Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (russian: Владисла́в Ма́ркович И́ллич-Сви́тыч, also transliterated as Illič-Svityč; September 12, 1934 – August 22, 1966) was a Soviet linguist and accentologist. He was a founding father of comparative Nostratic

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

and the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics.

Biography

Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...

descent, Illich-Svitych was born in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...

. In 1941, he moved with his parents to Chkalov (now

Orenburg Orenburg (russian: Оренбу́рг, ), formerly known as Chkalov (1938–1957), is the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Ural River, southeast of Moscow. Orenburg is also very close to the border with Kazakhst ...

) and later to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. His father, Mark Vladislavovich Illich-Svitych (1886–1963), worked as a bookkeeper. His mother, Klara Moiseevna Desner (1901–1955), was chief director of puppet theater in Orenburg.К биографии В. М. Иллича-Свитыча (Biography of V. M. Illich-Svitych)
/ref> He resuscitated the long-forgotten Nostratic hypothesis, originally proposed by Holger Pedersen in 1903. While embarking on a field trip to collect data on the Hungarian dialects of the

Carpathians The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretche ...

, he died in an automobile accident on August 22, 1966, near

. His death prevented him from completing the ''Comparative Dictionary of Nostratic Languages'', but the ambitious work was continued by his colleagues, including

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...

and Vladimir Dybo.

Selected publications

* ''Nominal Accentuation in Baltic and Slavic'', translated by R. L. Leed and R. F. Feldstein, Cambridge, London 1979: the MIT Press. (originally edited in Russian in 1963)

Notes

References

* Merritt Ruhlen: ''On the Origin of Languages. Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy.'' Stanford University Press 1994. *Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (Hrsg.): ''Sprung from Some Common Source. Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages.'' Stanford University Press, Stanford (Calif.) 1991. * Vitaly Shevoroshkin: ''Reconstructing Languages and Cultures. Abstracts and Materials from the First International Interdisciplinary Symposium on Language and Prehistory.'' Brockmeyer, Bochum 1989. * Bomhard, Allan R. and John C. Kerns: ''The Nostratic Macrofamily. A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship''. Mouton De Gruyter. Berlin - New York 1994. * Dolgopolsky, Aharon: ''The Nostratic Macrofamily and Linguistic Palaeontology.'' The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Oxford 1998. * Holger Pedersen: ''Türkische Lautgesetze.'' ZDMG 57, 1903. * Holger Pedersen: ''Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century: Methods and Results.'' Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1931.

External links

Example of Illich-Svitych's Nostratic reconstruction
{{DEFAULTSORT:Illich-Svitych, Vladislav Markovich 1934 births 1966 deaths Linguists from Russia Russian people of Polish-Jewish descent Linguists from the Soviet Union 20th-century linguists Paleolinguists Linguists of Nostratic languages Road incident deaths in the Soviet Union Long-range comparative linguists Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics

Biography

Selected publications

See also

Notes

References

External links