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 Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and U ...

linguistics Linguistics is the science, 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 ...

and the

Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics The Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics (also called the Nostratic School) is a school of linguistics based in Moscow, Russia that is known for its work in . Formerly based at Moscow State University, it is currently centered at the (Institut ...

Biography

Of Polish-Jewish descent, Illich-Svitych was born in Kiev. In 1941, he moved with his parents to Chkalov (now Orenburg) 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 millio ...

. 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 stretches ...

, 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 Vladimir Antonovich Dybo (russian: Влади́мир Анто́нович Дыбо́; born 30 April 1931) is a Soviet and Russian linguist, Doctor Nauk in Philological Sciences (1979), Professor (1992), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sci ...

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 Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...

: ''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 Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin ( rus, Виталий Викторович Шеворошкин) is an American linguist of Russian origin, specializing in the study of ancient Mediterranean languages. Shevoroshkin was born in 1932 in Georgia (US ...

: ''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