FROM THE LIBRARY OF GEORGE HOWARD DARWIN

RASK, ERASMUS CHRISTIAN.

A Grammar of the Icelandic or Old Norse Tongue. Translated from the Swedish of by George Webbe Dasent M. A.

London, William Pickering, 1843.

8vo. In contemporary cloth, rebacked. With stains and repairs to boards. Inner hinges reinforced. Previous owner's name to verso of front board: "G. H. Darwin / April 1869" (Charles Darwin's son). Light foxing throughout, primarily affecting first leaves. VIII, 272, (1) pp. + 1 plate. 


First substantial English translation, with an interisting provenance, of Rask’s pioneering Old Norse grammar (originally published in Danish in 1811), one of the foundational works of modern comparative linguistics.

The present copy belonged to George Howard Darwin, (son of Charles Darwin) distinguished mathematician and astronomer, best known for his work on tidal theory and the evolution of the Earth–Moon system.

Rask was among the earliest scholars to treat Old Norse (Icelandic) as a systematic and a historically grounded language, rather than a curiosity of antiquarian interest. His work helped establish the methodological basis for what would become Indo-European philology.

Rasmus Rask is one of the absolutely most prominent and famous Danish philologers and is very well esteemed worldwide. He was the first to systematically study the ancient Nordic languages and is the discoverer of the relations between the consonants in the Indo-European languages. This discovery served as the foundation of the rules Jacob Grimm later formulated, underlying the Germanic and High-German soundshifts. In PMM, Rask is identified as "one of the founders of the modern science of language." (PMM 266).

Order-nr.: 63108

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