Editing Jacob Grimm (section)

==Linguistic work==

===''History of the German Language''===
[[File:Letter from Jacob Grimm to Jan Frans Willems, Berlin, 26 april 1844.jpg|thumb|During the research for his 'History of the German Language' Grimm corresponded with numerous colleagues. Ghent University Library holds several letters between Jacob Grimm and [[Jan Frans Willems]].]]
Grimm's ''Geschichte der deutschen Sprache'' (History of the German Language) explores German history hidden in the words of the German language and is the oldest linguistic history of the Teutonic tribes. He collected scattered words and allusions from classical literature and tried to determine the relationship between the German language and those of the [[Getae]], Thracians, Scythians, and other nations whose languages were known only through Greek and Latin authors. Grimm's results were later greatly modified by a wider range of available comparisons and improved methods of investigation. Many questions that he raised remain obscure due to the lack of surviving records of the languages, but his book's influence was profound.<ref name=EB1911/>

===''German Grammar''===
Grimm's famous ''Deutsche Grammatik'' (German Grammar) was the outcome of his purely philological work. He drew on the work of past generations, from the humanists onwards, consulting an enormous collection of materials in the form of text editions, dictionaries, and grammars, mostly uncritical and unreliable. Some work had been done in the way of comparison and determination of general laws, and the concept of a comparative Germanic grammar had been grasped by the Englishman [[George Hickes (divine)|George Hickes]] by the beginning of the 18th century, in his ''Thesaurus''. [[Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate|Ten Kate]] in the Netherlands had made valuable contributions to the history and comparison of Germanic languages. Grimm himself did not initially intend to include all the languages in his ''Grammar'', but he soon found that [[Old High German]] postulated [[Gothic language|Gothic]], and that the later stages of German could not be understood without the help of other [[West Germanic languages|West Germanic]] varieties including English, and that the [[literature of Scandinavia]] could not be ignored. The first edition of the first part of the ''Grammar'', which appeared in 1819, treated the inflections of all these languages, and included a general introduction in which he vindicated the importance of a historical study of the German language against the quasi-philosophical methods then in vogue.<ref name=EB1911/>

In 1822 the book appeared in a second edition (really a new work, for, as Grimm himself says in the preface, he had to "mow the first crop down to the ground"). The considerable gap between the two stages of Grimm's development of these editions is shown by the fact that the second volume addresses phonology in 600 pages – more than half the volume. Grimm had concluded that all philology must be based on rigorous adherence to the laws of [[sound change]], and he subsequently never deviated from this principle. This gave to all his investigations a consistency and force of conviction that had been lacking in the study of philology before his day.<ref name=EB1911/>

His advances have been attributed mainly to the influence of his contemporary [[Rasmus Christian Rask]]. Rask was two years younger than Grimm, but the Icelandic paradigms in Grimm's first editions are based entirely on Rask's grammar; in his second edition, he relied almost entirely on Rask for Old English. His debt to Rask is shown by comparing his treatment of [[Old English language|Old English]] in the two editions. For example, in the first edition he declines ''dæg, dæges'', plural ''dægas'', without having observed the law of [[vowel shift|vowel-change]] pointed out by Rask. (The correct plural is ''dagas.'') The appearance of Rask's Old English grammar was probably the primary impetus for Grimm to recast his work from the beginning. Rask was also the first to clearly formulate the laws of sound-correspondence in the different languages, especially in the vowels (previously ignored by [[etymologist]]s).<ref name=EB1911/>

The ''Grammar'' was continued in three volumes, treating principally derivation, composition and [[syntax]], the last of which was unfinished. Grimm then began a third edition, of which only one part, comprising the vowels, appeared in 1840, his time being afterwards taken up mainly by the dictionary. The ''Grammar'' is noted for its comprehensiveness, method and fullness of detail, with all his points illustrated by an almost exhaustive mass of material, and it has served as a model for all succeeding investigators. [[Friedrich Christian Diez|Diez]]'s grammar of the [[Romance language]]s is founded entirely on Grimm's methods, which have had a profound influence on the wider study of the [[Indo-European languages]] in general.<ref name=EB1911/>

===Grimm's law===
{{Main|Grimm's law}}
Jacob is recognized for enunciating [[Grimm's law]], the Germanic Sound Shift, which was first observed by the Danish philologist [[Rasmus Christian Rask]]. Grimm's law, also known as the "Rask-Grimm Rule" or the First Germanic Sound Shift, was the first law in linguistics concerning a non-trivial [[sound change]].  It was a turning point in the development of linguistics, enabling the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historic linguistic research.  It concerns the correspondence of consonants between the ancestral [[Proto-Indo-European language]] and its [[Germanic languages|Germanic]] descendants, [[Low German|Low Saxon]] and [[High German languages|High German]], and was first fully stated by Grimm in the second edition of the first part of his ''Grammar''. The correspondence of single consonants had been more or less clearly recognized by several of his predecessors, including [[Friedrich von Schlegel]], Rasmus Christian Rask and [[Johan Ihre]], the last having established a considerable number of ''literarum permutationes'', such as '''b''' for '''f''', with the examples ''bœra''&nbsp;=&nbsp;''ferre'' ("to bear"), ''befwer''&nbsp;=&nbsp;''fibra'' ("fiber"). Rask, in his essay on the origin of the [[Icelandic language]], gave the same comparisons, with a few additions and corrections, and even the same examples in most cases. As Grimm in the preface to his first edition expressly mentioned Rask's essay, there is every probability that it inspired his own investigations. But there is a wide difference between the isolated permutations described by his predecessors and his own comprehensive generalizations. The extension of the law to High German in any case is entirely Grimm's work.<ref name=EB1911/>

The idea that Grimm wished to deprive Rask of his priority claims is based on the fact that he does not expressly mention Rask's results in his second edition, but it was always his plan to refrain from all controversy or reference to the works of others. In his first edition, he calls attention to Rask's essay and praises it ungrudgingly. Nevertheless, a certain bitterness of feeling afterwards sprang up between Grimm and Rask, after Rask refused to consider the value of Grimm's views when they clashed with his own.<ref name=EB1911/>

===''German Dictionary''===
Grimm's monumental [[dictionary]] of the [[German Language]], the ''[[Deutsches Wörterbuch]]'', was started in 1838 and first published in 1854. The Brothers anticipated it would take 10 years and encompass some six to seven volumes. However, it was undertaken on so large a scale as to make it impossible for them to complete it. The dictionary, as far as it was worked on by Grimm himself, has been described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.<ref name=EB1911/> It was finally finished by subsequent scholars in 1961 and supplemented in 1971. At 33 volumes at some 330,000 headwords, it remains a standard work of reference to the present day. A current project at the [[Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities]] is underway to update the ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' to modern academic standards. Volumes A–F were planned for completion in 2012 by the Language Research Centre at the [[Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities]] and the [[University of Göttingen]].