2024/06/07 by Swiggers, Pierre
paper · doi:10.25364/04.49:2023.94.11
In 1885 Hugo Schuchardt published his pamphlet Ueber die Lautgesetze. Gegen die Junggrammatiker. It contained a critical analysis of the principle of the exceptionless character of the Lautgesetze (sound laws). Schuchardt’s criticisms were not directed against the adequacy of particular sound laws; they were intended as a discussion, leading to the rejection of some fundamental assumptions in the neogrammarian approach, as formulated in the publications of Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Hermann Osthoff and Hermann Paul. Schuchardt not only disagreed with the strict opposition made by the Junggrammatiker between physiological and psychological factors; he also radically departed from their homogenising conception of languages and linguistic communities. On the higher epistemological level, Schuchardt rejected the neogrammarian use of the term ‘laws’ in dealing with historical language data. On this point, he sided with the Swiss linguist Ludwig Tobler, who in 1879 had critically discussed the status of ‘laws’ in (historical) linguistics. Immediately upon the publication of Schuchardt (1885), the two scholars entertained epistolary contacts.