Aus Karl Brugmanns Jugenderinnerungen

The present volume contains excerpts from the memoirs of the youth and early career of Karl Brugmann (1849-1919), professor of Indo-European linguistics at Leipzig University and one of the great figures in the history of that discipline.. In 1876 Brugmann was able to substantiate the principle of the regularity of sound-change advocated by the Neogrammarians by demonstrating that the system of the Indo-European proto-language also included the syllabic nasals *m̥, *n̥(not preserved in any of the individual IE languages). This led to disputes with Curtius. Brugmann's text describes his life up to his return from Lithuania in 1880 and thus also throws light on the period around 1876 as a critical phase in the history of linguistics. Footnotes offer ample information about individuals and facts mentioned in the text, and the volume is prefaced with an essay "Der 'Junggrammatiker' Karl Brugmann". In 1876 Brugmann was able to substantiate the principle of the regularity of sound-change advocated by the Neogrammarians, by demonstrating that the system of the Indo-European proto-language included also the syllabic nasals m̥, n̥ (not preserved in any of the individual IE languages). By this he got into arguments with Curtius. Brugmann's text describes his life up to his return from Lithuania in 1880 and therefore throws light also on the period around 1876 as a critical phase in the history of linguistics.