Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (born 27 May 1937) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a "Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s. He was professor of Germanic and theoretical linguistics at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich from 1974 (retired 2005).

Theories

Vennemann's book Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica (2003) was reviewed in Lingua by linguists Philip Baldi and B. Richard Page, who made reasoned dismissals of a number of his proposals. The reviewers still applauded Vennemann's "efforts to reassess the role and extent of language contact in the development of Indo-European languages in Europe". Vennemann's controversial claims about the prehistory of European languages include the following: