Pavle Ivic
Encyclopedia
Biography
Professor Pavle Ivić (1 December 1924 - 19 September 1999) was a leading South SlavicSouth Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
and general dialectologist
Dialectology
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...
and phonologist
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. Both his field work and his synthesizing studies were extensive and authoritative. A few of his best-known publications are:
- Die serbokroatischen Dialekte, ihre Struktur und Entwicklung, Gravenhage, Mouton, 1958
- Srpski narod i njegov jezik (The Serbian People and Their Language). Belgrade, 1971;
- Word and sentence prosody in Serbocroatian, by Ilse Lehiste and Pavle Ivić. CambridgeCambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986.
He edited many periodicals and scholarly series, and was an important figure in the All-Slavic Linguistic Atlas project. He was one of the most respected authorities on the standardization of the Serbian language
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
. He frequently lectured in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and other countries, and was an Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America
Linguistic Society of America
The Linguistic Society of America is a professional society for linguists. It was founded in 1924 to advance linguistics, the scientific study of human language. The LSA has over 5,000 individual members and welcomes linguists of all kinds. It works to advance the discipline and to communicate...
.
A well-known intellectual and public figure in Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the most prominent academic institution in Serbia today...
, he took part in the polemics accompanying the breakdown of 1945-1991 Yugoslavia. He was as signatory of the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was a draft document produced by a 14-member committee composed by members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1985 to 1986, presided by Kosta Mihailović...
.
He was survived by his wife, Prof. Milka Ivić, a Slavic syntactician
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
.