Zigmas Zinkevičius | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1925-01-04)January 4, 1925 Juodausiai,Lithuania |
| Died | February 20, 2018(2018-02-20) (aged 93) |
| Occupations |
|
| Known for | Linguistics, Baltistics, Dialectology, history of the Lithuanian language history of the study of the Lithuanian language, the historical grammar of the Lithuanian language, onomastics, recreation ofProto-Baltic |
| Notable work | History of the Lithuanian language (6 vols., published in 1984–1994) |
Zigmas Zinkevičius (4 January 1925 – 20 February 2018) was a Lithuanianacademician,Baltist,linguist, linguistichistorian,dialectologist, politician, and the formerMinister of Education and Science of Lithuania (1996–1998).[1][2] Zinkevičius authored over a hundred books, including the popular[3] six-volume "History of the Lithuanian Language" (1984–1994), and over a thousand articles, both in Lithuanian and other languages.[4] He was an academician of theLithuanian Catholic Academy of Science since 1991 and a full member of theLithuanian Academy of Sciences from 1990 to 2011, when he became anemeritus member.[4][5]
Zinkevičius was a member of the editorial boards of the Lithuanian Language Society (Lietuvių kalbos draugija) and of the international periodicals "Baltistica [lt]" and "Lituanistica".[1] Zinkevičius created the theory about the three Lithuanian written languages at the beginning of Lithuanian writing.[5] During his 72-year academic career, he taught at Vilnius University for 45 years.[6] Zinkevičius was fluent in a number of languages, includingEnglish,German,Russian,Polish,Ukrainian,Belarusian andFrench.[7]
Zinkevičius was born on 4 January 1925 in theJuodausiai [lt] village inUkmergė district.[4] In 1939, after finishing the six-year school, he transferred to theAntanas Smetona Gymnasium in Ukmergė [lt].[8] In 1945, Zinkevičius entered the Faculty of History and Philology ofVilnius University (VU).[8]
Zinkevičius's academic career began in 1946,[1] when he held the position of chief laboratory assistant at the Lithuanian Department of Vilnius University until 1950.[4] After finishing his studies in 1950,[5] Zinkevičius taught in VU and theVilnius Pedagogical Institute until 1956.[4] In 1955, he defended his thesisLietuvių kalbos įvardžiuotinių būdvardžių istorijos bruožai (lit. 'Historical Traits of Adjective Pronouns in the Lithuanian Language').[9] Between 1956 and 1967, he was thedocent at the Department of Lithuanian Language of VU.[4] Zinkevičius was also the deputydean of the Faculty of History and Philology in 1956–1968[8] and between 1962 and 1964, held the position of chief researcher.[4] Between 1964 and 1966, together withAleksas Stanislovas Girdenis [lt], Zinkevičius prepared a new classification of the dialects of the current Lithuanian language.[5] In 1967, he defended hisdoctoral thesisLietuvių dialektologija (Lyginamoji tarmių fonetika ir morfologija) ('Lithuanian Dialectology (Comparative Phonetics and Morphology of Dialects)').[9] From 1967 to 1973, Zinkevičius received the position of professor at the Department of the Lithuanian Language.[4] He was the head of the Department of Lithuanian Language at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University from 1973 until 1988.[1][4]
Then, between 1988 and 1991, Zinkevičius became the head of the Department of Baltic Philology.[1][5] After Lithuania regained its independence, he also began lecturing at theVytautas Magnus University.[1] He was the director of the Lithuanian Language Institute in 1995 and 1996.[1][5]
From 2001 to 2009, he was the Chairman of the Council of theScience and Encyclopaedia Publishing Institute.[5] Zinkevičius was also the editor-in-chief of theLithuania Minor Encyclopedia [lt] (3 vols. 2000–06).[5] While in his nineties, he still worked as many as 10–12 hours a day.[10] The professor was widely-acclaimed as the most famous, productive, and cited Lithuanian linguist of recent times.[11][10][3] His works concerned subjects such asdialectology and theLithuanian language's history, as well as the history of its study, its historical grammar,onomastics, and he reviewed many works of linguistics.[1][8] Zinkevičius's work was well-received, both in Lithuania and abroad, where he was elected as a foreign member of many academies: theRoyal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities from 1982,Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1991,Latvian Academy of Sciences from 1995.[4][5]
