Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835)

Abstract

Wilhelm von Humboldt was a writer, politician, linguist, and language philosopher who developed key concepts in the theory of language and had a strong influence on sychronic and structural descriptive linguistics. He studied at the universities of Frankfurt an der Oder and Gottingen, and maintained lifelong friendships with Goethe and Schiller. He stayed in Paris 1797–1801 and journeyed to Spain and the Basque Country. His subsequent positions included: ambassador to Rome 1802–8, reformer of the Prussian educational system, founder of the University of Berlin 1810, and minister. After resigning from office 1819, Humboldt carried out linguistic research in Tegel 1820–35, regularly presenting linguistic papers at the Berlin Academy. He laid down the principles of a philosophically oriented anthropological research of the empirical cultural manifestations of humankind. After writing political and aesthetical essays, Humboldt concentrated on language. On the basis of Kantian philosophy, he developed a philosophy of language as the ‘formative organ of thought.’ He studied many languages, including Basque, Amerindian languages, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese and the Malayo-Polynesian languages to which his major work is devoted. He developed a huge program of descriptive structural linguistics with special emphasis on the ‘characterization’ of individual languages on the basis of their literature.