Max Muller管見 : 言語研究史からみて

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タイトル別名
  • Max Muller カンケン ゲンゴ ケンキュウシ カラ ミテ
  • A Note on Max Muller in the Field of Philology

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説明

Friedrich Max Muller, whose works stimulated wide-spread interest in the study of philology, mythology and religion, was supposed to have some kind of influence also on the development in the study of language in Japan, but has not been known to us yet. In this view the writer introduces him to the Japanese readers, giving the outline of his life and his fundamental views on language itself and investigating his ideas and his method of study concerning the changes in languages, especially in the dialect and the phonetic decay, and his morphological classification of languages. He was thought to follow August Schleicher in the view of language itself except the latter's idea that language is an autonomous organic matter. But Max Muller is one step ahead of him in regarding spoken language as an object to examine. Being an keen observer of the phonetic changes in languages, he perceived the rules in the changes and named them Grimm's Law to let philologists recognize them. However, if Max Muller had considered language as a social convention to acquire, not just as a natural phenomenon, his understanding of this idea would have been more profound and would have been developed in further ways. He only employed this law as a basis of distinguishing phonetic change from dialectic regeneration. The limitation of his study might be the fact that he was forced to investigate languages within the frame of his fundamental notion of the natural phenomenon of language. On the other hand, he was the man to establish Vedic studies and became the first editor of the Rig-Veda. This achievement is noteworthy in the study of Sanskrit. Again, nothing was known about comparative philology in England when he came to that country; being the first in the field he introduced and popularized the new science. His fame was of course due to his ability and the extensive range of his writings, but undoubtedly enhanced by a combination of opportunities such as can rarely fall to the lot of any scholar. For the study of Indo-European langua

ges he offered full information based on his good knowledge of languages and gave suggestions from the viewpoint of comparative study. His influence on linguistic study in Japan will be examined in a further study.

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