August Leskien

Leskien, August 

Born July 8, 1840, in Kiel; died Sept. 20, 1916, in Leipzig. German linguist. Academician of the academies of sciences of Berlin and Munich. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1876).

Leskien was one of the founders of the neogrammarian school. He studied at the universities of Kiel, Leipzig, Jena, and Göttingen. He was a professor at the universities of Jena (1869) and Leipzig (1870–1916). Leskien’s main works were in Indo-European linguistics and the Baltic and Slavic languages. He studied the phonology of the Baltic and Slavic languages and contributed to the development of a comparative grammar of these languages. Leskien published works on Slavic and Lithuanian folklore.

WORKS

Grammatik der serbo-kroatischen Sprache, part 1. Heidelberg, 1914.
Litauisches Lesebuch, mit Grammatik und Wörterbuch. Heidelberg, 1919.
Handbuch der altbulgarischen Sprache, 7th ed. Heidelberg, 1955.
Die Deklination im Slawisch-Litauischen und Germanischen. Leipzig, 1963.

REFERENCE

Streitberg, W. “August Leskien.” In Portraits of Linguists, vol. 1. Bloomington-London, 1966. Pages 469–73.