The Lautgesetz-Controversy

The essays reproduced in this volume represent the major and characteristic documents in that flood of literature that was produced during the neogrammarian controversy. At that time, the entire community of linguists came face to face with the most profound problems of its theory and practice; it was a true crisis of empirical interpretation. Therefore, these essays are of much more than ‘mere’ historical interest: each one of them plunges directly into the central issues of the science of hist