| Tadeusz Milewski | |
| Birth Date: | 17 May 1906 |
| Birth Place: | Kolomyia, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now Ukraine) |
| Nationality: | Polish |
| Known For: | Milewski's typology |
| Alma Mater: | University of Lviv |
| Thesis Year: | 1929 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński |
| Discipline: | Linguist |
| Workplaces: | Jagiellonian University in Kraków |
| Main Interests: | Slavic languages, general linguistics, linguistic typology |
Tadeusz Milewski (17 May 1906 – 5 March 1966) was a Polish linguist and Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, specializing in the study of the Slavic languages, general linguistics and linguistic typology.[1]
Tadeusz Milewski was born in Kolomyia and studied linguistics at the University of Lviv, under the supervision of Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński, from 1925 to 1929. His dissertation research was on the Polabian language. Together with his professor, he moved to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1929 and took up a teaching position there.[2]
Like other professors of the Jagiellonian University, he was arrested by the Gestapo on 6 November 1939 (as part of the Sonderaktion Krakau), and he spent a year in concentration camps in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. After his release, he participated in clandestine teaching in German-occupied Poland, and also started working on his book “Outline of general linguistics”.
Milewski became a professor at the Jagiellonian University in 1946, and taught there in various roles until his death on 5 March 1966 in Kraków, after a long illness. The funeral was held by Archbishop Karol Wojtyła, a former student and longtime friend.
Milewski is internationally best known for his contributions to linguistic typology, in particular his distinction between concentric and excentric language types, which is widely recognized as a precursor to the well-known distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking languages. He is also the originator of Milewski's typology. In addition to his interests in Slavic and Indo-European linguistics, he had a strong interest in the languages of North America.