Johannes Schmidt (July 29, 1843 – July 4, 1901) was a German linguist. He developed the Wellentheorie ('wave theory') of language development.
Schmidt was born in Prenzlau, Province of Brandenburg. He studied philology (historical linguistics) with the great Indo-Europeanist August Schleicher and specialized in Indo-European, especially Slavic, languages. He earned a doctorate in 1865 and worked from 1866 as a teacher at a gymnasium in Berlin.
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Johannes Schmidt (July 29, 1843 – July 4, 1901) was a German linguist. He developed the Wellentheorie ('wave theory') of language development.
Schmidt was born in Prenzlau, Province of Brandenburg. He studied philology (historical linguistics) with the great Indo-Europeanist August Schleicher and specialized in Indo-European, especially Slavic, languages. He earned a doctorate in 1865 and worked from 1866 as a teacher at a gymnasium in Berlin.
In 1868 Schmidt was invited by the University of Bonn to take a position as professor of German and Slavic languages. In Bonn he published the work Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen ('The Relationships of the Indo-Germanic Languages', 1872), which presented his Wellentheorie ('wave theory'). According to this theory, new features of a language spread from a central point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. This should lead to...
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