Prof. Baruch Podolsky Z.L.

[Ghil'ad Zuckermann]

Dear Scholars of Jewish Languages,

 

It is with great sadness to announce yet another obituary on our distinguished list:
 
Prof. Baruch Podolsky was a wonderful teacher, most knowledgeable linguist, and inspiring lexicographer. He was an active contributor to our List. Yehi zichro Baruch.

 

Below, please find a brief bio:(FN1)

 

Born: 1940, Moscow, Russia
Immigrated to Israel: 1971 (after being an asir tsiyon)

Education:

• 1956-58 Moscow State University, Faculty of Oriental Languages, Hindi language.
• 1964-66 Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, English.
• 1971-85 Tel Aviv University, General Linguistics (BA 1974), Semitic Linguistics (BA 1974, MA 1976, PhD 1985).

Work experience:

• Since 1973 teaches courses in general and Semitic linguistics at Tel Aviv University.
• In 1990 Visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• In 1992 Visiting professor at Moscow State University, Institute of the Countries of Asia and Africa, Department of Arabic.
• In 1997 Visiting professor at SOAS, University of London, External Examiner in Amharic.
• Since 1992 lectures on Hebrew in Kol Israel radio program in Russian (REKA).

Took part in numerous international congresses and conferences. Member of the editorial board of Israel Oriental Studies.

Courses taught:
Amharic, Ge'ez, Syriac, The Structure of Hindi, Introduction to Semitic Linguistics (Phonology and Morphology), Phonetics, Problems in Semitic Morphophonemics, Genetic and Typological Classification of Languages, Scripts and Languages in the Near East, Introduction to Lexicography, Phonology and Morphology of Modern Hebrew, Substrata of Modern Hebrew.

Fields of interest:
Comparative linguistics, etymology, lexicography, history of writing, Nostratic linguistics, phonology and morphophonemics of Semitic languages, the structure of Modern Hebrew, Indian, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan and American Indian languages.

Major publications:

Books:

• A Practical Grammar of Hebrew [in Russian]. Tel Aviv 1985.
• A Small Hebrew-Amharic Vocabulary.Jerusalem 1985.
• A Greek Tatar-English Glossary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1985.
• Historical Phonetics of Amharic. Tel Aviv 1991.
• Hebrew-Russian Dictionary. Tel Aviv: Rolnik & Moscow: Russki Yazyk, 1992.
• Russian-Hebrew Dictionary. Tel Aviv: Rolnik & Moscow: Russki Yazyk, 1992.

Papers:

• Morphophonology of Amharic verb. In: Modern Ethiopia/L'Ethiopie moderne. Rotterdam: Balkema, 1980.
• Stress as a morphological factor in Modern Hebrew. Leshonenu 45, 1981 [Hebrew].
• Some problems in phonology and morphophonology of Amharic. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Addis Ababa - Uppsala - East Lansing 1984.
• Notes on the Urum (Greek Tatar) language. Rocznik Orientalistyczny (Warsaw) 44/2, 1985.
• Notes on the Urum language [revised version]. Mediterranean Language Review 2, 1985.
• The system of verbal stems in Amharic. Ethiopian Studies, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Rotterdam/Boston: Balkema, 1986.
• The schwa vowel in Amharic. Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau, vol. 2. Wiesbaden 1991.
• The problem of word accent in Modern Hebrew. In: H.G. Mukarovsky (ed.), Proceedings of the 5th International Hamito-Semitic Congress, vol. 2. Wien 1991.
• Mass immigration and its possible impact on the linguistic situation in Israel. IOS 15. 1995.
• Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords in Russian. Massorot 9-11, Jerusalem 1997 [Hebrew].
• I. Mel'chuk and B. Podolsky. Stress in Modern Hebrew nominal inflection. Theoretical Linguistics 22, 1/2, 1996.

Edited some 30 books, translated into Russian and Hebrew.

 

Yehi zichro Baruch.

 

FN1: Based on http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/semitic/podolsky.html .

[illan]

Dear list members, and hopefully Lidia Podolsky,

Dr Baruch (Boris) Podolsky (who always preferred being called simply Baruch) was one of my biggest inspirations, in the Academia and elsewhere. He was an astonishingly devoted academic, an honest and caring teacher, as well as a good adversary in occasional inflamed debates. He always generously spread his insights, praying his students would take them on and trying to recruit them to fill the huge gaps of modern Semitic research.

Baruch led my way in choosing the subject for my Masters' thesis and starting to invest in undescribed langauges spoken in Israel. For lighting my path, for the seemingly never ending debates he was always willing to launch with me, and for being one of those Mentschen who make it plausible for young academics like me to agree to commit to life of research - for all those I thank Dr Baruch Podolsky.

May his memory and great work remain with us for eternity.

Illan Gonen
PhD candidate
Dept of Middle Eastern Studies / Hebrew and Aramaic
University of Cambridge

2011/2/23 Ghil'ad Zuckermann <gzuck...@gmail.com>

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