Hermann Möller

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Hermann Möller (* 13. January 1850 in Hjerpsted , Denmark ; † 5. October 1923 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish historical linguist who especially for his studies in support of the thesis of a genetic relationship between Indo-European languages and Semitic languages is known .

Life

Hermann Möller grew up on Sylt and Oland , where his father was a pastor, and thus came into contact with Frisian . He studied at the University of Leipzig and became a supporter of "the new comparative direction" (the young grammarians ). He was initially a private lecturer at the University of Kiel . Here he was the first to offer a Frisian course in the winter semester of 1879/80. Later he was a professor at the University of Copenhagen .

Möller's theory, the result of many years of professional work, did not receive general recognition from the linguistic specialist world and is only rarely mentioned today (2008). However, it was accepted as valid at the time by a number of leading linguists, such as Holger Pedersen (1924) and Louis Hjelmslev . According to Hjelmslev (1970: 79), “a primordial relationship between Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic was shown in detail by the Danish linguist Hermann Möller, using the method of element functions”.

Möller's work was continued by Albert Cuny (1924, 1943, 1946) in France and more recently by the American scholar Saul Levin (1971, 1995, 2002). It is undoubtedly due to Möller's work that Holger Pedersen included Hamito-Semitic in his adopted nostratic language family, a classification that was retained by the following nostraticists (e.g. Wladislaw Illitsch-Switytsch and Allan Bomhard ). The Hamitic family was rejected as invalid by Joseph Greenberg (1963), who consequently also rejected the name "Hamito-Semitic" and replaced it with the " Afro-Asiatic " that is common today .

Möller's magnum opus was the comparative Indo-European-Semitic dictionary from 1911. He is also known for his version of the laryngeal theory , which he presented in The Semitic-pre-Indo-European laryngeal consonants (1917). Möller was the first to recognize the groundbreaking effect of F. de Saussure's thesis on vowel alternations in Indo-European vocalism in 1879. He defended this thesis against some fierce opposition, and improved and refined it in the following year. Based on his research in the field of Semitic languages, he called the causal larynx sounds the laryngals. According to Oswald Szemerényi (1990), he can rightly be seen as the true founder of the laryngeal theory.

literature

  • Albert Cuny: Etudes prégrammaticales sur le domaine des langues indo-européennes et chamito-sémitiques. Champion, Paris 1924.
  • Albert Cuny: Recherches sur le vocalisme, le consonantisme et la formation des racines en “nostratique”, ancêtre de l'indo-européen et du chamito-sémitique. Adrien Maisonneuve, Paris 1943.
  • Albert Cuny: Invitation à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes et des langues chamito-sémitiques. Brière, Bordeaux 1946.
  • Joseph H. Greenberg: The Languages ​​of Africa. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1963 (From the same publisher: second revised edition, 1966; third edition, 1970. All three editions simultaneously published at The Hague by Mouton &. Co.)
  • Louis Hjelmslev: Language: An Introduction. University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
  • Saul Levin: The Indo-European and Semitic Languages: An Exploration of Structural Similarities Related to Accent, Chiefly in Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew. State University of New York Press, 1971, ISBN 978-0-87395-055-8 .
  • Saul Levin: Semitic and Indo-European, Volume 1: The Principal Etymologies, With Observations on Afro-Asiatic. John Benjamin Publishing Company, 1995, ISBN 1-55619-583-4 .
  • Saul Levin: Semitic and Indo-European, Volume 2: Comparative Morphology, Syntax and Phonetics. John Benjamin Publishing Company, 2002, ISBN 1-58811-222-5 .
  • Hermann Möller: Semitic and Indo-European. Part l. Consonants. (Only volume to appear of a projected longer work). H. Hagerup, Copenhagen 1906 (Reprint: 1978. Hildesheim - New York: Georg Olms. ISBN 3-487-06669-6 .)
  • Hermann Möller: Comparative Indo-European-Semitic dictionary. Copenhagen. (Reprint: 1970, reissued 1997. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1911, ISBN 3-525-26115-2 .)
  • Hermann Möller: The Semitic-pre-Indo-European laryngal consonants. Andr. Fred. Høst, København 1917.
  • Holger Pedersen: Sprogvidenskaben i det Nittende Aarhundrede. Met or the above results. Gyldendalske Boghandel, København 1924.
  • Holger Pedersen: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century: Methods and Results , translated from the Danish by John Webster Spargo. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1931 (English translation of the previous.)
  • Oswald Szemerényi: Introduction to Comparative Linguistics. 4th edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1990.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jarich Hoekstra: Theodor Heinrich Fürchtegott Hansen (1837-1923), a semi-speaker of the Hallig Frisian writing. In: Elmar Eggert and Jörg Kilian (Ed.): Historical Orality. Contributions to the history of the spoken language. (= Kiel research on linguistics) Peter Lang, ISBN 978-3-653-95948-2 , pp. 227–246