Die Anfänge Der Rumänischen Sprachwissenschaft
Summary
The fact that Rumanian is one of the languages studied in the Grammatik der romanischen [sic] Sprachen of F. Diez is by no means as natural as we might think it today. In Mithridates, which appeared in 1809, Rumanian is still defined as a “Romance-Slavic” language, which thus does not explicitly belong to the Romance languages.
In the field of Rumanian studies, the first decades of the last century were marked by an increasing interest in the grammatical and lexical description of Rumanian. The substantial contribution of Rumanian philologists, however, was only appreciated outside Rumania many years later, at a time when comparative studies, especially those concerned with the Romance languages, felt the need for a deeper knowledge of Rumanian.
While Diez and Fuchs, for example, were content to make use of either German-Rumanian manuels, or of studies written in German (Kopitar 1829, Schott 1845), the following generation (that is, Miklosich, Rösler, Mussafia and Schuchardt) tried to obtain first-hand information directly from Rumanian writers, who, although their materials were often tendentious and partial, nevertheless offered the richest source of information on Rumanian. Recourse to studies by Rumanians on their mother tongue proved even more necessary as the field of interest was transferred from global descriptions to more detailed linguistic studies. The studies of Miklosich, Rösler and Mussafia marked the beginning of Rumanian philology abroad, which, however, would soon be more fully developed by Rumanian philologists such as Hasdeu, Lambrior, Şǎineanu and Philippide. These were fully conversant with contemporary European linguistic trends, as well as with the work of their Rumanian predecessors. Among these, Ion Heliade Rǎdulescu and Ioan Maiorescu represent two different directions in Rumanian philology in the first half of the 19th century.
The work of Heliade is important in several respects. On the one hand, it is related to the ideas of the first Rumanian philologists of the so-called Transylvanian School – which was a continuation of both Classical and Illuminist studies – on the other hand, it is characterized by a large number of original remarks, which although sporadic and unorganized, witness to an awareness of contemporary linguistic problems.
While Heliade was not familiar with Western researches based on the comparative method, Maiorescu was strongly influenced by them. The present study shows for the first time parallels between certain fundamental ideas of F. Bopp and I. Maiorescu concerning the origin of language and the function and origin of a number of grammatical elements.
From the point of view of the historiography of Rumanian linguistics, the ideas of Heliade and Maiorescu which are discussed in the present study are usually considered to be of secondary importance against those dealing with the problem of the formation of a Rumanian literary language. This problem, as well as that of the Romanicity of the Rumanian language, occupies a major position in the work of all Rumanian linguists of the last century. For general linguistics, these problems do not play the same role. On the other hand, many of the ideas expressed in passing show that the points of contact between Rumanian linguistics and linguistic studies in other countries are not merely incidental.