Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony at theIvane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (from left to right: Bernard Outtier, Jost Gippert, Winfried Boeder and Darejan Tvaltvadze), 2009
Since 1994, Gippert has been teaching Comparative Linguistics at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. He has been a member of theGelati Science Academy (Georgia) since 1996, and of the department of “Languages” at theBerlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2007.
Since Gippert became a Professor of Comparative Linguistics, much of his research has focused on Indo-European languages, their history and etymology, as well as the general linguistic typology and especially the study of the languages of theCaucasus. Thanks to his dedication to the languages of the Caucasus, many international research projects have been undertaken in this area under his supervision. His research focuses onhistorical linguistics,linguistic typology, electronic text corpora, multimedia language documentation and electronic manuscript analysis.
Since 2020 Gippert is the Senior Professor at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at theUniversity of Hamburg[1] and the Head of the ERC funded project “The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories (DeLiCaTe)“ hosted by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at theUniversity of Hamburg. The project aims to show the development of specific alphabetic scripts in the context of Christianisation in the early 5th century CE meant the beginning of literacy for three distinct ethnic groups in the Caucasus: Georgians, Armenians and the so-called “Caucasian Albanians“.[3]
Gippert is the founder and leader of theTITUS project (Thesaurus of Indo-European Texts and Languages).[4] Its goal, since its foundation in 1987, has been the full digital accessibility of textually recorded material of various Indo-European and adjacent languages. In 1999, he started theARMAZI project (Caucasian Languages and Cultures: Electronic Documentation),[5] which aimed at a comprehensive collection of Caucasian language material. This project yielded the Georgian National Corpus (GNC). Since 2010, Gippert has been the head of the center “Digital Humanities in the State ofHesse: Integrated Processing and Analysis of Text-based Corpora” within the unit of the “Federal Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence” (LOEWE (project). This center is a collaboration between theGoethe University of Frankfurt and theTechnische Universität Darmstadt with additional support from theGoethe Museum, Frankfurt.
In the 1990s, Gippert turned his attention to Oriental manuscripts, working on projects with the goal of making them digitally accessible, e.g., theTocharian manuscripts of the BerlinTurfan Collection. Furthermore, he edited works including theCaucasian-Albanianpalimpsest manuscripts found onMount Sinai. In 2009, he was a visiting scholar in the research group “Manuscript Cultures” at theUniversity of Hamburg. In summer 2013, he visited the University of Hamburg again, as a Petra Kappert Fellow, participating in the compilation of the “Encyclopedia of Manuscript Cultures” and of the handbook “Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies”.
Since 2022 withing the project “The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories (DeLiCaTe)“ Jost Gippert is leading the working process for the creation of the electronic manuscript analysis models and devices for the Georgian, Armenian and Caucasian Albanian manuscripts.[3]
1977:Zur Syntax der infinitivischen Bildungen in den indogermanischen Sprachen [The syntax of infinitival formations in the Indo-European languages]. (Europäische Hochschulschriften, 21/3), 360 pp.; Frankfurt, Bern, Las Vegas: Lang 1978. Dissertation
1990:Iranica Armeno-Iberica. Studien zu den iranischen Lehnwörtern im Armenischen und Georgischen [Iranica Armeno-Iberica. A study of Iranian loan words in Armenian and Georgian], 451 + 389 pp.; Vienna:Austrian Academy of Sciences 1993. Inaugural dissertation.
1997:Index Galenicus. Wortformenindex zu den Schriften Galens [Index Galenicus. Word form index to the writings of Galen]. 2 volumes. Dettelbach: Röll.
2007: Gippert, Jost / Sarjveladze, Zurab / Kajaia, Lamara: The Old Georgian Palimpsest Codex Vindobonensis georgicus 2, edited by Jost Gippert in co-operation with Zurab Sarjveladze and Lamara Kajaia, 368 pp.;Turnhout:Brepols 2007.
2008: Gippert, Jost / Schulze, Wolfgang / Aleksidze, Zaza / Mahé, Jean-Pierre: The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai, 2 vols., XXIV + 530 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2009.
2010: Gippert, Jost / Schulze, Wolfgang / Aleksidze, Zaza / Mahé, Jean-Pierre: The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai. Vol. III: The Armenian Layer, edited by Jost Gippert., 220 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2010.
