Oswald Szemerényi
Oswald Szemerényi | |
|---|---|
linguist, Indo-Europeanist | |
| Known for | Szemerényi's law |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
Oswald John Louis Szemerényi,
Indo-Europeanist. He is best known as the namesake of Szemerényi's law, an early sound law in the Proto-Indo-European language
.
Biography
Szemerényi was born in
First World War began in 1914, he and his mother were expelled to Hungary; neither of them had ever seen the country before as his mother was born in Bonn and moved to London two years after she was born. His father was interned on the Isle of Man for the entirety of the war.[2] The family found patronage from the Countess Széchenyi and his mother began working for her in Budapest. When his father returned, he found gainful employment at the Hotel Gellért as the head waiter, due to his exceptional English.[1][2]
: 8
In 1931, Oswald was made a fellow at
Indo-European linguistics[1] in 1936 and published his first book publication, Liquid Sonants in Latin, in 1941, edited by Gyula Laziczius.[2]: 10–11 On 5 November 1940, he married Elizabeth Kövér in Beregszász (now Berehove, Ukraine).[2]: 12 During 1942, he was drafted and sent eastward to the Soviet border regions around Shostka, in modern-day Ukraine near the Russian border. There, he learned Russian and saw no combat; he later joked that his time in the war was "just a nice study leave to learn the [Russian] language".[2]: 12–13 In October of the same year, he received news that his wife had given birth to his son, Zoltán, who very quickly required a major surgery, leaving him with a massive scar. He was relieved of duty in August 1943.[2]
After the
academia, becoming the university chair for comparative philology at University College London in 1960.[1]
Selected bibliography
- 1960 Studies in the Indo-European System of Numerals, Heidelberg
- 1964 Syncope in Greek and Indo-European and the Nature of Indo-European Accent, Napoli
- 1970 Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Darmstadt
- 1989 3., vollständig neu bearbeitete Auflage
- 1996 Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics, Oxford
- Richtungen der modernen Sprachwissenschaft
- 1971 Teil I: Von Saussure bis Bloomfield, 1916-1950, Heidelberg
- 1982 Teil II: Die fünfziger Jahre, 1950-1960, Heidelberg
- 1972 Comparative Linguistics (Current Trends of Linguistics)
- 1977 Studies in the Kinship Terminology of the Indo-European Languages, Leiden
- 1980 Four Old Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian - Skudra - Sogdian - Saka, Vienna
- Scripta Minora: selected essays in Indo-European, Greek, and Latin, edited by Patrick Considine and James T. Hooker, Innsbruck,
- 1987 Vol. I: Indo-European
- 1987 Vol. II: Latin
- 1987 Vol. III: Greek
- 1991 Vol. IV: Indo-European Languages other than Latin and Greek (1991)
- 1989 An den Quellen des lateinischen Wortschatzes, Innsbruck
- 1991 Summing Up a Life[2]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Morpurgo Davies, Anna (17 January 1997). "Obituary: Professor O. J. L. Szemerenyi". The Independent. London. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
- ^ ISBN 3-8107-5056-5.
- Prehistory, History, and Historiography of Language, Speech, and Linguistic Theory. (Papers in Honor of Oswald Szemerényi) (Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1992)
- Historical Philology. Papers in Honor of Oswald Szemerényi II (Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1992)
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics: Indo-European and Finno-Ugric. Papers in Honor of Oswald Szemerényi III (Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1993)
External links
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