Aleksandar Belić (

Serbian Cyrillic The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (, ), also known as the Serbian script, (, ), is a standardized variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language. It originated in medieval Serbia and was significantly reformed in the 19th cen ...

: Александар Белић, ; 15 August 1876 – 26 February 1960) was a Serbian linguist and academic.

Biography

Belić was born in

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

. After studying

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

in Belgrade, Odessa, and Moscow, he received his PhD at

Leipzig University Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

in 1900. He worked at the

University of Belgrade The University of Belgrade () is a public university, public research university in Belgrade, Serbia. It is the oldest and largest modern university in Serbia. Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it me ...

and Belgrade Higher School during his academic career. He was a member and longtime president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. His membership lasted between 1937 and 1960 with the interruption in the 1941-1944 period of the Axis occupation of Serbia when he was suspended. Belić is generally considered the leading Serbian linguist of the first half of the twentieth century. His research dealt with comparative Slavic studies, general linguistics,

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

, and syntax. He authored ''Pravopis srpskohrvatskog književnog jezika'' (Standard Serbo-Croatian Normative Guide, 1923) which was based on a strictly phonological spelling principle. He wrote extensively on

Čakavian Chakavian or Čakavian (, , , proper name: or own name: ''čokovski, čakavski, čekavski'') is a South Slavic languages, South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmati ...

and

Kajkavian Kajkavian is a South Slavic languages, South Slavic supradialect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia and Gorski Kotar. It is part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, being transitional to the supradialects of Č ...

dialects and made a significant contribution to Slavic accentology with his discovery of the Slavic neoacute accent in Čakavian. Belić introduced the tripartite division of Kajkavian based on the reflexes of

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...

''*tj'' and ''*dj'', which was first published in Stanojević's ''Narodna enciklopedija srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenačka'' (Serbo-Croatian-Slovene National Encyclopedia, 1927), although disproved by later dialectology studies. He contributed to the acceptance of the so-called Belgrade style of standard Serbian. During his entire life he was a consistent advocate of a unified Serbo-Croatian language. Belić's selected works have been published in 14 volumes in 1999. He died in Belgrade.

Selected works

*''Dijalekti istočne i južne Srbije'' (1903) *''Dijalektološka karta srpskog jezika'' *''Akcentske studije'' *''O dvojini u slovenskim jezicima'' *''Galički dijalekt'' *''O jezičkoj prirodi i jezičkom razvitku'' (1941) *''Pravopis srpsko-hrvatskog književnog jezika'' (1923)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Belic, Aleksandar 1876 births 1960 deaths Linguists from Serbia People from the Kingdom of Serbia People from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia Imperial Moscow University alumni Burials at Belgrade New Cemetery Rectors of the University of Belgrade Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Leipzig University alumni