Alfredo Trombetti

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (December 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Alfredo Trombetti]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Alfredo Trombetti}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Alfredo Trombetti
Portrait of Alfredo Trombetti
Born	16 January 1866 Bologna, Italy
Died	5 July 1929 Venice, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Linguist
Academic work
Institutions	University of Bologna
Main interests	Comparative linguistics
Notable ideas	Monogenesis

Alfredo Trombetti (16 January 1866 in Bologna – 5 July 1929 in Venice) was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.

Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna. He was a member of the Italian Academy.

He is best known as an advocate of the doctrine of monogenesis, according to which all of the world's languages go back to a single common ancestral language. His arguments for monogenesis were first presented in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905.^[1] This doctrine is still extremely controversial.

A selection of Trombetti's proposed global etymologies:^[1]

Meaning	Root
to hear; ear	kul (kur)
water	ma; wad (wad, wed, wod), ud
dog	ku (ku-ari, ku-ri, etc.)
hair	tuk, suk
behind, back	kata, taka
foot	ganga; pat
earth (clay, ash)	tu
dust	twar, tur (< tu 'earth')
woman	na (nai)
man (person)	ku, etc.
man (male)	mar
egg (testicle)	umu (mu-n, mu-r, etc.)

• 1902-1903. "Delle relazioni delle lingue caucasiche con le lingue camitosemitiche e con altri gruppi linguistichi. Lettera al professore H. Schuchardt." In Giornale della Società asiatica italiana, T. 15, pp. 177–201 and T. 16, pp. 145–175. Florence.
• 1902. Nessi genealogici fra le lingue del mondo antîco, 4 volumes, unpublished. Recipient of the Royal Prize of the Italian Academy in 1902.
• 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
• 1907. Come si fa la critica di un libro. Con nuovi contributi alla dottrina della monogenesi del linguaggio e alla glottologia generale comparata. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
• 1908. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata I. I pronomi personali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe de scienze morali. Bologna.
• 1912. Manuale dell'arabo parlato a Tripoli. Grammatica, letture e vocabolario. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
• 1913. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata II. I numerali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe de scienze morali. Bologna.
• 1920. Saggi di glottologia generale comparata III. Comparazioni lessicali. Accademia delle scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna. Classe de scienze morali. Bologna.
• 1922-1923. Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Zanichelli.
• 1925. Le origini della lingua basca. Bologna: Azzoguidi.
• 1927. "La lingua etrusca e le lingue preindoeuropee del Meditarreneo." In Studi etruschi, T. 1. Florence.
• 1928. La lingua etrusca. Florence: Rinascimento del libro.
• 1928. "Origine asiatica delle lingue e popolazioni americane." In Atti del 22 congresso internazionale degli americanisti, Roma, Settembre 1926, T. 1, pp. 169–246. Rome: Istituto Cristoforo Colombo.
• 1929. Il nostro dialetto bolognese. Bologna: Zanichelli.

• Dené–Yeniseian languages

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alfredo Trombetti.

• Works by or about Alfredo Trombetti at the Internet Archive