Ralf-Stefan Georg (November 7, 1962 in

Bottrop Bottrop () is a city in west-central Germany, on the Rhine–Herne Canal, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Located in the Ruhr industrial area, Bottrop adjoins Essen, Oberhausen, Gladbeck, and Dorsten. The city had been a coal-mining and rail cent ...

) is a German linguist. He is currently

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

, Germany, for Altaic Linguistics and Culture Studies.

Education

Georg earned an M.A. in Mongolian Linguistics,

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

and Semitic Linguistics at Bonn University (1990), and later completed his Ph.D. (Central Asian Studies, Indo-European and

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) an ...

Studies), with a descriptive grammar of the

Thakali language Thakali is a Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal spoken by the Thakali people, mainly in the Myagdi and Mustang Districts. Its dialects have limited mutual intelligibility. Seke (Tangbe, Tetang, Chuksang) is sometimes considered a separate language ...

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...

language of

Mustang The mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. Mustangs are often referred to as wild horses, but because they are descended from once-domesticated animals, the ...

in Mid-Western

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is ma ...

), at the same institution (1995).

Research

Since 1992, Georg has been engaged in linguistic fieldwork and the writing of descriptive grammars of unwritten/endangered/understudied languages. Apart from a grammar of a Thakali dialect, he has co-authored a grammar of

Itelmen The Itelmens ( Itelmen: Итәнмән, russian: Ительмены) are an indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan langu ...

( Chukchi–Kamchatkan language family) and written a grammar of

Ket Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state governme ...

(

Yeniseian languages The Yeniseian languages (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak;"Ostyak" is a concept of areal rather than genetic linguistics. In addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages Khanty and Selkup. occasional ...

), as well as shorter grammatical descriptions of

Ordos Mongolian Ordos Mongolian (also ''Urdus''; Mongolian ; Chinese 鄂尔多斯 ''È'ěrduōsī'') is a variety of Central Mongolic spoken in the Ordos City region in Inner Mongolia and historically by Ordos Mongols. It is alternatively classified as a lan ...

and Huzhu Mongghul (a variety of the so-called Monguor group). He has published widely on problems of

language classification In linguistics, language classification is the grouping of related languages into the same category. There are two main kinds of language classification: genealogical and typological classification. Genealogical (or genetic) classification Language ...

, especially on the controversy surrounding the

Altaic hypothesis Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...

(the putative genetic relationship between the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families to which

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

and

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

are sometimes added). He belongs to the critics of this hypothesis and argues for a non-genetic, areal interpretation of the commonalities between these languages. Other fields of interest he is active in include

Palaeosiberian languages The Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of Siberia. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedat ...

languages, Indo-European and Kartvelian linguistics and

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

.Association for Linguistic Typology, Membership entry Stefan Georg
Retrieved on 2009-08-10.

Publications

* * *Georg, Stefan, Peter A. Michalove,

Alexis Manaster Ramer Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956) is a Polish-born American linguist (PhD 1981, University of Chicago). Work Ramer has published extensively on syntactic typology (esp. in relation to Australian, Eskimo, and Austronesian languages); on phonol ...

, and Paul J. Sidwell (1999)
"Telling general linguists about Altaic."
''Journal of Linguistics 35'':65–98. Mongolian translation: Ерөнхий хэл шинжлэлчид алтай судлалын тухай. ''Алтай Судлал/Studia Altaica I/2001'': 174-215 (transl.: P. Ajuulzhav/G. Tujaa/O. Sambuudorzh). *Georg, Stefan (1999/2000): Haupt und Glieder der altaischen Hypothese: die Körperteilbezeichnungen im Türkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen (= Head and members of the Altaic hypothesis: The body-part designations in Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic'). ''Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, neue Folge B 16'': 143–182. *Georg, Stefan (2001): Türkisch/Mongolisch tengri “Himmel/Gott” und seine Herkunft. ''Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 6'': 83-100. *Georg, Stefan (2002): Altaic Languages. In: David Levinson and Karen Christensen (eds.): ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, Vol. 1''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 86-87. *Georg, Stefan (2003
Ordos
In: J. Janhunen (ed.): The Mongolic Languages. London: Routledge: 193-209. *Georg, Stefan (2003a)
Mongghul
in: J. Janhunen (ed.): The Mongolic Languages. London: Routledge: 286-306. *Georg, Stefan (2003b)
The Gradual Disappearance of a Eurasian Language Family – The Case of Yenisseyan
In: M. Janse and S. Tol (eds.): ''Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive Approaches''. Amsterdam: Benjamins: 89-106. * * * * * *Georg, Stefan (2008): Yeniseic languages and the Siberian linguistic area In: A. Lubotsky, J. Schaeken and J. Wiedenhof (eds.): ''Evidence and Counter-Evidence. Festschrift Frederik Kortlandt, Vol.I''. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.

References

External links

Personal homepage of Stefan Georg at academia.edu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Georg, Stefan 1962 births Living people Linguists from Germany Historical linguists Mongolists People from Bottrop Linguists of Yeniseian languages Linguists of Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages Linguists of Sino-Tibetan languages