Alexander Vovin Explained

Alexander Vladimirovich Vovin
Native Name:Александр Владимирович Вовин
Native Name Lang:ru
Birth Date:27 January 1961
Birth Place:Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (present-day St. Petersburg, Russia)
Death Place:Paris, France
Children:3
Alma Mater:Saint Petersburg State University
Thesis Year:1987
Workplaces:School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Miami University, University of Michigan
Doctoral Students:Marc Miyake

Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin (Russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France. He was a world-renowned linguist, well known for his research on East Asian languages.

Education

Alexander Vovin earned his M.A. in structural and applied linguistics from the Saint Petersburg State University in 1983, and his Ph.D. in historical Japanese linguistics and premodern Japanese literature from the same university in 1987, with a doctoral dissertation on the Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari (ca. 1056).[1]

Career

After serving as a Junior Researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies (1987–1990), he moved to the United States where he held positions as assistant professor of Japanese at the University of Michigan (1990–1994), assistant professor at Miami University (1994–1995), and assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi (1995–2003). He was appointed full professor at the University of Hawaiʻi in 2003, and continued working there until 2014. He was visiting professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto from 2001 to 2002 and again in 2008, a visiting professor at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany (2008–2009), and a visiting professor at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) in Tokyo, Japan from May to August 2012.

In 2014, Vovin accepted the position of Director of Studies at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale (CRLAO) unit of the EHESS, where he remained until his death in 2022.[2]

Alexander Vovin specialized in Japanese historical linguistics (with emphasis on etymology, morphology, and phonology), and Japanese philology of the Nara period (710–792), and to a lesser extent of the Heian period (792–1192). His last project before his death involved the complete academic translation into English of the Man'yōshū (ca. 759), the earliest and the largest premodern Japanese poetic anthology, alongside the critical edition of the original text and commentaries. He also researched the moribund Ainu language in northern Japan, and worked on Inner Asian languages and Kra–Dai languages, especially those preserved only in Chinese transcription, as well as on Old and Middle Korean texts.

His last work, published in 2021, is on the Bussokuseki no Uta of Yakushi-ji temple in Nara. In the same year, a festschrift was dedicated to Vovin on his 60th birthday.[3]

He had been engaged in coordinating the Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic Languages from 2019 to the time of his death in 2022, with cooperation from several universities and European Union funding of €2,470,200,00.[4] However, the project was terminated upon his death.

Personal life

Vovin was married twice: first to Varvara G. Lebedeva-Vovina (née Churakova), with whom they have a son, Aleksei, born in 1982, and the second time to fellow Japanese language researcher Sambi Ishisaki (石崎賛美) in 2000.[5] [6] Two more children were born to the second marriage.

He died on 8 April 2022, at the age of 61, from cancer.[7]

Publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Alexander Vovin EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales - Academia.edu . ehess.academia.edu.
  2. Web site: Bottéro . Françoise . 8 April 2022 . Disparition d'Alexander Vovin . 8 April 2022.
  3. Book: Kupchik . John . Alonso de la Fuente . José Andrés . Miyake . Marc Hideo . Studies in Asian historical linguistics, philology and beyond: festschrift presented to Alexander V. Vovin in honor of his 60th birthday . Leiden: Brill . 2021 . 978-90-04-44856-8 . 1250436437 .
  4. Web site: Periodic Reporting for period 3 - EDJ (An Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic Languages) | H2020 .
  5. Book: Kupchik . John . Kupchik . John . Alonso de la Fuente . José . Miyake . Marc Hideo . Studies in Asian Historical Linguistics, Philology and Beyond: Festschrift Presented to Alexander V. Vovin in Honor of his 60th Birthday . 2021 . Brill . Leiden . 978-90-04-44855-1 . IX–XIV . Biography of Alexander Vovin . https://brill.com/downloadpdf/display/book/9789004448568/front-4.pdf. none.
  6. Book: Vovin, Alexander . The Eastern old Japanese corpus and dictionary . Ishisaki-Vovin . Sambi . 2022 . Brill . 978-90-04-47119-1 . History of Oriental studies . Leiden ; Boston.
  7. Polish: Rocznik Orientalistyczny . Yearbook of Oriental Studies . 165–167 . In memoriam Alexander Vovin (1961–2022) . Obituarium/Obituary . Jankowski . Henryk . 10.24425/ro.2022.141419 . free . 75 . 1 . 2022.

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