Brugmann, Karl

Brugmann, Karl

(kärl bro͝ok`män), 1849–1919, German philologist. A professor at Leipzig, Brugmann believed that scientific rules of linguistics do not admit of exceptions. With the help of others, notably Hermann Osthoff, Wilhelm Scherer, and Berthold Delbrück, he did much work in Indo-European linguistics and issued a large comparative grammar of Indo-European languages that is still a standard reference. He was highly regarded as a neogrammarian.

Brugmann, Karl

 

Born Mar. 16, 1849, in Weisbaden; died June 29, 1919, in Leipzig. German linguist.

Brugmann was one of the founders of the neogrammarian school of linguistics. He studied at the universities of Halle and Leipzig and was a professor at the University of Leipzig (from 1882). With W. Streitberg he published the journal Indogermanische Forschungen (from 1892). He and H. Osthoff together published the six-volume Morphological Studies in the Indo-European Languages (parts 1-6, 1878-1910). The preface to this work, written by Brugmann and Osthoff, became the manifesto of the neogrammarians. He was the author of works on the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages.

WORKS

Griechische Grammatik, 4th ed. Revised by A. Thumb. Munich, 1913.
Kurze vergleichende Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Berlin-Leipzig, 1922.
Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, vols. 1-2, 2nd ed. Strasbourg-Berlin, 1897-1916 (Jointly with B. Delbrück.)
In Russian translation:
“Morfologicheskie issledovaniia v oblasti indoevropeiskikh iazykov;” preface to Zvegintsev, V. A. Khrestomatiia po istorii iazykoznaiia XIX-XX vekov. Moscow, 1956. [Jointly with H. Osthoff.]