A World of Words

Revisiting the Work of Renward Brandstetter (1860-1942) on Lucerne and Austronesia. Edited by Robert Blust and Jürg Schneider.

Including ten essays, a chronology of his life and a bibliography of his publications, this book describes and analyzes Brandstetters's scientific work, not only on Austronesian languages. Renward Brandstetter’s work has played an important role in advancing the progress of Austronesian linguistics. In this volume, the work of this great scholar is described and analyzed in detail. The articles cover the major fields on which this polymath has worked over a period of 60 years: Swiss-German dialects, historical and comparative linguistics, Austronesian languages, Malay and Buginese literature, and the cultural and language history of the Swiss canton of Lucerne. Renward Brandstetter was a Swiss linguist whose greatest scientific achievement is his contribution to our understanding of ‘Indonesian’ languages - his term - or Austronesian languages as they are called nowadays. Using texts, dictionaries and grammars from more than 30 languages, he was the first to posit a proto-language (Urindonesisch) for this language family, and the first to attempt a systematic comparative treatment of sound system and morphology of these languages. In the latter part of his life, he was driven by a desire to contribute to peace and the recognition of equality among peoples and nations. In a series entitled “We peoples of the Indonesian earth”, he gave voice to the “Indonesian” peoples and demonstrated that their languages and literatures are in no respect inferior to Indo-European languages. XIII,156 Seiten und 8 Tafeln, broschiert (Frankfurter Forschungen zu Südostasien; Band 8/Harrassowitz Verlag 2012)