KURYLOWICZ, JERZY

born Aug. 26, 1895, Stanislav, Galicia, Austria-Hungary died Jan. 28, 1978, Krakw, Poland Polish historical linguist who was one of the greatest 20th-century students of Indo-European languages. His identification of the source of the Hittite consonant h in 1927 substantiated the existence of the laryngeals, Indo-European speech sounds postulated by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879. This discovery then stimulated much research in Indo-European phonology, the comparative study of changes in speech sounds. Kurylowicz' contributions to Indo-European linguistics, particularly Romance and Germanic studies, began in 1924. In 1928 he became a professor at the university in Lww (now Lviv, Ukraine) and wrote tudes indo-europennes I (1935; Indo-European Studies I). After World War II he held professorships at the universities of Wroclaw and Krakw, Poland. Two of his major works are L'Apophonie en indo-europen (1956; Apophony in Indo-European) and The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European (1964).