Vovin, Alexander

Alexander (Sasha) Vovin (27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022)

Obituary

Participation:

Position: Directeur d’études, linguistique historique du Japon et de l’Asie du Nord-Est, EHESS/CRLAO, Paris

Fields of interest

Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic historical linguistics, the Ainu language and linguistics, Paleosiberian languages and linguistics (especially Ghilyak and Yeniseian), Old Japanese, Ancient Korean, Manchu. Old Turkic and Middle Mongolian language and literature, Chinese transcription of ancient Inner Asian languages, prehistory and early history of North-East Asia, Siberia, and Inner Asia.

Research activities

PI of the project AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE JAPONIC LANGUAGES, funded by ERC Advanced grant
 
Editor-in-chief (together with Juha Janhunen) of the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EURASIAN LINGUISTICS (Brill, First issue to appear March 2019)

Ongoing project on the edition with commentary and translation of the Man’yōshū, the oldest Japanese poetic anthology

A Grammar of Jurchen.

Editor-in-chief for the series LANGUAGES OF ASIA in Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.

Elected memberships and international awards

Recipient of ERC Advanced 2018 grant

Elected member of Academia Europaea (2015)

Laureate of 2015 award of the Japanese National Institute of Humanities

Selected Publications

Books

2018a     Man’yōshū, Book 19, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary. Leiden: Brill. XX+243 pp.

2018b    Studies in Japanese and Korean historical and theoretical linguistics and beyond. A Festschrift to honor Prof. John B. Whitman on the occasion of his 60th birthday (co-edited with William McClure). Leiden: Brill. XXXII+198 pp.

2017      Man’yōshū, Book 1, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary. Leiden: Brill. XX+192 pp.

2016a     Man’yōshū, Book 18, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary. Leiden: Brill. XVIII+168 pp.

2016 Man’yōshū, Book 17, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration. romanization, glossing and commentary. Leiden: Brill. XVII+217 pp.

2013 Man’yōshū, Book 20, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration. romanization, glossing and commentary. Folkestone & Leiden: Global Oriental/Brill. XVII+317 pp.

2012 Man’yōshū, Book 14, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration. romanization, glossing and commentary. Folkestone & Leiden: Global Oriental/Brill. XVIII+269 pp.

2011 Man’yōshū, Book 5, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration. romanization, glossing and commentary. Folkestone & Leiden: Global Oriental/Brill. XVI+179 pp.

2010 Koreo-Japonica: A re-evaluation of a common genetic origin. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. XVI+278 pp.

2009a Man’yōshū, Book 15, a new English translation containing the original text, kana transliteration. romanization, glossing and commentary. Folkestone: Global Oriental, XVII+219 pp.

2009b A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. part 2: Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles, Postpositions, and Indices. XIX+988 pp., Folkestone: Global Oriental.

2005 A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese. part 1: Introduction, Writing System and Phonology, Lexicon, Nominals. XIX+432 pp., Folkestone: Global Oriental.

2003a A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: Routledge/Curzon Press, 2003, XIX+476 pp.

2003b 日本語系統論の現在/Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese language. Co-edited with Osada Toshiki (長田俊樹). Kyoto: The International Research Center for the Japanese Studies, 572 pp.

1993 A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu. Leiden: E. J. Brill Publishers, XIII+219 pp.

BOOKLETS

2009 『万葉集と風土記に見られる不思議な言葉と上代日本列島におけるアイヌ語の分布』。京都:国際日本文化研究センター。2009(Strange Words in the Man’yōshū and the Fudoki and the Distribution of the Ainu Language in the Japanese Islands in Prehistory). Kyoto: The International Research Center for the Japanese Studies, 57 pp.

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

2018a     ‘Four Tungusic Etymologies’. In: Philology of the Grasslands: Festschrift for Gyorgy Kara (ed. by Ákos Apatóczky, Christopher Atwood, and Bela Kempf). Brill: Leiden. pp. 366-368.

2018b     ‘On the etymology of the name of Mt. Fuji’. In: Studies in Japanese and Korean historical and theoretical linguistics and beyond. A Festschrift to honor Prof. John B. Whitman on the occasion of his 60th birthday (co-edited with William McClure). Leiden: Brill. pp. 80-89.

