Tamas Gamqrelidse

Tamas Gamqrelidse ( Georgian თამაზ გამყრელიძე ) or Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (born October 23, 1929 in Kutaisi ) is a Georgian linguist and orientalist and is one of the world's leading linguists today.

Life

In 1952 he completed a degree in Oriental Studies from the University of Tbilisi . In 1963 he received his doctorate and in 1964 he completed his habilitation there. In 1966 he received the chair for structural and applied linguistics and holds this chair as a university professor until today (March 2020). He has been the director of the Tsereteli Institute for Oriental Studies of the Georgian Academy of Sciences since 1973 . He has been a member of the Georgian Academy since 1974 and has been its President since February 2005. In 2013 he was appointed honorary president of the academy.

He has written books on Indo-European and ancient languages, theoretical, structural and applied linguistics, as well as Kartwelistik . From 1988 to 1995 he was the editor of the journal Voprosy Jasykosnanija ( Вопросы языкознания ) published by the Russian Academy of Sciences .

He is a foreign honorary member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , corresponding member of the British Academy , Fellow of the European Society for Linguistics (1986–1988 its chairman), corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , member of the Russian Academy der Sciences , corresponding member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences , honorary doctorates from the University of Bonn and the University of Chicago .

From 1992 to 2005 Gamqrelidze was a member of the Georgian parliament .

In 1988 he was awarded the Lenin Prize of the Soviet Union , in 1989 the Humboldt Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and in 1992 the Ivan Jawachishvili Prize of the State University of Tbilisi.

He is the brother of the well-known mathematician Rewas Gamqrelidse .

research

Gamkrelidze presented (with Ivanov, see "Works") a new hypothesis about the original home of the Indo-Europeans, namely south of the Caucasus , which, however, has hardly found supporters. The same applies to the glottal theory, also represented by him, on the structure of the Indo-European plosive sound system , which was described in standard works such as Mayrhofer, but only received a short paragraph in Meier-Brügger.

Publications (selection)

• Anatolian languages ​​and the problem of Indo-European migration to Asia Minor . In: Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics , Tokyo, 1970
• Alphabetic writing and the old Georgian script . Caravan Books, New York, 1994
• with Vyacheslav Vsevolodowitsch Ivanov : Indoevropjskij jazyk i indoevropejcy. Reconstruction i istoriko-tipologieskij analiz prajazyka i protokultury . University Press Tiflis, Tiflis 1984. (Russian)
  • Translated into English as Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture . 2 volumes. 1st part: The Text , 2nd part: Bibliography, Indexes . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994 and 1995.
• Ivo Hajnal (Ed.): Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Selected writings. Linguistic sign, typology and language reconstruction. Innsbruck 2006, (online) . (PDF)

Web links

Commons : Tamaz Gamkrelidze  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Tamas Gamqrelidse in the catalog of the German National Library
• CV Tamas Gamqrelidses (English, Georgian)
• Rüdiger Schmitt : Foreword to Gamqrelidse's Selected Writings

Remarks

1. ^ Institute of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics . In: Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University . ( tsu.ge [accessed on March 22, 2020]).
2. ^ Academic Council . In: Academy of Sciences . ( org.ge [accessed July 23, 2018]).
3. ^ Website of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved on May 6, 2013. ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Manfred Mayrhofer : Main problems of the Indo-European phonetics since Bechtel. (= Session reports of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical-Historical Class , No. 709) Vienna 2004, ISBN 978-3-7001-3250-9 , pp. 48–54.
5. ↑ Michael Meier-Brügger : Indo-European Linguistics . 9th revised and supplemented edition. Berlin / New York: De Gruyter 2010, pp. 256–257.
6. ^ Robert Woodhouse: Some criticisms of the Gamkrelidze / Ivanov glottalic hypothesis for Proto Indo-European. In: Historische Sprachforschung 108, 2 (1995), pp. 173-189.