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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Winteler, Jost (1846–1929)

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J Winteler was born in a village in the Swiss canton of Glarus. He studied philology in Jena, Germany. In his famous doctoral thesis, published in 1876, he described his native dialect of Kerenz. By analyzing the activity of the organs producing language (dialect) sounds, he was the founder of the so-called sound physiology (together with his teacher Eduard Sievers). In his prestructural approach, he noticed that there are sounds with and others without the capacity to change meaning. Purely structural terms were used already, such as Lautgegensatze (‘contrasts of sound’), (Sprach-)Bau ‘(linguistic) structure,’ and Konsonantensystem, Sprachsystem ‘system of consonants, of language.’ There was speculation over Winteler's influence on Einstein's theory of relativity for two reasons: Winteler was Einstein's mentor and rooming house owner, and he made a remark on the ‘relativity of conditions’ or ‘configurational relativity,’ but which meant that the configuration of language features is relative depending on the language system.