Jerzy Kuryłowicz

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Jerzy Kuryłowicz (born August 26, 1895 in Stanislau , † January 28, 1978 in Kraków ) was a Polish linguist and Indo-Europeanist.

Life

Kuryłowicz was the son of Roman Kuryłowicz and Flora nee Kleczyńska and brother of the microbiologist Włodzimierz Kuryłowicz . After attending grammar school in Lemberg , he began studying economics at the University of World Trade in Vienna in 1913 , but was drafted into the Austrian army a year later. After the end of the war he studied Romance languages, German, Indology and Semitic studies in Lemberg. He also spent a year in Paris, where he a. a. studied with Antoine Meillet . In 1929 he was appointed professor for Indo-European and Romance studies at the University of Lemberg .

After being forced to move from Lemberg in 1946, he became professor of general linguistics in Breslau . From 1948 until his retirement he was professor of the same subject at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

From 1938 he was a member of the Polska Akademia Umiejętności , from 1952 the Polish Academy of Sciences , in 1965 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1974 to the British Academy .

Laryngeal theory and Hittite

Ferdinand de Saussure is the inventor of the laryngeal theory . The fact that this theory is now generally accepted is due not least to Jerzy Kuryłowicz and his studies of Hittite . In 1917, the Hittite clay tablets discovered in what is now Turkey about 100 years ago were deciphered, four years after de Saussure's death. Kuryłowicz has identified Hittite as an Indo-European language and has also found words in Hittite that have a laryngeal sound where de Saussure postulated it.

Awards (excerpt)

Works

  • Traces de la place du ton en gathique . Champion, Paris 1925.
  • Études indoeuropéennes . Gebethner & Wolff, Kraków 1935.
  • L'accentuation des langues indo-européennes . Kraków 1952. (2nd edition 1958)
  • L'apophonie en indo-européen . Zakład im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 1956.
  • Esquisses linguistiques . Polska Akademia Nauk / Zakład Naroldowy im. Ossolíńskich, Wrocław / Kraków 1960.
  • L'apophonie en sémitique . Kraków 1962.
  • The inflectional categories of Indo-European . Winter, Heidelberg 1964.
  • with Manfred Mayrhofer : Indo-European grammar . Winter, Heidelberg 1968 ff.
  • Studies in Semitic grammar and metrics . Wydawn. Polskiej Akademii Nauk / Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich / Curzon Press, Wrocław / London 1972.
  • Metric and language history . Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 1975.
  • Problèmes de linguistique indo-européenne . Zakład narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 1977.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jerzy Kuryłowicz: ə indo-européen et ḫ hittite . In: W. Taszycki / W. Doroszewski (eds.): Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski . 1. Vol. Gebethner & Wolff, Kraków 1927. pp. 95-104; Id .: Les effets du ə en indoiranien . In: Prace filologiczne , 2, 1927, pp. 201-243.

literature

  • Harald Wiese: A journey through time to the origins of our language. How Indo-European Studies explains our words , Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3832516017 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kuryłowicz, Jerzy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish linguist and Indo-Europeanist
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Stanislau
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1978
Place of death Krakow