Joseph Wright (linguist)
Encyclopedia
Joseph Wright FBA
(31 October 1855 – 27 February 1930)
was an English philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology
at Oxford University.
, near Bradford
in Yorkshire
, the seventh son of Dufton Wright, a woollen cloth weaver and quarryman, and his wife Sarah Ann (née Atkinson). He started work as a "donkey-boy" in a quarry at the age of six, leading a donkey-drawn cart full of tools to the smithy to be sharpened. He later became a "doffer" – responsible for removing and replacing full bobbins – in a Yorkshire mill
in Sir Titus Salt's
model village
. Although he learnt his letters and numbers at the Salt's Factory School, he was unable to read a newspaper until he was 15. He later said of this time, "Reading and writing, for me, were as remote as any of the sciences".
By now a wool-sorter earning £1 a week, Wright became increasingly fascinated with languages and began attending night-school to learn French, German and Latin, as well as maths and shorthand. At the age of 18 he even started his own night-school, charging his colleagues twopence a week.
By 1876 he had saved £40 and could afford a term's study at the University of Heidelberg
, although he walked from Antwerp to save money.
Returning to Yorkshire, Wright continued his studies at the Yorkshire College of Science (later the University of Leeds
) while working as a schoolmaster. A former pupil of Wright's recalls that, "with a piece of chalk [he would] draw illustrative diagrams at the same time with each hand, and talk while he was doing it".
He later returned to Heidelberg and in 1885 completed a Ph.D. on Qualitative and Quantitative Changes of the Indo-Germanic Vowel System in Greek.
, and became a lecturer to the Association for the Higher Education of Women and deputy lecturer in German at the Taylor Institution
.
From 1891 to 1901 he was Deputy Professor and from 1901 to 1925 Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford.
He specialised in the Germanic languages
and wrote a range of introductory grammars for Old English, Middle English
, Old High German
, Middle High German
and Gothic
which were still being revised and reprinted 50 years after his death. He also published a historical grammar of German.
He had a strong interest in English dialects and claimed that his 1893 Windhill Dialect Grammar was "the first grammar of its kind in England." Undoubtedly, his greatest achievement was the editing of the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary
, which he published between 1898 and 1905, initially at his own expense. This remains a definitive work, a snapshot of English dialect speech at the end of the 19th century. In the course of his work on the Dictionary, he formed a committee to gather Yorkshire material, which gave rise in 1897 to the Yorkshire Dialect Society, which claims to be the world's oldest surviving dialect society. He was the author of the Dialect Test
. Wright had been offered a position at a Canadian university, who would have paid him an annual salary of £500 – a very generous salary at the time. However, Wright opted to stay in Oxford and finish the Dialect Dictionary without any financial backing from a sponsor.
Wright's papers are in the Bodleian Library
, Oxford.
1913), in which she makes reference to their various walking and cycle trips into the Yorkshire Dales
, as well as various articles and essays.
The couple had two children – Willie Boy and Mary – both of whom died in childhood.
Wright and his wife were known for their hospitality to their students and would often invite a dozen or more, both men and women, to their home for Yorkshire Sunday teas. On these occasions Wright would perform his party trick of making his Aberdeen Terrier, Jack, lick his lips when Wright said the Gothic
words for fig-tree – smakka bagms.
Although Wright was a progressive
to the extent that he believed women were entitled to a university education, he did not believe that women should be made voting members of the university, saying they were, "... less independent in judgement than men and apt to run in a body like sheep".
Although his energies were for the most part directed towards his work, Wright also enjoyed gardening and followed Yorkshire cricket and football teams.
He died of pneumonia
on 27 February 1930. His last word was "Dictionary". In 1932 his widow, Elizabeth, published a biography of Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright.
, and was one of his tutors at Oxford: studying the Grammar of the Gothic Language
with Wright seems to have been a turning-point in Tolkien's life.
In the course of editing the Dictionary he corresponded regularly with Thomas Hardy
.
Wright was greatly admired by Virginia Woolf
, who writes of him in her diary that, "The triumph of learning is that it leaves something done solidly for ever. Everybody knows now about dialect, owing to his dixery." He was the inspiration for the character of Mr Brook in The Pargiters, an early draft of The Years
.
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
(31 October 1855 – 27 February 1930)
was an English philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
at Oxford University.
Early life
Wright was born in ThackleyThackley
The village of Thackley is a small suburban area to the north east of the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire in England.- Geography :The village is loosely bordered by the village of Idle to the south, and Windhill to the west. The area to the east of the village is largely wooded and rural,...
, near Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, the seventh son of Dufton Wright, a woollen cloth weaver and quarryman, and his wife Sarah Ann (née Atkinson). He started work as a "donkey-boy" in a quarry at the age of six, leading a donkey-drawn cart full of tools to the smithy to be sharpened. He later became a "doffer" – responsible for removing and replacing full bobbins – in a Yorkshire mill
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
in Sir Titus Salt's
Titus Salt
Sir Titus Salt, 1st Baronet , born in Morley, near Leeds, was a manufacturer, politician and philanthropist in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. His father Daniel Salt was a businessman and was sent Titus to Batley Grammar School...
model village
Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model village within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, West Yorkshire, England, by the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal...
. Although he learnt his letters and numbers at the Salt's Factory School, he was unable to read a newspaper until he was 15. He later said of this time, "Reading and writing, for me, were as remote as any of the sciences".
