Ferdinand Sommer

Ferdinand Sommer (4 May 1875 in Trier – 3 April 1962 in Munich) was a German classical and Indo-European philologist.

From 1893 he studied at the universities of Marburg and Freiberg, where he was a pupil of Rudolf Thurneysen. In 1899 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Leipzig with the thesis Die Komparationssuffixe im Lateinischen (Comparative suffixes of Latin). In 1902 he was named professor of Indo-European linguistics, Sanskrit and classical philology at the University of Basel, and later on in his career, he held professorships in Indo-European linguistics at the universities of Rostock (1909–13), Jena (1913–24) and Bonn (1924–26). From 1926 to 1951 he was a professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Munich.

He was a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences (from 1922), Göttingen Academy of Sciences (from 1925), Bavarian Academy of Sciences (from 1927) and Academy of Sciences in Berlin (from 1944).

Selected works

• Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre. Eine Einführung in das sprachwissenschaftliche Studium des Lateins. Heidelberg 1902, 3rd edition 1914 – Handbook of Latin phonetics and morphology; an introduction to the linguistic study of Latin.
• Griechische Lautstudien. Straßburg 1905 – Greek studies.
• Die indogermanischen iā- und io-Stämme im Baltischen. Leipzig 1914 – The Indo-Germanic iā and io strains of the Baltic.
• Sprachgeschichtliche Erläuterungen für den griechischen Unterricht. Laut- und Formenlehre. Leipzig 1917, 4th edition Darmstadt 1961 – Linguistic-historical explanations for Greek lessons; phonology and morphology.
• Vergleichende Syntax der Schulsprachen (Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch, Griechisch, Lateinisch) Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Deutschen. Leipzig 1921, 6th edition Darmstadt 1989 – Comparative syntax of school languages (German, English, French, Greek, Latin) with special reference to German.
• Die Aḫḫijavā-Urkunden. Munich 1932. Nachdruck Hildesheim 1975 – The Aḫḫijavā documents.
• Hethiter und Hethitisch. Stuttgart 1947 – Hittites and hittitology.
• Schriften aus dem Nachlass (edited by Bernhard Forssmann) Munich 1977 – Writings from the Nachlass.