Jaan Puhvel | |
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Born | [1] Tallinn, Estonia | 24 January 1932
Nationality |
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Spouse | Madli Puhvel |
Awards | Order of the White Star, Third Class (2001) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic advisors | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Linguistics |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions | |
Notable students | |
Main interests | |
Notable works | Hittite Etymological Dictionary (1984–) [2] |
Jaan Puhvel (born 24 January 1932) [3] is an Estonian comparative linguist and comparative mythologist who specializes in Indo-European studies.
Born in Estonia,Puhvel fled his country with his family in 1944 following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states,and eventually ended up in Canada. Gaining his Ph.D. in comparative linguistics at Harvard University,he became a professor of classical languages,Indo-European studies and Hittite at the University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA),where he founded the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology and was Chairman of the Department of Classics.
Puhvel is the founder of the Hittite Etymological Dictionary,and the author and editor of several works on Proto-Indo-European mythology and Proto-Indo-European society.
Jaan Puhvel was born in Tallinn,Estonia on 24 January 1932,the son of Karl Puhvel and Meta Elisabeth Paern. [4] His father,a civil engineer by profession,was a forest manager working for the Estonian government. Jaan received his earliest education in Aegviidu and at the Jakob Westholm Gymnasium . [5] In April 1944,following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states,the family emigrated to Finland. The following autumn they moved to Sweden. [6] [5] While a high school student in Sweden,Puhvel decided that he wanted to become a scholar in Indo-European linguistics. [2]
Puhvel graduated from high school in Sweden in 1949,and his family subsequently emigrated to Canada. He studied Latin,French and Ancient Greek at McGill University,where he graduated with an MA in comparative linguistics in 1952,for which he earned the Governor General's Gold Medal. [4]
With a scholarship from the Canadian government,Puhvel went to study at Harvard University,where he was elected a Member of the Harvard Society of Fellows in 1953. From 1954 to 1955,he studied at Sorbonne University in Paris,France,and at Uppsala University in Uppsala,Sweden. In Paris,his teachers included the linguists Émile Benveniste,Georges Dumézil,Pierre Chantraine and Michel Lejeune,and the philologist Alfred Ernout,while at Uppsala,philologist Stig Wikander was among his teachers. [6] He subsequently lectured on the classics at McGill,Harvard and University of Texas at Austin. Puhvel gained his PhD in comparative linguistics at Harvard University in 1959 with a dissertation on the laryngeal theory. It was later published as Laryngeals and the Indo-European Verb (1960). [6] [5]
Puhvel taught classical languages and comparative Indo-European linguistics at the University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1958. In 1965,he was appointed Professor of Indo-European Studies there. [4] [6] [5] Puhvel founded the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology at UCLA in 1961. At UCLA,he was Director of the Center for Research in Languages and Linguistics (1962–1967),Vice Chairman of Indo-European Studies (1964–1968),and Chairman of the Department of Classics (1968–1975). [4] Prominent students of Puhvel at UCLA include anthropologist C. Scott Littleton and folklorist Donald J. Ward. [6]
Puhvel was President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies from 1971 to 1972. He is a member of many other scholarly organizations,including the Linguistic Society of America,the American Oriental Society and the American Philological Association. Puhvel has been a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (1961–1962),and a Guggenheim Fellow (1968–1969). [4] He became an Officer First Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 1967. [4] Puhvel is the creator of the Hittite Etymological Dictionary (1984–),which as of 2020 has been published in ten volumes. This project is the culmination of more than a half a century of work by Puhvel. [2] Since volume 5 (2001),it complements the Chicago Hittite Dictionary,which began in 1980.
