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Eugene Helimski | |
|---|---|
Евге́ний Арно́льдович Хели́мский | |
| Born | 15 March 1950 Odessa, Soviet Union |
| Died | 25 December 2007(2007-12-25) (aged 57) Hamburg, Germany |
Eugene Arnoldovich Helimski (also spelledEugene Khelimski;Russian:Евге́ний Арно́льдович Хели́мскийEvgeniy Arnol'dovich Khelimsky; 15 March 1950 – 25 December 2007) was aSoviet andRussianlinguist, later working inGermany. He held a Doctor ofPhilology degree (1988) and was aprofessor.
Helimski specialized inSamoyedic andFinno-Ugric languages, explored questions ofUralic andNostratic linguistic relationships, language contact, thetheory of genetic language classification, as well as the cultural history ofNorthern Eurasia andshamanism. He became one of the world’s leading authorities on theSamoyedic languages.
Helimski graduated in 1972 from the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics atMoscow State University. He defended his Candidate Dissertation, Ancient Ugro-Samoyedic Linguistic Ties (Tartu, 1979), and his Doctoral Dissertation, Historical and Descriptive Dialectology of the Samoyedic Languages (Tartu, 1988).
From 1978 to 1997, he worked at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies of theRussian Academy of Sciences. He also taught at theRSUH (1992–1998), at the University of Budapest (1994–1995), and lectured at several other European universities. Beginning in 1998, he served as Professor at the University of Hamburg and Director of its Institute of Finno-Ugric/Uralic Studies.[1]
Helimski organized and took part in numerous linguistic expeditions to Siberia and theTaimyr Peninsula. He conducted fieldwork on all of the Samoyedic languages and co-authored the well-known Studies on theSelkup Language, which significantly expanded scholarly understanding of the Samoyedic branch.
He identified regular patterns in the historical phonetics ofHungarian and demonstrated grammatical and lexical parallels between Ugric and Samoyedic. He compiled all available data onMator, an extinct South Samoyedic language, and published its dictionary and grammar. Helimski also proposed new Uralic, Indo-European, and Nostratic etymologies, and collected extensive material on loanwords in Siberian languages (including Russian).[2]
In comparative linguistics, he introduced modifications to the traditional "genealogical tree" model based on Uralic evidence, influencing broader approaches to language classification.
Helimski also studied shamanism among the Samoyedic peoples, collecting and publishing texts of shamanic incantations.
He edited several volumes of Таймырский этнолингвистический сборник (Taimyr Ethno-Linguistic Compendium, RSUH) and other works on Uralistics.
He initiated the creation of a digital Uralic database, which later became part ofSergei Starostin'sStarLing Project.[3] (This database was largely based on Károly Rédei’s Uralic Etymological Dictionary [UEW].[4])
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