William D. Whitney | |
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.jpg) Portrait of Whitney | |
| Born | William Dwight Whitney (1827-02-09)February 9, 1827 |
| Died | June 7, 1894(1894-06-07) (aged 67) New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | Williams College University of Berlin University of Tübingen University of Breslau |
| Occupation(s) | Linguist, philologist |
| Employer | Yale University |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Wooster Baldwin |
| Children |
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| Relatives | Whitney family |
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William Dwight Whitney (February 9, 1827 – June 7, 1894) was an Americanlinguist,philologist, andlexicographer known for his work onSanskrit grammar andVedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was the first president of theAmerican Philological Association and editor-in-chief ofThe Century Dictionary.
William Dwight Whitney was born inNorthampton, Massachusetts, on February 9, 1827. His father was Josiah Dwight Whitney (1786–1869) of theNew England Dwight family. His mother was Sarah Williston (1800–1833) ofEasthampton, Massachusetts.[1]
Whitney enteredWilliams College at fifteen, graduating in 1845. He continued studying and worked at a bank inNorthampton for several years. He was at first interested in natural sciences, and assisted his older brotherJosiah Whitney on a geological survey of theLake Superior region in 1849, having charge of the botany, the barometrical observations and the accounts.[1] On this expedition, he began the study of Sanskrit in his leisure hours. Around this time Whitney was living atYale University inConnecticut.
In 1850, Whitney left the United States to study philology, and especially Sanskrit, in Germany. There, he spent his winters at Berlin studying underFranz Bopp andAlbrecht Weber, and his summers were devoted to research underRudolph von Roth atTübingen. It was during his time in Germany that Whitney began a major life project, "preparation of an edition and translation of theAtharva-veda."[2]
He gained wide reputation for his scholarship in the field. In 1853, Yale University offered Whitney a position as "Professor of Sanskrit", a position made just for him and the first of its kind in the United States. It was not until 1861, however, that he received his doctoral degree from the University of Breslau. He also taught modern languages at theSheffield Scientific School, and served as secretary to theAmerican Oriental Society from 1857 until he became its president in 1884.[citation needed] TheAmerican Philosophical Society elected Whitney to membership in 1863.[3]
On August 28, 1856, Whitney married Elizabeth Wooster Baldwin. She was the daughter ofRoger Sherman Baldwin, US Senator and Governor of the State ofConnecticut.[citation needed]They had six children:[citation needed]
He died at his home, onWhitney Avenue, on June 7, 1894.[citation needed]
Whitney revised definitions for the 1864 edition of Webster'sAmerican Dictionary, and in 1869 became a founder and firstpresident of theAmerican Philological Association.[citation needed] In the same year he also became Yale's professor of comparative philology. Whitney also gave instruction in French and German in the college until 1867, and in the Sheffield scientific school until 1886.[4] He wrote metrical translations of theVedas, and numerous papers on the Vedas and linguistics, many of which were collected in theOriental and Linguistic Studies series (1872–74). He wrote several books onlanguage, and grammar textbooks ofEnglish,French,German, and Sanskrit.[citation needed]
HisSanskrit Grammar (1879) is notable in part for the criticism it contains of theAshtadhyayi, the Sanskrit grammar attributed toPanini. Whitney describes the Ashtadhyayi as "containing the facts of the language cast into the highly artful and difficult form of about four thousand algebraic-like rules (in the statement and arrangement of which brevity alone is had in view at the cost of distinctness and unambiguousness)."[5]
In hisCourse in General Linguistics in the chapter on the 'Immutability and Mutability of the Sign',Ferdinand de Saussure credits Whitney with insisting on the arbitrary nature oflinguistic signs.
The linguistRoman Jakobson (Jakobson 1965, 23-4) remarks that Whitney exerted a deep influence on European linguistic thought by promoting the thesis of language as a social institution. In his fundamental books of the 1860s and 1870s, language was defined as a system of arbitrary and conventional signs. This doctrine was borrowed and expanded byFerdinand de Saussure, and it entered into the posthumous edition of his 'Course', adjusted by his disciplesC. Bally andAlbert Sechehaye (1916). The teacher declares: "On the essential point it seems to us that the American linguist is right: language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon remains indifferent." Jakobson writes, Arbitrariness is posited as the first of two basic principles for defining the nature of the verbal sign: "The bond uniting the signifier with the signified is arbitrary." The commentary points out that no one has controverted this principle "but it is often easier to discover a truth than to assign to it the appropriate place."[6]
Although he suffered from a heart ailment in his later years, he was editor-in-chief of the first edition of the respectedCentury Dictionary, which appeared from 1889 to 1891.
NB: Dates marked * may not be first publication.
