Karl Verner
Danish linguist / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl Adolf Verner (1846-1896) was a Danish linguist and a pioneer linguist in the study of phonetics. He was deeply interested in phonetic systems of the Indo-European languages.[1] One of his linguistic fascinations was accentology.[2]
Verner was born in Denmark and studied at the University of Copenhagen, where he received his Ph.D. in 1867. He was a famous linguist. He never worked for any university as a professor. Some universities asked him to work as professor for them. He always refused and preferred his job in the library of Halle.[3] In Halle, he met many young linguists from the University in Leipzig. Contacts with other linguists further directed him towards his linguistic future.[4]
Verner’s work and influence on linguistics was so important that people still study him and use his ideas for their own books and articles. His greatest contribution to linguistics is called Verner’s Law. The discovery of this law explained some issues with Grimm’s Law whose rules were not enough to explain all exceptions[5] in the historical development of languages.