Carl Meinhof | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 23 July 1857 Barzwitz,Province of Pomerania (now Barzowice, Poland) |
| Died | 11 February 1944(1944-02-11) (aged 86) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Linguist |
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a Germanlinguist and one of the first linguists to studyAfrican languages.
Meinhof was born inBarzwitz nearRügenwalde in theProvince of Pomerania,Kingdom of Prussia. He studied at theUniversity of Tübingen[citation needed] and at theUniversity of Greifswald.[1] In 1905 he became professor at theSchool of Oriental Studies inBerlin. On 5 May 1933 he became a member of theNazi Party.
His most notable work was developing comparativegrammar studies of theBantu languages, building on the pioneering work ofWilhelm Bleek. In his work, Meinhof looked at the commonBantu languages such asSwahili andZulu to determine similarities and differences.
In his work, Meinhof looked atnoun classes with all Bantu languages having at least 10 classes and with 22 classes of nouns existing throughout the Bantu languages, though his definition of noun class differs slightly from the accepted one, considering the plural form of a word as belonging to a different class from the singular form (thus leading, for example, to consider a language like French as having four classes instead of two). While no language has all 22 (later: 23) classes active,Venda has 20,Lozi has 18, andGanda has 16 or 17 (depending on whether the locative class 23e- is included). All Bantu languages have a noun class specifically for humans (sometimes including other animate beings).
Meinhof also examined other African languages, including groups classified at the time asKordofanian,Bushman,Khoikhoi, andHamitic.
Meinhof developed a comprehensive classification scheme for African languages. His classification was the standard one for many years (Greenberg 1955:3). It was replaced by those ofJoseph Greenberg in 1955 and in 1963.
In 1902, Meinhof made recordings of East African music. These are among the first recordings made of traditionalAfrican music.
In 1912, Carl Meinhof publishedDie Sprachen der Hamiten (The Languages of the Hamites). He used the termHamitic. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'."[2] However, in the case of the so-calledNilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory oflanguage mixture." Meinhof did this in spite of earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston demonstrating that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in factNilotic languages with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages.[3]
Carl Meinhof was the great-uncle (the brother of the grandfather) ofUlrike Meinhof, a well known German journalist, who later became a founding member of theRed Army Faction (RAF), aleft-wing militant group operating chiefly inWest Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
