Darwin-L Message Log 5:185 (January 1994)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<5:185>From 00HFSTAHLKE@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu  Thu Jan 27 16:14:13 1994

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 17:10:35 -0500 (EST)
From: 00hfstahlke@leo.bsuvc.bsu.edu
Subject: Re: History of "adaptation" in historical linguistics
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu

On the term Hamitic, no less a comparativist that Carl Meinhof, whose
comparative Bantu work was a model of the application of
Neo-Grammarian methods to non-Indo-European langauges, advocated a
version of the Hamitic hypothesis.  There has been a suggestion that
he was doing this under National Socialist influence, but I don't know
how much substance there is to that claim.  It is possible that he
adopted the hypothesis because nothing else seemed to work at the
time.

By way of introduction, I'm an Africanist specialized in West African
Niger-Congo languages.  I do some comparative work and also some
phonology, but these days I do mostly academic computing
administration.

Herb Stahlke

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