9.3 Newsmakers: Vagif Aslanov

Autumn 2001 (9.3)
Page 10

Newsmakers
Vagif Aslanov

Vagif Aslanov (1928-2001), one of the giants in linguistics research in Azerbaijan, passed away on August 3 of complications from a stroke he had suffered six years earlier.

During his lifetime, Aslanov published more than 300 academic works. His research covered everything from sentence structure to the origins of words, from principles of lexicography to speech culture, from morphological analysis to sociolinguistics, from the linguistic features of classic Eastern poets to the etymology of European words. His major research dealt with the problem of reconstruction-that is, establishing the proto-forms of words to see how long ago they originated.

Aslanov's work at the Institute of Linguistics contributed valuable knowledge about the history of the Azeri language. He proved, based on medieval sources, that the history of written Azeri could be traced back to the 12th century. Earlier scholars had placed Azeri's first written appearance in the 14th century, when the Turkic language became the elite language of poetry in Azerbaijan.

The breadth of Aslanov's research and his knowledge of many languages - including Azeri, Turkish, English, Russian, German, Persian and Arabic - brought him to think very deeply about the universality of languages and the universality of human thinking. He will be remembered as a person of deep knowledge, rare honesty and a strong dedication to his work.

____
From Azerbaijan International (9.3) Autumn 2001.
© Azerbaijan International 2001. All rights reserved.