2017a     ‘Origins of the Japanese Language’. In: Online Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 34 pp.

http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-277?rskey=RSBt53&result=17

2017b     ‘Koreanic Loanwords in Khitan and Their Importance in the Decipherment of the Latter’. In: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarica 2017.2: 207-215 (Special issue on the Khitan Studies), ed. by István Vásáry.

2017c     ‘Some Tofalar Etymologies’. In: Essays in the History of Languages and Linguistics, Dedicated to Marek Stachowski on the occasion of his 60th birthday, ed. by Németh, Michał, Barbara Podolak, and Mateusz Urban. Kraków: Jagiellonian University, pp. 794-801.

2016a     ‘And so Flows History’. In: Endangered Languages of the Caucasus and Beyond. (Ramazan Korkmaz and Gürkan Doğan, eds.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 275-287.

2016b     ‘On the Linguistic Prehistory of Hokkaidō’. In: Crosslinguistics and Linguistic Crossings in Northeast Asia. Ed. by Gruzdeva, Ekaterina and Juha Janhunen. Studia Orientalia 117: 29-38. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society.

2016c     ‘No Aramaic Word for ‘Monastery’ in East Asia. Reflections on Christopher I. Beckwith’s Recent Publication’. Journal Asiatique 304.1: 117-124. (Co-authored with Laurent SAGART).

2016d     ‘Who Were the *Kjet and What Language did they Speak?’ Journal Asiatique 304.1: 125-144. (Co-authored with Edward VAJDA and Étienne DE LA VASSIÈRE)

2016e     ‘Old Turkic Kinship Terms in Early Middle Chinese’. (Co-authored with David McCraw). Türk Dili Yilliği — Belleten 2011.1: 107-118.

2015a     ‘Some Notes on the Tuyuhun (吐谷渾) Language — In the footsteps of Paul Pelliot–’. In: Journal of Sino-Western Communications, 7.2: 157-166.

2015b ‘On the Etymology of Middle Korean psʌr ‘rice’’. In: Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları, 25.2, special issue ed. by Mehmet Ölmez (Festschrift for Uwe Bläsing).

2015c ‘Eskimo loanwords in Northern Tungusic’. In: Victoria Arakelova (ed.). Festschrift for Uwe Bläsing (special issue of Iran and Caucasus 19: 87-95).

2014a ‘Borrowing of Verbal Roots across Language Families Boundaries in the ‘Altaic’ World’. Althai Hakpo 24: 151-161.

2014b ‘Why Koreanic is not Demonstrably Related to Tungusic?’ In: To Soo Hee & Chung Kwang (eds.). Korean within Altaic Languages and Altaic Languages within Korean. Altaic Series 2, ACSI. Seoul: Aleum Publishers. pp. 97-117.

2013a ‘Old Turkic Loanwords in the Khitan Language’. In: Yalım Kaya Bitigi. Festschrift for Prof. Osman Sertkaya. Ed. by Hatice Șirin User and Bülent Gül, pp. 621-25.

2013b ‘From Koguryǒ to T’amna: Slowly Riding South with the Speakers of Proto-Korean.’ Korean Linguistics, 15.2: 222-40.

2013c ‘Mongolian names for ‘Korea’ and ‘Korean’ and their significance for the Korean language history’. In: Studies in Korean Linguistics and Language Pedagogy. Festschrift for Ho-min Sohn, ed. by Sung-Ock Sohn, Sungdai Cho,& Sek-Hoon You, pp. 200-205.

2013d ‘Personal pronouns: a pillar or a pillory of the ‘Altaic’ hypothesis?’ Türk Dili Araștırmaları. 21(2): 251-278.

2013e ‘Northeastern and Central Asia: “Altaic” Linguistic History. The chapter in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Edited by Immanuel Ness. 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. vol. 1.24: 1-7 (volume edited by Peter Bellwood).

2012 ‘Did Wanyan Xiyin invent the Jurchen Script?’ In: Recent Advances in Tungusic Linguistics, ed. By Andrej Malchukov and Lindsay J. Whaley. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 49-58.

2011a ‘On one more source of Old Japanese i2’. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 20: 219-228.

2011b ‘A modest proposal on the decipherment of the Khitan-Chinese bilingual text of 1134 (the Langjun inscription)’. In: Life and Afterlife & Apocalyptic Concepts in the Altaic World: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), Château Pietersheim, Belgium, September, 3 – 8, 2000, Tunguso-Sibirica; 31, ed. by Michael Knüppel and Aloïs van Tongerloo. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 123-130.

