Gabelentz at Humboldt

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Dear Martin,
just a brief note:
> If you want to know more about Georg von der Gabelentz (who coined the 
> term "typology"),
Well, I would be a bit cautious concerning the use of the term 'coined'. 
It would perhaps be better to say 'in the writings of whom the use of 
the term 'typology' has been documented first' or 'hwo applied the term 
'tyüplogiy' for "grammatical statistics" (Gabelentz' words). If we start 
from the fact that the term /type/typus/ etc. had been widely used in 
the the late 18th century and early 19th century (Linné, Cuvier, 
Lamarck, Goethe, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, to name just a few), we can 
safely assume that it belonged to the standard repertoire of early 
'classificatory sciences'. By that time, compounds based on '-logy' 
seemed to have been quite stylish, too (it would be quite interesting to 
collect all the -logies' coined by that time). This is e.g. illustrated 
by the term 'morphology', introduced by Goethe and Carl Friedrich 
Burdach 1817 (Goethe used the term already in a diary notice from 1796. 
Burdach also introduced the term 'bio-logy'). From this we can infer 
that the compound (German) Typo-logie has been in the air since long, 
even though Gabelentz  reclaims its use to 'baptize' the above-mentioned 
method: "Dürfte man ein angeborenes Kind taufen, ich würde den Namen 
Typologie wählen". Note that Gabelentz does not say that he has 
'invented' or 'coined' the term, but that he has chosen the 'name'. If 
we take this quote literally, we have to assume that the 'name' had 
already been given - else it would have been difficult for Gabelentz to 
'choose' it.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang


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*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze *

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