Sujet : Thomas Young died (10-5-1829)
De : benlizro (at) *nospam* ihug.co.nz (Ross Clark)
Groupes : sci.langDate : 11. May 2024, 02:33:16
Autres entêtes
Organisation : A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID : <v1mht3$1pmoe$1@dont-email.me>
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"Polymath...made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology."
Some of you probably know the other stuff, but it's the last that's most familiar here. I believe PTD was of the opinion that Young deserved at least as much credit as Champollion for the decipherment of hieroglyphics, if not more.
More detail at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Young_(scientist)
And that ain't all. Crystal points out that Young coined the term "Indo-european" (in an 1814 review of Adelung's _Mithridates_).
AND
Here's a nice statement by Young (from the same review) about the "language/dialect" business that has been a perennial on sci.lang and a.u.e.:
"It is ... absolutely impossible to fix a correct and positive criterion of the degree of variation which is to constitute...a distinct language: for instance, whether Danish and Swedish are two languages or two dialects of one...."
AND
"In an appendix to his 1796 Göttingen dissertation De corporis hvmani viribvs conservatricibvs there are four pages added proposing a universal phonetic alphabet (so as 'not to leave these pages blank'; lit.: "Ne vacuae starent hae paginae, libuit e praelectione ante disputationem habenda tabellam literarum vniuersalem raptim describere"). It includes 16 "pure" vowel symbols, nasal vowels, various consonants, and examples of these, drawn primarily from French and English." (Wiki)