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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Schuchardt, Hugo (1842–1927)

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H. Schuchardt's doctoral thesis submitted to Bonn University in 1862 became the basis of the famous three volumes on the vocalism of Vulgar Latin (1866–1868), building a bridge between Classical and Romance Philology. He became a full professor of Romance Philology in Halle, Central Germany, and thereafter in Graz, Austria (1876–1900). In his 770 publications, Schuchardt dealt with the classification of Romance dialects, with etymologies and the cultural background of words discussed, and with descriptions of Portuguese-, French-, Spanish-, English- and Dutch-based creole languages so that Schuchardt became the founder of creolistics. Language mixture in Europe, Africa and Asia was described, as well as the origin of languages and the question of an artificial world language. Language development must be grasped by describing the change of the universal concepts based on the things of the real world, which therefore have to be included in the objectives of linguistic research (things and words). Word history comes before language history and the history of culture. The mixture of different cultures leads to the mixture of language systems, as shown in Schuchardt's studies on creole languages and pidgins, and on the lingua franca, a term used by Schuchardt beginning in 1909.