Important people

Question 1

Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609)

Answer 1

It was generally accepted that the main language of the people in the Bible was Hebrew. Scaliger questioned this fact, and was one of the first people to do so.

Question 2

Marcus Zuerius van Boxhoorn (1612-1653)

Answer 2

A Dutch scholar who proposed a precursor to present day languages. He called this proto-language ‘Scythian’. He substantiated this proposal by comparing similar words from different European languages. He also stated that loanwords shouldn’t be considered for the purposes of language comparison. He didn’t include Sanskrit in his findings.

Question 3

Sir William Jones (1746-1794)

Answer 3

A judge and polyglot from Calcutta, India. He is credited with the beginnings of modern comparitive linguistics. He constructed the foundation of the Indo-European language family tree as it is today. After his death a few members were added to the tree: Albanian (1835), Armenian (1837), Tocharian (1908) and Hittite (1915).

Question 4

Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff (1878)

Answer 4

Founders of the theory Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze: “All sound change, insofar as it is mechanical, takes place under exceptionless laws, i.e. the direction of the sound movement is always the same with all members of a speech community, unless dialect split occurs.”