Zinkevičius is also the author of the "wicz" theory, according to whichLithuanian Poles whose surnames end in "wicz" constitutes a separate ethnic group, but are reallyethnic Lithuanians.[12][13]
According to Polish historian Barbara Jundo-Kaliszewska, during the 1980s and 1990s, Zinkevičius was one of the prominent activists of the nationalist and anti-Polish,[14] organizationVilnija,[15] whose main goal was a rapidLithuanization of theVilnius region.[16][17]
Zinkevičius tenured as Minister of Education and Science from December 10, 1996, to March 25, 1998, inVagnorius Cabinet II and was a state consultant on education and science issues in 1998.[1][18] During his tenure as Minister of Education and Science, he helped intensify the policy of Lithuanianization of thePolish minority living in Lithuania.[12] On December 17, 1996, in an interview he said that Lithuanian should be the sole language of lectures in state schools, and that youth inVilnius Region speak a "simple" language, while in schools they are forced to speak in a language foreign to them, Polish. He also questioned the citizenship of those who do not speak Lithuanian.[19] The statement prompted a protest from thePolish Foreign Ministry and the Congress of Poles of Lithuania.[19] Prime MinisterGediminas Vagnorius declared that the minister's opinions did not reflect the government's position.[19]
On February 3, 2015, he was one of 60 signatories of an open letter addressed, among others, to Lithuanian PresidentDalia Grybauskaitė and members of the government, in which he demanded that the Polish minority partyLLRA be excluded from the government coalition and that the party's deputies be stripped of their seats in theSeimas, due to the stated reasons that LLRA's views are openly directed against the state and it repeatedly lies in international forums about discrimination against the Polish minority in Lithuania, without specifying which parts of Lithuanian or international law were broken by Lithuania.[20] On August 28, 2015, he published an open letter addressed to the Minister of EducationJuozas Bernatonis protesting a planned reform allowing Poles in Lithuania to spell their names in Polish, arguing that: "Undoubtedly, the supposedly Polish surnames of most Polish-speakers in Southeastern Lithuania are actually of Lithuanian origin. They were Polonized during the Polish and Soviet occupations".[21]
After Zinkevičius's death, Lithuania's prime minister between 1996 and 1999Gediminas Vagnorius said that Zinkevičius "brought a different approach, a sincere, matter-of-fact, professional approach to education policy and forced others to step up" and described him as "very sincere, very benevolent and distinguished by high intelligence".[22] He was elected chairman of theLithuanian Christian Democratic Party in 1999.[7] He resigned from the leadership of the party on November 17, 2000, in protest against the merger of the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party with theChristian Democratic Union (KDS) led byKazys Bobelis.[23] He became a member of the newLithuania's Christian Democracy Party [lt] in 2001.[24]
 | This sectioncontainstoo many or overly lengthy quotations. Please helpsummarise the quotations. Consider transferring direct quotations toWikiquote or excerpts toWikisource.(January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Zigmas Zinkevičius was always a practising Roman Catholic.[9] His wife was Regina Zinkevičienė and they had two children, Laima Zinkevičiūtė and Vytautas Zinkevičius.[1][25] He died in hospital on 20 February 2018, surrounded by his family.[1] He was buried in theAntakalnis cemetery on February 23.[6][26] The contemporary president Dalia Grybauskaitė, when expressing her condolences on his death, said that Lithuania lost an outstanding linguist:
The fundamental scientific works of the long-time Vilnius University professor made it possible to learn about the past of our language and nation, to understand its origin, to strengthen Lithuanianness and national self-esteem.[22]
