Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Gabelentz family in their own words
- 3 Georg von der Gabelentz as a pioneer of information structure
- 4 The Basque-Berber connection of Georg von der Gabelentz
- 5 Phenomenological aspects of Georg von der Gabelentz's Die Sprachwissenschaft
- 6 Content and Form of Speech
- Index
4 - The Basque-Berber connection of Georg von der Gabelentz
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Gabelentz family in their own words
- 3 Georg von der Gabelentz as a pioneer of information structure
- 4 The Basque-Berber connection of Georg von der Gabelentz
- 5 Phenomenological aspects of Georg von der Gabelentz's Die Sprachwissenschaft
- 6 Content and Form of Speech
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Discussions of Gabelentz's œuvre tend to omit the fact that he attempted in some of his later writings to demonstrate a genealogical connection between the Basque and Berber languages. Based on an examination of Gabelentz's texts, unpublished notes and correspondence, as well as several contemporary reviews, this chapter examines Gabelentz's proposal and what it shows about his theoretical views vis-à-vis historical-comparative linguistics and his place in the linguistic community of the time. It shows how Gabelentz's critique of the prevailing historical-comparative approach led him to abandon all established methods and draw wildly implausible conclusions. Even the most vehement critics of the Neogrammarians, such as Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927), looked on uncomprehendingly at the turn Gabelentz had taken.
Keywords: Basque, Berber, historical-comparative linguistics, Afro-Asiatic languages, Hugo Schuchardt, Neogrammarians
Introduction
In the last years of his life, Georg von der Gabelentz dealt intensively with the question of a possible genetic relationship between Basque and Berber.
This resulted in two publications. The first is his lecture at the meeting of the Philosophisch-historische Classe der Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophical-Historical Class of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences) on 22 June 1893, which was immediately published in the proceedings of the Academy (Gabelentz, 1893); the second is available in book form, published posthumously one year after his death by his nephew Albrecht von der Schulenburg under the title Die Verwandtschaft des Baskischen mit den Berbersprachen Nord-Africas (The genetic relationship between Basque and the North African Berber languages) (Gabelentz, 1894). These two writings were largely ignored at the time and have hardly received any attention in later Gabelentz scholarship, even though the arguments for the Basque-Berber relationship are also taken up in the revised second edition of Die Sprachwissenschaft (Gabelentz, 2016 [1901]),2 where Gabelentz expounds the implications that, in his opinion, necessarily result for historical linguistic theory.
The different publication dates for the Academy lecture and Basque-Berber book are somewhat deceptive in that there cannot have been much time between the composition of the two works, given that Gabelentz passed away only five months after delivering the lecture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Gabelentz and the Science of Language , pp. 57 - 98Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019