biography
| name: |
Whitney, William Dwight
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1827–94)
|
| biography:
| Philologist and lexicographer, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. He studied at Williams College (1845), worked briefly as a bank clerk, then studied languages at the University of Breslau (1861 PhD). He taught Sanskrit at Yale and was appointed head of both that department and the modern language department. He translated the Vedas (the ancient Hindu sacred scriptures), wrote a Sanskrit grammar, and contributed to an important Sanskrit dictionary. He served as the first president of the American Philological Association (1869), and edited the Century Dictionary (6 vols, 1889–91). His interest in the origin and growth of languages, as detailed in his Language and the Study of Language (1867) and The Life and Growth of Language (1875), helped popularize the study of language. Recognizing the central importance of usage in governing language change, he was one of the first modern grammarians. His Essentials of English Grammar (1877), though never as popular as some other 19th-c grammars, is widely regarded as a ground-breaking work. |
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