fortis and lenis

[Jan Ivarsson]

The Dictionary of the Swedish National Encyclopaedia gives the dates 1882 for lenis and 1887 for fortis as linguistic terms, but cites no source.
Jan Ivarsson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herb Stahlke" <HSTAHLKE at GW.BSU.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: den 11 september 2000 19:00
Subject: fortis and lenis


> I've been looking for 19th c. uses of the terms fortis and lenis.
> The earliest the OED gives is Webster's 1908 followed by a series
> of linguistics articles starting from the early 1930s.  I checked
> several etymological dictionaries, including Klein's, and fortis
> does not show up.  Lehmann, in his _A Reader in Nineteenth-Century
> Historical Indo-European Linguistics, translates something in
> articles by von Raumer (1856) and Grassmann (1863) as "hard" and
> "soft" in reference to consonants that have also been classified
> as fortis and lenis.  As much as those sound like reasonable
> translations for fortis and lenis, I don't have access here to the
> German originals to check against.  I checked several German
> dictionaries and the one German etymological dictionary our
> library has, and fortis and lenis don't show up there either.
> Does anyone know of earlier uses of the terms than Webster's, in
> English or elsewhere?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Herb Stahlke