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Rüdiger Harnisch: Sprachwissenschaft im Epochenumbruch von der Spätaufklärung zur Romantik. Zum 150. Todestag von Johann Andreas Schmeller

The present article examines and discusses the idea of an epochal break in continuity between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The paper concentrates on J. A. Schmeller, one of the pioneers of German Studies and the founder of academic research into dialectology. Schmeller, the 150th anniversary of whose death takes place in 2002, is known as the "Bavarian Grimm". His work shows elements of the so-called "Romantic", or rather historical-comparative, approach to the study of language, but other comments made by him belong rather to the grammatical tradition of the Enlightenment. It is shown that both schools can be internally differentiated, but, at the same time, that the respective theoretical frameworks followed by their characteristic representatives ( J. Grimm and Adelung) always include features typical of the other direction (§ 2). Following on from this, Schmeller’s position in the intellectual history of the period is redefined (§ 3), firstly, in the context of the universal grammar of the "Enlightenment" and in that of the historical-comparative grammar of "Romanticism". This reassessment takes place within the theoretical contexts of apriorism (3.1) and the historical approach to language (3.2). Secondly, Schmeller ‘s work is investigated in connection with three areas, which have hitherto received too little attention in discussions of his historical significance, namely, articulatory phonetics and phonology (§ 3.3) and sensualistic semiotics (§ 3.4). Particular attention is devoted to the last of these, since we can trace a direct line of development from the rationalist-universal grammar of the French Ideologues to Schmeller and to the semiotic typology of Charles Sanders Peirce. As a result of our examination of Schmeller’s significance in the history of ideas, we can conclude that there was no clear break in continuity between the two epochs (§ 4)