna, he was able to continue his classical studies. On June 23, 1891 Trombetti received his doctorate with " cum laude ". The title of his dissertation was "Progressi degli studi linguistici". Trombetti later became a professor at the University of Bologna.

In 1904 he was appointed professor for Semitic linguistics and later, from 1912, for general linguistics. He was a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei . He kept in contact with a number of linguists of his time. a. also to Hugo Schuchardt, a Romanist from Graz .

He is an advocate of the theory of the well-known monoglottogenesis , according to which all languages spoken worldwide can be traced back to a single common ancestor. His arguments for monogenesis were first presented in his 1905 book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio . His hypotheses are not undisputed.

In order to resolve the relationship between the Caucasian languages ​​and other language groups, he constructed a Semitic- Caucasian theory. The draft was created between 1902 and 1903. To solve the problem of the Caucasian languages ​​and their relationship, there were other contemporaries and theoretical assumptions, according to Vilhelm Thomsen (1899) with the Caucasian- Etruscan relatives, Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Marr (1908) with the Kartvelian- Semitic relatives, Heinrich Winkler (1907) with the Caucasian- Elamite relatives. Carl Pauli was the first to address the problem of the Caucasian languages ​​(1886).

He studied the Basque language in 1923 and saw great similarities with the Caucasian languages and the Sino-Tibetan language family . Alfredo Trombetti tried in his "L'unita d'origine del linguaggio" (1905) to prove the thesis of monoglottogenesis with the fact that words with a similar meaning in different languages ​​sometimes had similarities in their phonetic structure .

Alfredo Trombetti and Virginia Trombetti, b. Patelli had several children, some of whom died early. One son was the later lawyer Ettore Trombetti (* 1895), who worked for the Partito d'Azione , his granddaughter was the actress Laura Betti .

His wife was a factory worker whom he had known since he was seventeen.

Works (selection)

  • 1902-1903. Delle relazioni delle lingue caucasiche con le lingue camitosemitiche e con altri gruppi linguistichi. Lettera al professore H. Schuchardt. In: Giornale della Società asiatica italiana , Vol. 15, pp. 177-201 and Vol. 16, pp. 145-175. Firenze.
  • 1902. Nessi genealogici fra le lingue del mondo antîco. 4 volumes, Recipient of the Royal Prize of the Italian Academy in 1902.
  • 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
  • 1907. Come si fa la critica di un libro. Con nuovi contributi alla dottrina della monogenesi del linguaggio e alla glottologia generale comparata. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
  • 1908. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata I. I pronomi personali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Class de scienze morali. Bologna.
  • 1912. Manuals dell'arabo parlato a Tripoli. Grammatica, letture e vocabolario. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
  • 1913. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata II. I numerali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Class de scienze morali. Bologna.
  • 1920. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata III. Comparazioni lessicali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Class de scienze morali. Bologna.
  • 1922-1923. Elementi di glottologia. 2 volumes, Bologna: Zanichelli.
  • 1925. Le origini della lingua basca. Bologna: Azzoguidi.
  • 1927. La lingua etrusca e le lingue preindoeuropee del Meditarreneo. In Studi etruschi, T. 1. Firenze.
  • 1928. La lingua etrusca. Firenze: Rinascimento del libro.
  • 1928. Origine asiatica delle lingue e popolazioni americane. In: Atti del 22 congresso internazionale degli americanisti Roma, Settembre 1926. , T. 1, pp. 169-246. Roma: Istituto Cristoforo Colombo.
  • 1929. Il nostro dialetto bolognese. Bologna: Zanichelli.

literature

  • Carlo Tagliavini: Alfredo Trombetti et ses études sur la Langue Basque. (Alfredo Trombetti and his studies on the Basque Language) VIIème Congrès d'Etudes Basques = Eusko Ikaskuntzaren VII. Kongresua = VII Congreso de Estudios Vascos (7. 1948. Biarritz). Eusko Ikaskuntza, Donostia 2003, ISBN 84-8419-916-9 , pp. 737-742 [5]

Web links

  • Portrait photography by Alfredo Trombetti [6]
  • Alfredo Trombetti, archiviostorico.unibo.it [7]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carlo Tagliavini: Trombetti, Alfredo. Enciclopedia Italiana (1937) [1]
  2. ↑ Simon Boers: Alfredo Trombetti Een taalgenie. In: De Katholeik. Godsdienstig, divorced letter-wise Maandschrift. Honderd zeven-en twinntigste Deel. JW Van Leeuwen, JR Van Rossum, Leiden 1905, pp. 294–305 [2]
  3. ^ Adriano Sofri: La missione di Laura Betti. Archivio, la Repubblica.it August 5, 2004 [3]
  4. ↑ actually Luigi Rocchi
  5. ^ Georgij A. Klimov, Jost Gippert: Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-8754-8060-0 , p. 25
  6. ^ Trombetti Ettore, 13 agosto 1895, Storia e Memoria di Bologna [4]
personal data
SURNAME Trombetti, Alfredo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian linguist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 1929
Place of death Lido di Venezia