Holger Pedersen

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Holger Pedersen, around 1937

Holger Pedersen (born April 7, 1867 in Gelballe near Kolding , † October 25, 1953 in Hellerup near Copenhagen ) was a Danish linguist .

Indo-Europeanist and Celtologist

Pedersen received his doctorate as a linguist at the University of Copenhagen in 1897 and became professor of linguistics there in 1903. In the academic year 1926/27 he was rector of the university. He worked in the field of comparative linguistics , especially in Indo-European studies and Celtology . His Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages (1909–1913) occupies an important position in Celtology in the early 20th century and is still considered a standard work today.

In his 1951 work Die common Indo-European and pre -Indo-European plosives, Pedersen suggested that the aspirated plosives of Proto-Indo-European were not bh, ie, gh , but ph, th, kh . This theory was revived in 1984 in a modified form as the glottalized series / p ', t', k '/ by Tamas Gamkrelidze and WW Iwanow .

The nostratic

By comparing Indo-European with other Eurasian language families, Pedersen came up with the concept of nostratic languages , which he used for the first time in his work on Turkish phonology in 1903. In his 1931 historical book Linguistic Science in the 19th Century , he defined "Nostratisch" as follows:

As a comprehensive designation for the families of languages ​​which are related to Indo-European, we may employ the expression Nostratian languages (from Latin nostras "our countryman").

In this work he postulated the genetic relationship of Indo-European with Ural and - albeit somewhat weaker - with Alta . As even more distant relatives, he names the Eskimo languages , Semitic (and thus Hamito-Semitic as a whole) and - with reservations - also Basque .

However , Pedersen did not attempt to prove the genetic unity of the nostratic. It was not until the 1960s that the nostratic idea was revived , especially by Aharon Dolgopolsky , and filled with concrete content (see the article Nostratisch ). The Basque language was not taken into account; rather, it is now considered a member of the Dene-Caucasian macro family .

Works

  • 1903 Turkish phonetic laws. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . Volume 57.
  • 1909–1913 Comparative grammar of the Celtic languages. 2 volumes. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen.
  • 1908 The Indo-European-Semitic hypothesis and the Indo-European phonology. In: Indo-European Research . Volume 22.
  • 1931 Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century: Methods and Results. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass).
  • 1933 On the question of the original relationship between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric. In: Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne . Volume 67.
  • 1951 The common Indo-European and pre-Indo-European plosives. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selkab, Historis-filologiske Meddelser 32.5, Copenhagen.

See also

literature

  • Heinrich Koppelmann: The Eurasian language family. Carl Winters University Bookstore, Heidelberg 1933.
  • Allan R. Bomhard and John C. Kerns: The Nostratic Macrofamily. A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship . Mouton De Gruyter, Berlin - New York 1994.
  • Aharon Dolgopolsky: The Nostratic Macrofamily and Linguistic Palaeontology. The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Oxford 1998.
  • Rüdiger Schmitt: Holger Pedersen . In: Dietz Otto Edzard, Michael P. Streck (eds.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Aräologie Vol. 10, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 978-3-11-018535-5 , pp. 381–382 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of rectors on the University of Copenhagen website
personal data
SURNAME Pedersen, Holger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish linguist
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Yellow all at Kolding
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1953
Place of death Hellerup near Copenhagen