Isaak Iosifovic Revzin (russian: Исаак Иосифович Ревзин; 1923–1974) was a Russian linguist and

semiotician Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, ...

associated with the

Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School The Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed in 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikh ...

Life

Isaac Revzin was born in

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

. He worked at the Institute of Foreign Languages. A structural linguist, he proposed that linguistics be developed as a formal axiomatic theory. Despite the fact that he was a specialist in

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

, he only saw a computer (and from a distance) once in his life. He also wrote in collaboration with his wife, Olga Revzina. He died in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

. His son, Grigory Revzin, living in Moscow, is an art critic and a journalist.

Works

* (with Olga Revzina) 'Expérimentation sémiotique chez Eugene Ionesco', ''

Semiotica ''Semiotica'' is an academic journal covering semiotics. It is the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Publication Since 2000, the journal publishes five issues per year. It is published in English and French. ...

'' 4 (1960), pp. 240–262. * 'The relationship between structural and statistical methods in modern linguistics', ''Foreign developments in machine translation and information processing'', 1961, pp. 43–53 * ''Models of language'', London: Methuen, 1966. Translated by N. F. C. Owen and A. S. C. Ross from the Russian ''Modeli jazyka'' (1962).The English translation has been criticized as "very unsatisfactory and unreliable". ''

Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

'' 47 (1971), p. 188 * (with others) ''The fundamentals of human and machine translations'', 1966

References

1923 births 1974 deaths Linguists from the Soviet Union Russian semioticians 20th-century linguists Turkish emigrants to the Soviet Union {{russia-linguist-stub