Anatoly Liberman (russian: Анато́лий Си́монович Либерма́н; born 10 March 1937) is a linguist, medievalist, etymologist, poet, translator of poetry (mainly from and into Russian), and literary critic.
Liberman is a professor in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
, where since 1975 he has taught courses on the
history of all the Germanic languages and
literatures
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
,
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
,
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
,
lexicography
Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries.
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
* Theoretica ...
, European
structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
and
Russian formalism. He has published works on Germanic historical phonetics, English etymology, mythology/folklore, the history of philology, and poetic translation. He publishes a blog, "The Oxford Etymologist".
He is an advocate of
spelling reform
A spelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change to spelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples ar ...
.
Early life
Liberman was born in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
(then Leningrad) on 10 March 1937. His father was killed in action in 1941. He graduated from Leningrad State Herzen Pedagogical Institute (now the
Herzen State Pedagogical University) in 1959, and then taught English for three years at a boarding school for underprivileged children in the Leningrad region.
During that time he studied on his own and passed what is known in Russia as the
candidate minimum (
Germanic philology
Germanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective.
The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary tex ...
, the
history of English
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Sa ...
,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
and
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, that is,
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
and the
history of the Communist Party of the USSR).
After returning to Leningrad in 1962, Liberman taught English at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (now
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, abbreviated as SPbPU (also, formerly "Saint Petersburg State Technical University", abbreviated as SPbSTU), is a Russian technical university located in Saint Petersburg. Other former names i ...
) and became an extramural graduate student at
Leningrad University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...
.
Liberman's academic adviser was Professor M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, at that time a Soviet scholar in Old Icelandic literature and Germanic historical phonology. In 1965 he defended his Candidate of Philological Sciences (= PhD) dissertation on a topic of
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
historical phonology, and in the same year
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
ordered all the institutes of the Academy of Sciences to open groups for the study of what he called "the Scandinavian experience." Steblin-Kamenskij was invited to head such a group at the Institute of Linguistics and invited Liberman to be his full-time junior assistant. There he stayed until his emigration in 1975. In 1972 he defended his Doctor of Philological Sciences dissertation (= West European
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
) titled "Icelandic Prosody." At the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
since 1975, he spent one year as a Hill Visiting Professor and two years as an associate professor; after that he was promoted to full professorship.
Phonological theories
Liberman's main ideas in
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
are as follows: 1) A non-contradictory theory of phonology is probably unattainable, because we lack the means of segmenting the speech current into phonemes. 2) The most adequate model of a phonetic change continuing for centuries, such as
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
and consonant shifts, is that of a change caused by some event and is over once the potential of the initial impulse has been used up. The cause of every major change is another change. 3) Stress is not a force but a privileged position in a word, a position in which some oppositions occur that are not allowed in any other syllable. 4) The greatest phonetic changes in the history of Germanic were the concentration of all distinctive features in the root syllable and consonantal lenition as its consequence. 5)
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s, that is, the phonetic variants of a
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
, cannot be phonologized (by definition). 6) In Germanic, systemic changes of short vowels are reactions to changes in long vowels. Likewise, changes of voiced consonants are triggered by changes in voiceless consonants; what appears as voicing is really weakening.
Works on etymology
Liberman seeks to build an exhaustive purview of previous conjectures and hypotheses on word origins. His team has collected tens of thousands of articles on etymology from hundreds of journals, book chapters, and ''
Festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
en'', which feed his works. His books in this area include ''Etymology for Everyone: Word Origins and How We Know Them'' (2005),
''An analytic dictionary of English etymology: an introduction'' (2008)
and ''A Bibliography of English Etymology'' (2009). He has also published articles on individual words and groups of related words.
Poetical works
His poetical works include translations and extended commentary on
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (; russian: Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjurʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲɛrməntəf; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucas ...
,
Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev ( rus, Фёдор Ива́нович Тю́тчев, r=Fyódor Ivánovič Tyútčev, links=1, p=ˈfʲɵdər ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈtʲʉt͡ɕːɪf; Pre-Reform orthography: ; – ) was a Russian poet and diplomat.
...
,
Evgeny Boratynsky, and
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
.
* ''Mikhail Lermontov. Major Poetical Works''. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018.
Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its book ...
, 1982
* ''On the Heights of Creation: The Lyrics of Fedor Tyutchev''. Oxford: JAI Press, 1993.
* ''Vrachevanie dukha'' / ''
he Healing of the Spirit: Original Poetry and Select Translations from English and Icelandic into Russian''. NY: Effect, 1993. [Includes Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".]
* ''Vil'iam Shekspir, Sonety'' / ''William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Sonnets''. Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul'tur [The Languages of Slavic Cultures], 2016.
* ''Evgeny Boratynsky and the Russian Golden Age: Unstudied Words That Wove and Wavered.'' Anthem Press, 2020.
