Jerzy Kurylowicz

Jerzy Kurylowicz was a Polish linguist and a leading figure in twentieth-century Indo-European and general historical linguistics. In 1927 Kurylowicz identified certain consonant sounds in the newly deciphered Hittite language that corresponded to abstract sound units Ferdinand de Saussure had theoretically proposed decades earlier, in 1879, to explain irregular vowel patterns in other Indo-European languages without direct evidence for the sounds themselves; Kurylowicz's discovery provided striking confirmation of Saussure's laryngeal theory and is regarded as one of the most celebrated successful predictions in the history of linguistics. Kurylowicz also formulated influential general principles governing analogical change in language, often called Kurylowicz's laws of analogy, describing regular tendencies in how grammatical patterns are extended or restructured over time. Beyond Indo-European studies, Kurylowicz made significant contributions to Semitic linguistics and to the general theory of linguistic accentuation, and he held professorships in Poland, including at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, across a career that continued through major political upheavals in twentieth-century Europe.