Delbrück, Berthold

Born July 26, 1842, in Putbus; died Jan. 3, 1922, in Jena. German linguist. Studied in Halle and Berlin. Professor of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics at Jena beginning in 1870. He was the founder of the comparative syntax of Indo-European languages.

Together with E. Windisch, Delbrück wrote Syntactic Research (vols. 1-5, 1871-88), and he wrote the part dealing with syntax in Outline of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages (2nd ed., vols. 1-2, 1897-1916), which he coauthored with K. Brugmann. He studied the Vedas and published the Vedic Chrestomathy (1874). In the polemical work Basic Questions of Language Study (1901), Delbrück defended the neogrammarian concept of language; later, he abandoned it (see Introduction to the Study of the Indo-European Languages, 1880).