AUGUST AHLQVIST’S “CULTURAL WORDS”: EXCERPTS ON THE HISTORY OF FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGE STUDY DURING THE 1860S-1880S

Abstract

Karl August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist (literary pseudonym A. Oksanen) was a Finnish scholar, philologist and patriot who worked hard to create the Finnish standard language. The authors of the paper turn to some milestone facts from A. Ahlqvist’s academic biography. His meetings with some outstanding scholars, scientific expeditions to the kindred Finno-Ugric peoples, gathering of the unique field data as well as his educational activity were among those events. So-called “cultural words” became the main research topic of the paper. A. Ahlqvist classified “cultural words” according to human endeavors, locating genuine Finnish words among the loanwords. Having come to the conclusion that proper Finnish vocabulary comprised words which defined historically early, not specialized kinds of labour, A. Ahlqvist got firmly convinced that this fact witnessed the people’s historic youth period rather than its backwardness. Doing his research the scholar came to another important conclusion that the most part of the linguistic methodology was outdated then and needed updating. Thus A. Ahlqvist can be called a forerunner of the Neogrammarian turn. A. Ahlqvist became a pioneer in the Finno-Ugric language etymology study as well as in interdisciplinary approach in science, using the opportunities of “cultural words” analysis in the framework of the comparative historical method and as a means to reconstruct the Finnish ethnic history and culture.