The contemporary Minister of Education and ScienceJurgita Petrauskienė said:
Lithuania and the entire educational community lost an authoritative linguist, dialectologist, researcher of Baltistics, a great person. A bright memory of his personality also remains: a prominent scientist and at the same time a modest, benevolent, very hardworking and respectful person.[4]
Zinkevičius is highly acclaimed in international sources, where he is described as an "excellent linguistic historian of the greatest professional repute",[27] "eminent",[28] and "great Lithuanian scholar".[29] On the topic ofPolish–Lithuanian relations, in his bookVilnijos lenkakalbių pavardės (Surnames of the Vilnius Region's Polish-speakers), Zinkevičius emphasized that today Lithuanians and Poles should coexist in a nice way, but that this could only happen if the relations and history of both nations were based on the truth.[30] He has said that:
They need to look at history correctly, recognizing that Lithuanians are not descended from Polish-speakers, but on the contrary: local Polish-speakers descend from Lithuanian-speaking people.[30]
On his 90th birthday in 2015, Zinkevičius said: "I saw many governments, but I never changed my views, which made me disliked by those who changed them. This is how I am, this is how I will die, I wish everyone every success".[10]Vytautas Landsbergis, the honorary chairman of theHomeland Union at the time, congratulated Zinkevičius on his birthday with the following words:
I want to say, dear academician, that your name and the name of Lithuania are connected. Lithuania is a nation, and the basis of the nation is language. You have done immeasurable work in this area. May God give you the strength to increase the large pile of books about Lithuania.[10]
Other notable people in Lithuania, such as the contemporaryPresident of LithuaniaDalia Grybauskaitė,Prime MinisterAlgirdas Butkevičius, Deputy Speaker of theSeimasIrena Degutienė, sent representatives also to congratulate Zinkevičius.[10] The contemporary Minister of Education and ScienceDainius Pavalkis [lt] emphasized that Zinkevičius's scientific work made Lithuania famous in the world and thanked Zinkevičius for his strengthening of the Lithuanian schools insoutheastern Lithuania while he was a minister: "You achieved that all residents of this region who want to learn Lithuanian could do so."[10] ProfessorRomualdas Baltrušis [lt], Zinkevičius's childhood friend, recalled that the years ofSoviet occupation was hard for Zinkevičius and was glad that his work remained serious, uninfluenced by theCommunist ideology, and that he did not ignore the dangerous events for Lithuania and defended Lithuanian language and national identity from those opposed to them.[10] Zigmas Zinkevičius is the focus of thedocumentary filmZigmas Zinkevičius. Pamilęs lietuvių kalbą ('Zigmas Zinkevičius: Having Fallen in Love with the Lithuanian Language') created by directorAlgirdas Tarvydas in 2015.[5][a]
In 1994, Zinkevičius, as the professor of VMU, was awarded theregalia of anHonorary Doctor.[1] For his services to Lithuania in 1995, Zinkevičius was awarded theOrder of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, 3rd Class.[5][1] He was also thelaureate of the internationalHerder Prize in 1994 and the LithuanianScience Advancement Award [lt] in 1995.[1] In addition, he was awarded the title of Honorary Doctorate of theUniversity of Latvia.[1] In 2015, on July 6, theLithuanian Statehood Day, Zinkevičius was awarded the Commander's Grand Cross of theOrder for Merits to Lithuania by president Grybauskaitė.[31][5]
American historian Theodore R. Weeks expressed his opinion on Zigmas Zinkevičius lifetime professional work as a "flagship example" of a trend in Lithuanian historiography and linguistics that depicts theVilnius region as "always Lithuanian". According to Weeks, Zinkevičius in his bookEastern Lithuania in the Past and Now (published in 1993) "wishes to argue for the eternal Lithuanian nature of the region, a viewpoint that no historical or linguistic methods seem likely to support."[32] He also defines Zinkevičius' approach as "historical-linguistic ethnocentrism".[33] He emphasizes that Zinkevičius tends to ignore the actual ethnographic data and alleged national self-identification of the inhabitants, in favour of promoting the thesis of the unchanging Lithuanian nature of the region.[33]
