Friedrich Gedike on why and how to compare the world’s languages: a stepping stone between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt? KU Leuven
This paper discusses and reproduces a short text by Friedrich Gedike (1754–1803), a key figure of the German Spätaufklärung. Gedike published “Plan und Ankündigung eines Universalglossariums der Rußischen Kaiserin” in 1785 after P. S. Pallas had announced his famous comparative linguistic undertaking (Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia), the first volume of which would be published two years later. My contribution seeks to demonstrate that ...