Original poetry has appeared in the journals ''Vstrechi''
'Encounters'' ''Poberezh'e''
'The Coast'' ''Novyi Zhurnal''
'The New Journal'' and ''Mosty''
'Bridges''
Works on the history of philology
* Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore (University of Minnesota Press, 1984);
*Stefán Einarsson, Studies in Germanic Philology (Helmut Buske, 1986),
* Three volumes of N. S. Trubetzkoy's works: ''Writings on Literature'' (University of Minnesota Press, 1990), ''The Legacy of Genghis Khan...'' (Michigan Slavic Materials 33, 1991), and ''Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure'' (Duke UP, 1993) – editor, commentator, and partial translator into English.
* Epilogue, M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij's Myth (Karoma, 1982: 103–50).
Selected linguistic bibliography
*''The Saga Mind and the Beginnings of Icelandic Prose''. Edwin Mellen Press, 2018.
* ''In Prayer and Laughter: Essays on Medieval Scandinavian and Germanic Mythology, Literature, and Culture''. Moscow: Paleograph Press, 2016.
* ''Germanic Accentology''. Volume 1: The Scandinavian Languages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
*"The Phonetic Organization of Early Germanic." American Journal of Germanic Languages and Literatures
IJGLSA2, 1990: 1–22.
*"Vowel Lengthening before Resonant + Another Consonant and Svarabhakti in Germanic." ''On Germanic Linguistics. Issues and Methods'' 1991: 163–215.
*"Toward a Theory of West Germanic Breakings." ''IJGLSA'' 3, 1998: 63–119.
*"Apocope in Germanic, or an Ax(e) to Grind" ''New Insights in Germanic Linguistics II'', 2001: 81–93).
* ''Etymology for Everyone: Word Origins and How We Know Them''. Oxford: University Press, 2005.
*
An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction'. Minneapolis
University of Minnesota Press 2008, .
*''A Bibliography of English Etymology''. Minneapolis
2009.
* "The Reaction of Monosyllables to Apocope in German Dialects." ''Insights in Germanic Linguistics II. Classic and Contemporary'', 1997: 99–133).
*"Pseudolaryngeals (Glottal Stops) and the Twilight of Distinctive Voice in Germanic." ''Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference'', 2000: 31–53).
*"Palatalized and Velarized Consonants in English Against Their Germanic Background, with Special References to i-umlaut." ''Studies in the History of the English Language III'', 2007: 5–36.
*"Verner's Law" ''NOWELE'' 58/59, 2010: 381–425.
*"The Shortest History of Vowel Lengthening in English." ''Studies in the History of the English Language'' 6, 2015: 161–82).
Fiction
*''Otets i syn, ili mir bez granits''
'Father and Son, or World without Borders'' St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnaia akademiia, 2021.
Honors and awards
At the University of Minnesota (a selection): Scholar of the College (1985–88), McKnight fellowship (1994–96), Bush fellowship (1995), Fesler-Lampert Professorship (1999–2002), inclusion in ''The Wall of Discovery'' (2006), and an award for distinguished contribution to graduate and professional education (2010).
From outside sources (a selection): a fellowship from the
American-Scandinavian Foundation
The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) is an American non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting international understanding through educational and cultural exchange between the United States and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Swede ...
(1982),
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
(1982),
Fulbright research fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...
(1988), NEH Summer Seminars (1980 and 1991), Fellowship at
Clare Hall (
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, 1984), NEH Summer Scholarship (1995), summer scholarship (for research and lectures) from the
University of Rome (1995), a fellowship from the
American Council of Learned Societies
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
(2001–2002); a certificate and a prize for a meritorious paper at the
International Phonetic Congress 1977, Miami Beach (Florida, 1977), The
Katharine Briggs Folklore Award by the
Folklore Society
The Folklore Society (FLS) is a national association in the United Kingdom for the study of folklore.
It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts an ...
(1995), the
Verbatim Dictionary Society of North America award for best project of the year (1996), MLA's annual prize for "a distinguished bibliography" (2010). ''Word Origins…'' was a selection of the
Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members c ...
and three other clubs. In 2014 Liberman was elected President of the
English Spelling Society The English Spelling Society is an international organisation, based in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1908 as the Simplified Spelling Society. It primarily aims to raise awareness of problems caused by English orthography, English spelling' ...
, and in 2015 Fellow of the
Dictionary Society of North America. In 1997 a Festschrift was published under the title Germanic Studies in Honor of Anatoly Liberman, ''NOWELE'' 31–32.
References
External links
Anatoly Libermanat the University of Minnesota
The Oxford Etymologist– Professor Liberman's weekly column on word origins at the Oxford University Press blog.
Анатолий Либерман — Журнальный зал*
:ru:Либерман, Анатолий Симонович#.D0.A1.D1.81.D1.8B.D0.BB.D0.BA.D0.B8
Anatoly Liberman lecture "Translating Poetry or Versifying with an Accent"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liberman, Anatoly
Living people
Writers from Saint Petersburg
American male poets
Jewish American writers
English-language spelling reform advocates
Germanic studies scholars
Soviet emigrants to the United States
American people of Russian descent
Linguists from the United States
Linguists from Russia
Etymologists
1937 births
University of Minnesota faculty
21st-century American Jews
Herzen University alumni