Pedersen, Holger

Pedersen, Holger

(born April 7, 1867, Gelballe, Den.—died Oct. 25, 1953, Copenhagen) Danish linguist. He specialized in comparative Celtic grammar but made influential contributions to many other areas of linguistics. In addition to his Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages, 2 vol. (1909–13), he published works on Albanian, Armenian, Russian, and Indo-European dialects; on Lithuanian, Hittite, Tocharian, Czech, and Turkish phonology; on the relationship of Indo-European languages to the Semitic and Finno-Ugric languages; and on the origin of runes.

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Pedersen, Holger 

Born Apr. 7, 1867, in Gjelballe, near Kolding, Jutland; died Oct. 25, 1953, in Copenhagen. Danish linguist.

Pedersen graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1890 and became a professor there in 1903, serving as chairman of the university’s subdepartment of comparative grammar from 1914 to 1937. He was a specialist in the comparative and historical study of Indo-European languages and in comparative and historical linguistics. His authoritative works based on comparative phonology and morphology dealt with such Indo-European languages as Celtic, Hitto-Luwian, Albanian, Armenian, To-charian, and Slavic, as well as with the Semitic and Finno-Ugric languages. Pedersen cited significant consonantal correspondences to justify his theory of the Nostratic kinship of languages.

He is the author of a work on the development of comparative linguistics in the 19th century.

WORKS

Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen, vols. 1–2. Göttingen, 1909–13.
Sprogvidenskaben. Copenhagen, 1924.
Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century: Methods and Results. Cambridge, Mass., 1931.
Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen, 2nd ed. Copenhagen, 1938.

REFERENCES

Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Holger Pedersen…. Copenhagen, 1937.
Sommerfelt, A. “Holger Pedersen.” Orbis, 1954, vol. 3, no. 1.