Alexander M. Schenker is a notable American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Slavist, professor emeritus of Slavic linguistics at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, and the winner of the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic Studies for his contributions to the field of Polish studies

Polish studies

Polish studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates Polish language and literature in both its historic and present-day forms...

, as well for the general contributions to the development of the field of Slavic studies in the United States.

Biography

Schenker was born in Cracow in 1924. He enrolled to the university in Dushanbe

Dushanbe

-Economy:Coal, lead, and arsenic are mined nearby in the cities of Nurek and Kulob allowing for the industrialization of Dushanbe. The Nurek Dam, the world's highest as of 2008, generates 95% of Tajikistan's electricity, and another dam, the Roghun Dam, is planned on the Vakhsh River...

 (then Stalinabad) in Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

 during the World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Later he studied at the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, receiving his Ph.D. from Yale in 1953, where he eventually settled becoming a professor of Slavic studies.

Work

At Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

in the 1950s he participated in the creation of one of America's leading programs of Slavic languages and literatures, culminating in what was to become a classic textbook for teaching Polish in English: Beginning Polish (1966). His other notable works include:

• Polish Declension (1964), monograph
• Polish Conjugation (1954), article
• Gender Categories in Polish (1955), article
• Some Remarks on Polish Quantifiers (1971), article
• The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development, coedited with Edward Stankiewicz (1980),
• The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology (1996), his greatest book, receiving MLA'ss Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures.
• The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's Monument to Peter the Great (2003)

External links

• The Dawn of Slavic - The first chapter of The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology, in PDF