Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp (1791-1867), German philologist, born in Mainz. For his pioneering analysis of the grammatical forms of the Indo-European languages, he became known as one of the founders of the science of comparative philology, along with contemporary philologists the Danish Rasmus Christian Rask and the German Jacob Grimm. During his studies in Germany Bopp developed an interest in Eastern languages and philosophy and in 1812 he went to Paris to study Sanskrit. As a result of this study he published his first work, Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprachen (“On the conjugation system of Sanskrit in comparison with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic languages”) in 1916. With this, Bopp established the importance of studying Sanskrit grammar when comparing Indo-European languages.

In 1821 he was made professor of philology and Oriental literature at the University of Berlin. Bopp published many respected works in his lifetime, though his work linking the Malayo-Polynesian languages (see Austronesian languages) to the Indo-European languages (Über die Verwandtschaft der malayisch-polynesischen Sprachen mit den indisch-europäischen, 1841) was found to be in error. Among his other works is A Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Slavonic Languages (1833-1852; trans. 1856), the first major description of Indo-European grammar.