#OTD 160 years ago, Emil Sieg (1866–1951) was born 🤩 An Indologist working on texts from the Turfan expeditions, he identified, together with Wilhelm Siegling, two languages known as Tocharian A and B, which they showed to belong to the Indo-European language family. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 252 years ago, Hannah Kilham (1774–1832) was born 🥳 She was an English missionary active in West Africa and a pioneer in documenting languages such as Wolof and Mandinka. Kilham also supported education through these languages. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 105 years ago, Edith Braun (1921–2016) was born 🤩 An expert on the dialect landscape of Saarland, she was the author of both scholarly and popular works on the subject and also appeared regularly on the radio. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics

#OTD 180 years ago, Hermann Paul (1846–1921) was born 🎂 A medievalist focusing on Middle High German, lexicologist, lexicographer, and member of the Neogrammarian school, he is probably best known as the author of "Principien der Sprachgeschichte", published in 1880. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 241 years ago, Johann Andreas Schmeller (1785–1852) was born 🥳 He published the first modern edition of the Heliand, is considered a pioneer of German dialectology, and introduced the use of the schwa symbol in his work on Bavarian dialects. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 213 years ago, Ivar Aasen (1813–1896) was born 🤩 A Norwegian dialectologist, lexicologist, translator, poet, and playwright, he is best known today for creating Nynorsk, one of the two official written standards of Norwegian, the other being Bokmål. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 381 years ago, Anne Dacier (1645–1720) was born 🎉 A classicist, translator, commentator, and editor of numerous ancient works, she is known for her translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and works by Sappho, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 144 years ago, Vilém Mathesius (1882–1945) was born 🎂 An expert on the history of English, a co-founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, and a pioneer structuralist, he later turned his attention to the study of rhythm and intonation as his eyesight deteriorated. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 68 years ago, Anne Vainikka (1958–2018) was born 🎂 She was a pioneer in second language acquisition and a specialist in Finnish syntax and is perhaps best known as the co-author of the Minimal Trees Hypothesis with Martha Young-Scholten. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 150 years ago, Adeline Rittershaus (1876–1924) was born 🎉 A scholar of Old Germanic languages and a collector of Old Icelandic folk tales, she became the first woman allowed to teach at the University of Zürich’s Faculty of Arts in 1902. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

Vocatives, Digga! 🤩 Janel Zoske (@freieuniversitaet.bsky.social) and Tanja Ackermann (Universität Bielefeld) analyse the socio-pragmatic functions of various vocative types, such as Digga or Alter, in German in a questionnaire study of more than 3,000 participants. 🔗 www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/11...

#OTD 183 years ago, Johannes Schmidt (1843–1901) was born 🥳 An expert in comparative Indo-European grammar, he is best known for the Wave Theory, alongside related ideas developed by Hugo Schuchardt, which challenged and complemented the then-dominant family tree model. #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays

#OTD 105 years ago, Eugenio Coșeriu (1921–2002) was born 🎉 A major figure in Romance linguistics, general linguistics, and linguistic historiography, he is best known for developing the distinction between diastratic, diatopic, diaphasic, and diachronic variation. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 169 years ago, Carl Meinhof (1857–1944) was born. First professor of African linguistics to be appointed in Germany, he was an expert in Bantu languages. In 1933, he joined the NSDAP. His great-niece, Ulrike Meinhof, later became a member of the Red Army Faction. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 103 years ago, Morris Halle (1923–2018) was born 🎉 A pioneer of modern linguistics, he was an expert in generative phonology and a contributor to Distributed Morphology. In 1974, he served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 220 years ago, Johann Kaspar Zeuß (1806–1856) was born 🥳 An expert on Celtic history and culture, he published Grammatica Celtica (1853) that established Celtic languages as part of the Indo-European family. He is widely regarded as the founder of Celtic philology. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 178 years ago, Philipp Wegener (1848–1916) was born 🤩 Although "just" a high school teacher, he was one of the pioneers of functionalism. While sympathetic to the Neogrammarians, he saw language as a form of action, an instrument of communication shaped by use. #LinguisticBirthdayds #Histlx

#OTD 133 years ago, Gladys Reichard (1893–1955) was born 🎉 An influential anthropologist and expert on Native American languages such as Wiyot, Coeur d'Alene, and Navajo, she was particularly interested in language variation. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 171 years ago, Odille Morison (1855–1933) was born 🤩 A community leader of the Tsimshian, she was also a translator, ethnographer, and expert on Sm'algyax, the Tsimshian language spoken on the North Coast of British Columbia. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics

#OTD 166 years ago, Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) was born 🥳 Initially specializing in language teaching and phonetics, he became an expert on the history of English, also active in the international language movement, contributing to Esperanto, Ido, and his own Novial. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 197 years ago, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907) was born 🥳 A professor of comparative philology in Milan, he was an expert on Italian dialects, Romani, and Sanskrit. In 1881, he also formulated the so-called substratum theory. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 253 years ago, Josef Jungmann (1773–1847) was born 🎉 A poet, translator, lexicographer, and key figure of the Czech National Revival, he is best known for his Czech–German dictionary, a milestone in the standardization of written Czech. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

Individual Differences in Pragmatic Processing Where? Seminarzentrum at @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social When? 10-11 September 2026 More details? www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/en/v/exrean/... @erc.europa.eu

#OTD 92 years ago, Pieter Seuren (1934–2021) was born 🥳 He was an expert in logic and formal grammar theory, a specialist in Creole studies, notably Sranan and Mauritian Creole, and a historian of linguistics. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 168 years ago, Franz Boas (1858–1942) was born 🎉 He was a pioneer of cultural anthropology and linguistics, as well as an advocate of cultural relativism. His fieldwork focused on the Indigenous languages of the Americas, including Inuit languages and Kwak’wala. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

Martin Konvička (@teapotlinguist.bsky.social) and Andrea Pešková will wrap up our linguistic summer at @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social. Join us for a journey through the world of the Czech language: its history, orthography, sounds, grammar and links to Berlin. 🔗 www.dcl.fu-berlin.de/veranstaltun...

#OTD 186 years ago, August Leskien (1840–1916) was born 🤩 A comparative linguist who specialized in the Baltic and Slavic languages, he was a central figure in the Neogrammarian school. He formulated Leskien's law, which describes the shortening of vowels in Lithuanian. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 137 years ago, Charles K. Ogden (1889–1957) was born 🥳 He is best known for The Meaning of Meaning (1923), co-authored with I. A. Richards, in which he introduced the concept of the semiotic triangle and famously claimed that “the gostak distims the doshes.” #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 96 years ago, Carol Chomsky (1930–2008) was born 🤩 A specialist in child language acquisition, she focused particularly on syntax while also conducting influential research on the development of children's reading skills. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

#OTD 178 years ago, Heinrich Hübschmann (1848–1908) was born 🎉 A pioneering linguist, he demonstrated that Armenian, despite its many Iranian loanwords, is not an Iranian language but an independent branch of the Indo-European family. #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx