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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 (sometimes also spelledEugene Khelimski;Russian:Евге́ний Арно́льдович Хели́мскийEvgeniy Arnol'dovich Khelimsky; 15 March 1950 – 25 December 2007) was a Soviet and Russian linguist (in the latter part of his life working in Germany). He was a Doctor of Philology (1988) and Professor.
Helimski researchedSamoyedic andFinno-Ugric languages, problems ofUralic andNostratic linguistic affinity, language contact, the theory of genetic classification of languages, and the cultural history of Northern Eurasia and ofshamanism. He became one of the world's leading specialists in Samoyedic languages.
Helimski graduated from the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics ofMoscow State University (1972); completed a Dissertation on "Ancient Ugro-Samoyedic Linguistic Ties" (Tartu, 1979); completed the Doctoral Dissertation on "Historical and Descriptive Dialectology of the Samoyedic Languages" (Tartu, 1988); worked at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies at theRussian Academy of Sciences (1978—1997); lectured at theRSUH (1992—1998), University of Budapest (1994—1995) and other European universities. From 1998 onward, he was Professor of Hamburg University and Director of the Institute of Finno-Ugrian and Uralic Studies in Hamburg.[1]
Helimski was a participant and organizer of numerous linguistic expeditions to Siberia and to theTaimyr Peninsula; field studies of all Samoyedic languages, one of the authors of the well-knownStudies on theSelkup Language, which was based on field studies and has substantially broadened the linguistic understanding of Samoyedic. He exposed a number of regularities in the historical phonetics ofHungarian, and substantiated the existence of grammatical and lexical Ugro-Samoyedic parallels. He gathered all accessible data onMator, the extinct South-Samoyedic language, and published its dictionary and grammar. He proposed a number of novel Uralic, Indo-European and Nostratic etymologies, and collected a large body of material on the borrowed lexicon of the languages of Siberia (including Russian).[2]
Helimski proposed a number of modifications to the traditional theory of the "genealogical tree" with respect to the Uralic data, which affected comparative studies in general.
He worked on problematics ofshamanism among the Samoyedic peoples, collected and published texts of shamanistic incantations.
He published several editions of "Таймырский этнолингвистический сборник" ("Taimyr Ethno-Linguistic Compendium", RSUH) and other works on Uralistics.
Helimski initiated the development of a digital database of Uralic, which later became part ofSergei Starostin'sStarLing Project.[3](The database is based largely on Károly Rédei'sUralic Etymological Dictionary, UEW.[4])