By now a wool-sorter earning £1 a week, Wright became increasingly fascinated with languages and began attending night-school to learn French, German and Latin, as well as maths and shorthand. At the age of 18 he even started his own night-school, charging his colleagues twopence a week.
By 1876 he had saved £40 and could afford a term's study at the University of Heidelberg
Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg
The Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg is a public research university located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386, it is the oldest university in Germany and was the third university established in the Holy Roman Empire. Heidelberg has been a coeducational institution...
, although he walked from Antwerp to save money.
Returning to Yorkshire, Wright continued his studies at the Yorkshire College of Science (later the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
) while working as a schoolmaster. A former pupil of Wright's recalls that, "with a piece of chalk [he would] draw illustrative diagrams at the same time with each hand, and talk while he was doing it".
He later returned to Heidelberg and in 1885 completed a Ph.D. on Qualitative and Quantitative Changes of the Indo-Germanic Vowel System in Greek.
Career
In 1888, after his return from Germany, Wright was offered a post at Oxford University by Professor Max MüllerMax Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
, and became a lecturer to the Association for the Higher Education of Women and deputy lecturer in German at the Taylor Institution
Taylor Institution
The Taylor Institution comprises the buildings in Oxford which harbour the libraries dedicated to the study of the European Languages at Oxford University. It also includes lecture rooms used by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford...
.
From 1891 to 1901 he was Deputy Professor and from 1901 to 1925 Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford.
He specialised in the Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
and wrote a range of introductory grammars for Old English, Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
, Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
and Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
which were still being revised and reprinted 50 years after his death. He also published a historical grammar of German.
He had a strong interest in English dialects and claimed that his 1893 Windhill Dialect Grammar was "the first grammar of its kind in England." Undoubtedly, his greatest achievement was the editing of the six-volume English Dialect Dictionary
English Dialect Dictionary
English Dialect Dictionary is a dictionary of English language dialects, compiled by Joseph Wright.The English Dialect Dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications of the...
, which he published between 1898 and 1905, initially at his own expense. This remains a definitive work, a snapshot of English dialect speech at the end of the 19th century. In the course of his work on the Dictionary, he formed a committee to gather Yorkshire material, which gave rise in 1897 to the Yorkshire Dialect Society, which claims to be the world's oldest surviving dialect society. He was the author of the Dialect Test
Dialect Test
The Dialect Test was created by Joseph Wright in February 1879. It first appeared in the works of A.J. Ellis, to whom Wright dictated the test. It stands as one of the earliest methods of identifying vowel sounds and features of speech. The aim was to capture the main vowel sounds of an individual...
. Wright had been offered a position at a Canadian university, who would have paid him an annual salary of £500 – a very generous salary at the time. However, Wright opted to stay in Oxford and finish the Dialect Dictionary without any financial backing from a sponsor.
Wright's papers are in the Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
, Oxford.
Personal life
In 1896 he married Elizabeth Mary Lea (1863–1958), with whom he co-authored his Old and Middle English Grammars. She also wrote the book, Rustic Speech and Folklore (Oxford University PressOxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
1913), in which she makes reference to their various walking and cycle trips into the Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales is the name given to an upland area in Northern England.The area lies within the historic county boundaries of Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Cumbria...
, as well as various articles and essays.
The couple had two children – Willie Boy and Mary – both of whom died in childhood.
Wright and his wife were known for their hospitality to their students and would often invite a dozen or more, both men and women, to their home for Yorkshire Sunday teas. On these occasions Wright would perform his party trick of making his Aberdeen Terrier, Jack, lick his lips when Wright said the Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
words for fig-tree – smakka bagms.
Although Wright was a progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
to the extent that he believed women were entitled to a university education, he did not believe that women should be made voting members of the university, saying they were, "... less independent in judgement than men and apt to run in a body like sheep".
Although his energies were for the most part directed towards his work, Wright also enjoyed gardening and followed Yorkshire cricket and football teams.
He died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
on 27 February 1930. His last word was "Dictionary". In 1932 his widow, Elizabeth, published a biography of Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright.
Legacy
Wright was an important early influence on J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, and was one of his tutors at Oxford: studying the Grammar of the Gothic Language
Grammar of the Gothic Language
Grammar of the Gothic Language is a book by Joseph Wright describing the extinct Gothic language, first published in 1910. It includes the language's development from Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic , and part of Ulfilas's bible translation...
with Wright seems to have been a turning-point in Tolkien's life.
In the course of editing the Dictionary he corresponded regularly with Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
.
Wright was greatly admired by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, who writes of him in her diary that, "The triumph of learning is that it leaves something done solidly for ever. Everybody knows now about dialect, owing to his dixery." He was the inspiration for the character of Mr Brook in The Pargiters, an early draft of The Years
The Years
The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s....
.
External links
- Archives Hub: Papers of Joseph Wright
- Wright's Old High German Primer
- Wright's Middle High German Primer
- Wright's Grammar of the Gothic Language
- Joseph Wright, Comparative Grammar Of The Greek Language
- Digitisation of the English Dialect Dictionary
- Portraits of Linguists and their Studies in the area of Old Germanic Languages
- J.R.R. Tolkien By Brian Compton
- "From woollen mills to dreaming spires" (Oxford Times, 28 February 2008)]
- Idle scholar who brought local language to book (Oxford Today, Volume 22 Number 3, Trinity 2010)