August Schleicher

August Schleicher
August Schleicher, by Friedrich Kriehuber
Born(1821-02-19)19 February 1821
Meiningen, Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen
Died6 December 1868(1868-12-06) (aged 47)
Jena, Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Alma materUniversity of Tübingen, University of Bonn
SchoolHistoricism[1]
Main interests
Indo-European studies

August Schleicher (German: [ˈaʊɡʊst ˈʃlaɪçɐ];[2][3] 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. Schleicher studied the Proto-Indo-European language and devised theories concerning historical linguistics. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language. To show how Indo-European might have looked, he created a short tale, Schleicher's fable, to exemplify the reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society inferred from it.

  1. ^ E. F. K. Koerner, Practicing Linguistic Historiography, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1989, p. 193: "Schleicher historicism ... was in effect radicalized by the Neogrammarians."
  2. ^ "August – Französisch-Übersetzung – Langenscheidt Deutsch-Französisch Wörterbuch" (in German and French). Langenscheidt. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 20 October 2018.
  3. ^ Wells, John C. (2008), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.), Longman, ISBN 9781405881180