2010a ‘Once again on the Ruan-ruan language.‘ In: Ötükenden Istanbul’a. Türkҫenin 1290 Yɩlɩ, (From Ötüken to Istanbul. 1290 years of the Turkish language). Istanbul, ed. By Mehmet Ölmez et al., pp. 27-36.

2010b ‘Is Japanese Katakana Derived from Korean Kwukyel?’ In: Contemporary Korean Linguistics: International Perspectives. In Honor of Professor Sang-oak Lee, ed. By Robert J. Fouser. Seoul: Thaehaksa, pp. 379-384.

2009a 「琉球語、上代日本語と周辺の諸言語―再構と接点の諸問題―」。『日本研究』39: 11-27. (Ryukyuan, Old Japanese, and Surrounding Languages: Problems of Reconstruction and Contacts). In: Japanese Studies, 39: 11-27).

2009b ‘Once again on the Tabɣač language.’ Mongolian Studies XXIX: 191-206.

2008 ‘Proto-Japonic beyond the accent system.’ In: Proto-Japanese: Issues and prospects. Bjarke Frellesvig, John Whitman (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 2008, pp. 141-56.

2007a ‘On the etymology of Old Turkic yaŋa ~ yaŋan ~ yaɣan and Middle Mongolian ja’an ‘elephant.’’ Festschrift in Honor of Talat Tekin, ed. by Mehmet Ölmez. In: Türk Dili Araștɩrmalarɩ 18: 413-421.

2007b ‘Once again on the title qaɣan.’ Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 12: 177-87.

2007c ‘Once again on doublets in Western Old Japanese,’ In: Current Issues in the History and Structure of Japanese. Ed. By Bjarke Frellesvig, Masayoshi Shibatani, and John Charles Smith. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers 2007, pp. 351-74.

2007d ‘Korean Loanwords in Jurchen and Manchu.’ Althai hakpo 17: 73-84.

2007e ‘Cin-Han and Silla words in Chinese transcription.’ In: Lingustic Promenades: Festschrift for Prof. Kim Chin-Wu on the occasion of his retirement. Ed. by Lee, Sang-oak. Seoul: Hankook munhwasa, pp. 603-28.

2006a ‘Are Koguryo and Paekche different languages or dialects of Old Korean?’ Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 2.2: 107-42.

2006b ‘Why Manchu and Jurchen are looking so non-Tungusic?’ Tumen jalafun jecen akū Festschrift for Giovanni Stary’s 60th birthday, ed. by Juha Janhunen, Alessandra Pozzi, and Michael Weiers. 2006, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 255-66.

2003a ‘Once again on lenition in Middle Korean’, Korean Studies 27: 85-107.

2003b ‘Once again on Khitan words in Khitan-Chinese mixed verses’, in: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 56.2-4: 237-244.

2003c ‘Did the Xiong-nu speak a Yeniseian language? Part II: Vocabulary’, in: Altaica Budapestinensia MMII. Proceedings of 45th meeting of the Permanent International Conference (PIAC), Budapest, Hungary, ed. by Alice Sárközi, pp. 389-394.

2003d ‘Etymological notes on some Paleosiberian and Tungusic loanwords in Korean’, in Proceedings for Korean Language and Culture 5/6: 57-60, St. Petersburg, Russia.

2000 ‘Did the Xiong-nu speak a Yeniseian language?’ Central Asiatic Journal, 44.1: 87-104.

 

REVIEW ARTICLES

2009 ‘Japanese, Korean, and Other Non-Altaic Languages’, a review article of Martine Robbeets. Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. Central Asiatic Journal, 53.1, pp. 105-47.

2005a ‘The End of the Altaic Controversy,’ a review article of Sergei Starostin, Anna Dybo, and Oleg Mudrak‘s Etymological dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Leiden: E.J. Brill (2003), Central Asiatic Journal 49.1: 71-132.

2005b Review article of Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic: Indo-European and its closest relatives, vol. 2 (co-authored with Dr. Stefan Ralf Georg), Diachronica XXII.1: 184-90.

2003 Review article of Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic: Indo-European and its closest relatives, vol. 1 (co-authored with Dr. Stefan Ralf Georg), Diachronica vol. XX.2: 331-362.

1997 Review article of the Ancestry of the Chinese Language, ed. by S.-Y. Wang, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 25.2:308-336.