Johann Siegmund Valentin Popowitsch (Slovene: Janez Žiga Valentin Popovič;[1] February 9, 1705 – November 21, 1774) was a Styrian philologist and natural scientist. His advocacy of a standardized Upper German paved the way for Austrian German as a variety of Standard German.[2]
Popowitsch was born in Arclin, a village near Celje in Lower Styria.[1][2] He studied in Graz from 1715 to 1728, graduating from the Jesuit high school and lyceum. He continued his education by studying theology, but was not ordained. Popowitsch was familiar with 15 languages and his research interests included philology, botany, pomology, entomology, geophysics, oceanography, archaeology, history, and numismatics.
Dialectology and early linguistics
Popowitsch traveled extensively in German and Italian lands, gaining first-hand experience on dialect continua and language mixing. He was appointed the professor of German at the University of Vienna from 1753 to 1766, being preferred over Johann Christoph Gottsched[3] by Maria Theresia and her advisors.[1][2] He died in Perchtoldsdorf, at which point Vienna's Gottschedians ensured to minimize Popowitsch's linguistic legacy.[4] He was characterized by Jernej Kopitar as the "greatest scholar of his time in Austria, a praiseworthy philologist and natural scientist."[5]
^ abcStammerjohann, Harro (2009). Lexicon grammaticorum. A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics. Volume 2 L-Z. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. p. 1193.
^Dollinger, Stefan. 2024. Prescriptivism and national identity: sociohistorical constructionism, disciplinary blindspots, and Standard Austrian German. In Handbook of Prescriptive, Volume 1, ed. by Joan C. Beal et al. Abingdon: Routledge.
^Havinga, Anna. 2018. Invisibilising Austrian German. Berlin: de Gruyter
^Sitar, Sandi (1987). Sto slovenskih znanstvenikov, zdravnikov in tehnikov. Ljubljana: Prešernova družba. p. 27.
