Yakov Malkiel

Yakov Malkiel (born July 22, 1914 in Kiev , † April 24, 1998 ) was an American linguist and Romance scholar of Russian-Jewish descent.

Life

He was born into a Russian-Jewish merchant family. The family fled to Berlin during the Russian Civil War . In 1932 he graduated from the Werner Siemens Realgymnasium in the Bavarian Quarter in Berlin-Schöneberg . with a refugee ID he was able to study at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin from 1933 . He studied Romance studies with Ernst Gamillscheg , Slavic studies with Max Vasmer and Semitic studies with Eugen Wednesday . He received his PhD in 1938.

In 1940 he emigrated with his parents to the USA and initially worked in Wyoming . In 1942 he became a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley . He later became assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese there, and finally professor of Romance philology. In 1947 he founded the international journal Romance Philology and was its editor-in-chief for several years. In 1952 he co-founded the Department of Linguistics. He taught and researched there until his retirement in 1986.

He has published works on historical linguistics, the history of linguistics, etymology , linguistic typology and Romance linguistics. He wrote in English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish. He also gave his lectures in Russian.

From 1948 to 1962 he was married to the Argentine María Rosa Lida .

Awards

He has received three Guggenheim Awards . The universities of Chicago (1966), Illinois (1969), Paris (1983), Free University of Berlin (1983), Georgetown (1987), Oxford (1989) and Salamanca (1994) awarded him honorary degrees. In 1971 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works

Development of the Latin suffixes '-antia' and '-entia' in the Romance languages, with special regard to Ibero-Romance . University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1945. (University of California Publications in Linguistics; I, 4.)
Essays on Linguistic Themes. Blackwell, Oxford 1968. (Language and Style Series; 6.)
Etymological Dictionaries: A Tentative Typology . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1976
From Particular to General Linguistics. Selected Essays 1965–1978 . Benjamin, Amsterdam [u. a.] 1983. (Studies in Language Companion Series; 3.) ISBN 90-272-3002-1
Theory and Practice of Romance Etymology. Studies in Language, Culture and History . Variorum Reprints, London 1989. (Variorum Collected Studies Series.) ISBN 0-86078-236-0
A Tentative Autobibliography . With an introd. by Henry Kahane. Univ. of California Pr., Berkeley, Calif. 1988. (Romance philology. Special Issue, 1988-1989.)
Edita and inedita, 1979-1988. 1. Diachronic Problems in Phonosymbolism. - 2. Diachronic Studies in Lexicology, Affixation, Phonology . Benjamin, Amsterdam [u. a.] 1990-1992.
Etymology . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u. a.] 1993, ISBN 0-521-31166-7

literature

Steven Norman Dworkin: Yakov Malkiel. In: Language. 80, 1, 2004, pp. 153-162.
Paul Lloyd: Yakov Malkiel (1914-1998). In: Hispanic Review. 67, 1, Winter 1999, ISSN 0018-2176 , pp. 111-114.
Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933-1945. Entry on Yakov Malkiel (accessed: April 15, 2018)
Yakov Malkiel, Joseph J. Duggan, Charles Faulhaber: Yakov Malkiel. A Tentative Autobibliography. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1988, ISBN 0-520-06592-1 ( Romance philology. Special issue 1988/89).
Christian Schmitt: Malkiel, Yakov: Etymology, Cambridge University Press, 1993 . In: Kratylos. 39, 1994, pp. 32-37
Jürgen Trabant : Yakov Malkiel and the Berlin Romance Studies. In: Honorary doctorate Yakov Malkiel at the Department of Modern Foreign Language Philology at the Free University of Berlin on October 6, 1983. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-428-05715-5 , pp. 5-17. ( University speeches 6).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Malkiel, Yakov
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American linguist and romance scholar
DATE OF BIRTH	July 22, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kiev , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH	April 24, 1998