Hans Jakob Polotsky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Jakob Polotsky (born September 13, 1905 in Zurich ; died August 10, 1991 in Jerusalem ; also Hans Jacob Polotsky ) was an Israeli orientalist and linguist , professor of Semitic languages and Egyptology .

Life

Born as the son of Russian-Jewish parents in Zurich, Polotsky grew up in Berlin and studied Egyptology and Semitic studies at the University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen (dissertation on the inscriptions of the 11th dynasty with Hermann Kees ). During his stay in Göttingen from 1926 to 1931, he worked on Greek , Coptic , Syrian and Arabic material as an employee of the Septuagint company . These texts brought him into contact with Turkic and Iranian languages . From the spring of 1933 to the end of 1934 he worked on the edition of Manichaean texts in Berlin, but he is not mentioned in the publication as a Jew. Apparently in the spring of 1935 he fled Germany and found a job at the newly founded Hebrew University of Jerusalem . There he deepened his interest in Ethiopian languages ​​( Old Ethiopian , Amharic , Gurage , Tigre and so on) and was appointed professor in 1948. In 1965 he received the Israel Prize for the Humanities , and in 1982 the Harvey Prize . In 1968 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and in 1969 a corresponding member of the British Academy .

In Jerusalem he met speakers of the New East Aramaic language , which had long been neglected as a research area. Since he also mastered Russian , among other things , he was able to use important Russian contributions in this area. His Études de syntaxe copte (1944) were groundbreaking for the exploration of the Coptic sentence structure , but also of the entire older Egyptian verbal system (“ standard theory of Egyptian verbal syntax ” ). In the field of linguistics , he was familiar with the theories of Noam Chomsky , but tended more towards the school of Ferdinand de Saussure . His Collected Papers were published in 1971 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fonts

  • 1933: Manichean Studies. In: Le Muséon 46, pp. 247-271. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 648–672)
  • 1935. Manichean manuscripts from the Berlin State Museums. Edited on behalf of the Prussian Academy of Sciences under the direction of Prof. Carl Schmidt , Volume 1: Kephalaia. 1st half (delivery 1–10) with a contribution by Hugo Ibscher , W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart.
  • 1938: Études de grammaire gouragué. In: Bulletin de la Societé de Linguistique de Paris. 39, pp. 137-175. [= Collected Papers. pp. 477-515]
  • 1944: Études de syntaxe copte. Publications de la Société d'Archéologie Copte, Le Caire. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 102–207)
  • 1951: Notes on Gurage grammar. (= Notes and Studies published by the Israel Oriental Society. No. 2). (= Collected Papers. Pp. 519–573)
  • 1960: Syntaxe amharique et syntaxe turque In: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Etiopici, Roma. Acc. Naz. dei Lincei, pp. 117-121. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 3–7)
  • 1961: Studies in Modern Syriac. In: Journal of Semitic Studies. No. 6, pp. 1-32. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 585–616)
  • 1964: Aramaic, Syriac, and Ge'ez. In: Journal of Semitic Studies. No. 9, pp. 1-10. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 8–17)
  • 1965: Egyptian Tenses. In: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Vol. II, No. 5. (= Collected Papers. Pp. 71–96)
  • 1971: EY Kutscher (ed.): Collected Papers. by HJ Polotsky. Magnes Press, Jerusalem.
  • 1976: Les transpositions du verbe en egyptien classique. In: Israel Oriental Studies. No. 6, pp. 1-50.
  • 1978: A Point of Arabic Syntax: The Indirect Attribute. In: Israel Oriental Studies. No. 8, pp. 159-174.
  • 1979: Verbs with two Objects in Modern Syriac (Urmi). In: Israel Oriental Studies. No. 9, pp. 204-227.
  • 1987: Basics of the Coptic sentence structure. Scholars Press, Decatur, Ga, ISBN 1-55540-076-0 .
  • 1994: Incorporation in Modern Syriac. In: G. Goldenberg & Sh. Raz (eds.): Semitic and Cushitic studies. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994, pp. 90-102.
  • 1996: Notes on Neo-Syriac Grammar. In: Israel Oriental Studies. No. 16, pp. 11-48.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ KNAW Past Members: Hans Jakob Polotsky. Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, accessed July 19, 2020 .
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 19, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Polotsky, Hans Jakob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Polotsky, Hans Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli orientalist and linguist, professor of Semitic languages ​​and Egyptology
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1991
Place of death Jerusalem