Polish researcher Robert Boroch is of a similar opinion, in his review of Zinkevičius's workThe History of the Lithuanian Language (published in 1996) Boroch emphasized that "the weakness of the work is the lack of objectivity, mixing ideology and scientific facts".[34] He describes Zinkevičius's thesis about the lack of connection between the Polish language used in Lithuania and the one used in Poland as "wrong, because differences in pronunciation cannot be a distinctive feature sufficient to distinguish a given language", and his position as "justified only from the propaganda point of view", which Boroch believes aims to put the Polish language in Lithuania in the position of "a secondary and dying language".[34]
InLietuvių dialektologija (1966), his most important work in dialectology, Zinkevičius presented the comparativephonetics andmorphology of the Lithuanian dialects, which included 75 maps with the phonetic data of the dialects.[5] For this book, he received theLSSR state prize [lt] in 1968 and a Habilitated Doctor degree.[5]
His most important work for Lithuanianaccentology is his workIš lietuvių istorinės akcentologijos: 1605 katekizmo kirčiavimas (lit. From Lithuanian Historical Accentology: Accentuation of the 1605 Catechism) from 1975.[5] Zinkevičius was theeditor-in-chief of the bookKalbos praktikos patarimai (1976, 1985).[5] In his 1977 bookLietuvių antroponimika: Vilniaus lietuvių asmenvardžiai 17 a. pradžioje (lit. Lithuanians' anthroponymics: Vilnius' Lithuanians'personal names in the early 17th century), Zinkevičius looked at more than 5,000 Lithuanian personal names and examined the process of thepolonization of Lithuanian surnames.[5] Zinkevičius prepared textbooks forhigher education, e.g.Lietuvių kalbos dialektologija (lit. The Lithuanian language's dialectology; 1978, 1994) andLietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika (lit. Lithuanian language's historical grammar; 2 vols. 1980–81).[5] The latter book was the first historical grammar of the Lithuanian language, which thoroughly examined the main issues of Lithuanian grammar.[5]
Zinkevičius researched and published thePolish-Yotvingian dictionary "Pagan Dialects from Narew [lt]" (1983, 1985).[1][5] Zinkevičius wrote the monographsRytų Lietuva praeityje ir dabar (lit. Eastern Lithuania in the past and now; 1993) and theLietuvių kalbos istorija (lit. The History of the Lithuanian Language; 1996, published both in Lithuanian and English).[5] He also authored books to popularize science, for example,Kaip žmonės išmoko rašyti (lit. How People Learned to Write; 1958),Lietuvių kalbos tarmės (lit. The Lithuanian language's dialects; 1968),Kalbotyros pradmenys (lit. Basics of Language research; 1969, 1980),Kalbininkas K. Būga (lit. LinguistK. Būga; 1981),Tautos kilmė (lit. Nation's origin; 2006).[5] He wrote the bookTautos kilmė together with others, and it was published in English and German in 2005 and Russian in 2006.[5] In addition, Zinkevičius is also the author of the following books (this list is not comprehensive):[5]
Zinkevičius has also published studies regarding the Lithuanian language in the writings ofMartynas Mažvydas,Konstantinas Sirvydas,Mozerka Saliamonas Slavočinskis [lt],Kristijonas Donelaitis and the Wolfenbüttel postil.[5] He also authored threeautobiographies:[5]
He also published the four-volume bookRinktiniai straipsniai (lit. Selected articles) in 2002–2004, containing his articles that were published in the Lithuanian press.[5] He also prepared the Kazimieras Būga'sRinktiniai straipsniai (lit. Selected articles; 3 vols. 1958–61 and an index volume in 1962) and the bookKazimieras Būga: Gyvenimas ir darbai (lit. Kazimieras Būga: Life and Work; 1979).[5] Together with others, he also created theLietuvių kalbos vadovėlį IX–XI klasei (lit. Lithuanian language textbook for classes IX–XI), which was first published in 1971 and was re-printed a third time in 1997.[5]
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)