Neogrammarian Totally Explained

Everything about The Neogrammarian totally explained

The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according to scientific method. Today this hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested. Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were:

The object of linguistic investigation isn't the language system, but rather the idiolect, that is, language as it's localized in the individual, and therefore is directly observable.
Autonomy of the sound level: being the most observable aspect of language, the sound level is seen as the most important level of description, and absolute autonomy of the sound level from syntax and semantics is assumed.
Historicism: the chief goal of linguistic investigation is the description of the historical change of a language.
Analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound laws fails, analogy can be applied as an explanation if plausible. Thus, exceptions are understood to be a (regular) adaptation to a related form.

Leading Neogrammarian linguists included:

Otto Behaghel Despite their strong influence in their time, the methods and goals of the Neogrammarians have been criticized from various points of view, but mainly for: reducing the object of investigation to the idiolect; restricting themselves to the description of surface phenomena (sound level); overvaluation of historical languages and neglect of contemporary ones.

Literature

Hermann Paul: Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. (1880).

Karl Brugmann und Bertold Delbrück: Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (1897–1916).

Hugo Schuchardt: „Über die Lautgesetze. Gegen die Junggrammatiker“, in Hugo-Schuchardt-Brevier, ein Vademekum der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft., ed. Leo Spitzer. Halle (Saale) 1922.

Harald Wiese: Eine Zeitreise zu den Ursprüngen unserer Sprache. Wie die Indogermanistik unsere Wörter erklärt, Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3832516017.Further Information

Get more info on 'Neogrammarian'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://neogrammarian.totallyexplained.com">Neogrammarian Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.