Johann Severin Vater

Unver nderter Nachdruck der Originalausgabe von 1847.

Unver nderter Nachdruck der Originalausgabe von 1847.

Johann Severin Vater (1771–1826) was professor of theology and Oriental languages at Halle, but his linguistic interests ranged far more widely. This 1801 publication is the thirty-year-old scholar's ambitious attempt to outline a universal theory of language. Vater begins with a short definition of language, and two chapters speculating on the origins of human language and mechanisms for language change. These theoretical chapters, Vater says, were intended to be accessible to students making the transition from classics to philosophy. Vater then proposes the possibility of an overarching theory that could accommodate the different sounds, structures and vocabularies used to encode language functions, and which could be used by scholars to describe the grammar of different languages. He goes a stage further in suggesting that this could be the basis of a universal language. The book ends with a fascinating bibliography of early modern writings on language.

Johann Severin Vater (1771–1826) was professor of theology and Oriental languages at Halle, but his wide-ranging linguistic interests included Slavonic and Native North American languages (the latter classified using data provided by Alexander von Humboldt). This book, first published in 1815, describes itself as a bibliography pertaining to 'all the languages of the world'. It is a monument to late eighteenth-century research into languages and linguistics, listing for each of its entries relevant texts with lexicons and grammars of the language in question. It was a valuable resource for nineteenth-century philologists, and its intended reach beyond the German-speaking scholarly world is indicated by the fact that the German text is accompanied by a Latin translation throughout. As well as including many Asian languages, the book recapitulates Vater's research on Native American languages, his knowledge of which was virtually unrivalled in Europe at that time.