Puhvel has retired from UCLA as Professor Emeritus of Classical Linguistics,Indo-European Studies and Hittite. [7] He was a visiting professor at the University of Tartu from 1993 to 1999. [2] [8] Studies in Honor of Jan Puuhvel (1997),a festschrift in his honor,was published in two parts by the Institute for the Study of Man. Puhvel received the Estonian Order of the White Star,Third Class in 2001. [9] He took part in the editing process of Gilgamesh when the translation into Estonian was being prepared. [10]
The Estonian poet Kaarel Kressa has characterized Puhvel as one of the world's most prominent Hittitologists,and one of the foremost Estonian scholars. [2]
Puhvel married Estonian microbiologist Madli Puhvel on 4 June 1960,with whom he has three children. [4] He is the brother of philologist Martin Puhvel. [5] He resides in Encino,Los Angeles, [4] but spends every summer at the restored family farm in Kõrvemaa,Estonia. [2]
The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language.
The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that:
Hittite, also known as Nesite, is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, speakers of the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in preliterate societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans' original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions.
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and its speakers, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, including their society and Proto-Indo-European mythology. The studies cover where the language originated and how it spread. This article also lists Indo-European scholars, centres, journals and book series.
In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. There is controversy about the causes of these similarities. They are usually considered to be innovations, likely to have developed after the breakup of the Proto-Indo-European language. It is also possible that some of these are not innovations, but shared conservative features, i.e. original Indo-European language features which have disappeared in all other language groups. What is commonly accepted is that the shared features may usefully be thought of as Italo-Celtic forms, as they are certainly shared by the two families and are almost certainly not coincidental.
Baltic mythology is the body of mythology of the Baltic people stemming from Baltic paganism and continuing after Christianization and into Baltic folklore.
Jaan Anvelt, was an Estonian Bolshevik revolutionary and writer. He served the Russian SFSR, was a leader of the Communist Party of Estonia, the first premier of the Soviet Executive Committee of Estonia, and the chairman of the Council of the Commune of the Working People of Estonia. Imprisoned during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in 1937, he died from the injuries sustained during a beating by Aleksandr Langfang while in NKVD custody.
Proto-Anatolian is the proto-language from which the ancient Anatolian languages emerged. As with almost all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Anatolian languages as well as other Indo-European languages.
Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé was a Belgian-American philologist and religious studies scholar. He specialized in Germanic and Indo-European studies and was active at the University of Texas at Austin for much of his career.
The grammar of the Hittite language has a highly conservative verbal system and rich nominal declension. The language is attested in cuneiform, and is the earliest attested Indo-European language.
Olevik was a weekly newspaper published in Tartu, Estonia. The paper existed between 1882 and 1915.
Calvert Watkins was an American linguist and philologist, known for his book How to Kill a Dragon. He was a professor of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and after retirement went to serve as professor-in-residence at UCLA.
Kaarel Liidak was an Estonian agronomist, agriculture minister and politician, member and chairman of the National Committee of the Republic of Estonia from March to August 1944.
Udo Mario Strutynski is an Austrian-born American linguist and lawyer. As a linguist, Strutynski specializes in Indo-European and Germanic studies, particularly the study of Germanic and Indo-European mythology. As a lawyer he has distinguished himself to helping out victims of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, of which he is himself a survivor.
Atsuhiko Yoshida is a Japanese classical scholar best known for his research on parallels between Indo-European and Japanese mythology.
Martin E. Huld is an American linguist who is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles. He specializes in Indo-European linguistics.
Sino-Uralic or Sino-Finnic is a long-range linguistic proposal that links the Sinitic languages (Chinese) and the Uralic languages. Sino-Uralic is proposed as an alternative to the Sino-Tibetan family and is at odds with mainstream comparative linguistics, which firmly includes the Sinitic languages in the Sino-Tibetan family. The proposal has been brought forward by the Chinese linguist Jingyi Gao, based on works by 19th century linguists such as Karl August Hermann. Gao suggested the proto-population could have been lived in Neolithic China and carried the Haplogroup N, claiming that a common proto-language could have been spoken around 5.000-10.000 years ago. However, connections with the Uralic and other language families are generally seen as speculative.
Madde Kalda was an Estonian writer.
Aino Jõgi was an Estonian linguist, emeritus associate professor of English philology at the University of Tartu, and translator.
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