Holger Pedersen (linguist) facts for kids

Holger Pedersen (born April 7, 1867 – died October 25, 1953) was a Danish linguist. A linguist is a scientist who studies languages. Holger Pedersen wrote about 30 important books and papers about many different languages.

He was born in Gelballe, Denmark, and passed away in Hellerup, near Copenhagen.

Education and Learning

Holger Pedersen studied at the University of Copenhagen. There, he learned from famous language experts like Karl Verner, Vilhelm Thomsen, and Hermann Möller. He also studied at the University of Leipzig with other important scholars.

Later, in 1893, Pedersen went to the University of Berlin. The next year, he studied Celtic languages and an ancient language called Sanskrit at the University of Greifswald.

In 1895, he spent several months in the Aran Islands in Ireland. He went there to study an old form of Gaelic spoken by the people there.

Pedersen finished his main research paper, called a doctoral dissertation, in 1896. It was about how sounds are made in the Irish language. This paper was accepted and published in 1897.

In 1897, Pedersen started working as a teacher of Celtic languages at the University of Copenhagen. By 1900, he became a reader in comparative grammar. This means he taught about how languages change over time and how they are related. He later became a professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1912 and stayed there for the rest of his life.

Important Ideas in Language Study

Holger Pedersen made many important contributions to the study of languages.

In 1893, he traveled to Corfu to study the Albanian language. He later published a book of Albanian texts he collected. His work on Albanian is still used today.

For students of Celtic languages, Pedersen is famous for his book, Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages. This book is still a main reference for understanding the history of Celtic languages.

His book, Hittite and the Other Indo-European Languages, was a big step forward in studying the ancient Hittite language. It is still used by scholars today.

Another important book was Tocharian from the Viewpoint of Indo-European Language Comparison. In this book, he discussed how sounds changed in the Tocharian languages.

Pedersen also came up with the Ruki sound law. This is an important rule about how certain sounds changed in languages like Indo-Iranian, Baltic, and Slavic.

He is also known for describing Pedersen's law. This law explains a special way that word stress (accent) shifts in Baltic and Slavic languages.

Pedersen also supported the laryngeal theory. This theory suggests that some ancient sounds, called "laryngeals," existed in the very old Proto-Indo-European language. At the time, not many people believed this idea, but it later became very important.

Two of Pedersen's ideas, the glottalic theory and the Nostratic theory, are still discussed a lot today.

The Glottalic Theory

In 1951, Holger Pedersen suggested a new idea about the sounds in the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. He noticed that the sound 'b' was very rare in this old language. He thought that maybe the sounds 'p', 't', 'k' (like in "pat," "top," "kit") and 'b', 'd', 'g' (like in "bat," "dog," "go") might have been different in the past.

He suggested that the sounds 'b', 'd', 'g' might have originally been 'p', 't', 'k' but made with a special "popping" sound, called a glottalized sound. This idea was later explored further by other linguists like Paul Hopper, Tamaz Gamkrelidze, and Vyacheslav Ivanov.

The Nostratic Theory

Holger Pedersen first used the word "Nostratic" in 1903. He used it to describe a very big idea: that many different language families around the world might be related to each other. The word "Nostratic" comes from a Latin word meaning "our countryman," suggesting that these languages are all part of one big family.

Pedersen believed that the Indo-European languages (which include English, Spanish, Hindi, and many others) were related to other language families. He thought they were clearly related to Uralic languages (like Finnish and Hungarian). He also saw similarities, though fainter, with Turkish, Mongolian, and Manchu languages, as well as Yukaghir and Eskimo languages.

He also thought that Indo-European might be related to Semitic languages (like Arabic and Hebrew) and Hamitic languages. He even considered if Basque might be part of this huge family.

Pedersen believed that the "Nostratic world of languages" was enormous. He knew it would be a huge task to prove these connections. While he defined the idea, other scholars like Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky later worked to develop the Nostratic theory further. Pedersen's interest in this idea remained strong throughout his career.