OTTO JESPERSEN'S COPY

RASK, RASMUS.

Spansk Sproglære efter en ny Plan udarbejdet af R. Rask. [Spanish Grammar]

København, Beekens Forlag, 1824. 8vo. Cont. hcalf, somewhat worn. Spine with wear and a tear to front hinge. Internally brownspotted. Inner hinges a bit weak. 22,226 pp.

First edition of Rask's important "Spanish Grammar", Otto Jespersen's copy, with his name in own hand on front free end-paper.

Otto Jespersen (1860 - 1943) was one of the greatest linguists of the 20th century. He was professor of English language at the university of Copenhagen, and his works on English language and grammar are some of the best within their field and they were used at most English universities. He is the inventor of the famous artificial language "Novial", and his work "Fonetik" is considered a mile-stone of European linguistics.

"Through a long life Otto Jespersen has offered valuable contributions to general phonetics and grammar and to our knowledge of English and Danish and other languages, thus being a worthy successor of the great Danish linguists of the last century (Rask, Thomsen, Verner, and others). His revolutionary work for the improvement of the teaching of modern languages has had great effects far beyond the boundary of his own country." (Niels Haislund, in: Sebeok, Portraits of Linguists. A Biographical Source Book for the History of Western Linguistics, 1746-1963, 1967).

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 yielded as "one of the founders of the modern science of language." (PMM 266).

Order-nr.: 38780