Congratulations to our Belorussian colleagues for the anniversary!
At the Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno multiple events are being held to commemorate great linguist Vasiliy Mikhailovich Nikitevich’s 100th birthday: in his honor a round table discussion, auditorium, and a science conference will be held. A video with information on this is linked.
Vasiliy Mikhaylovich authored over 150 papers including the fundamental works “The basics of nominative derivation”(1985) and “Word formation and nominative derivation in Slavic languages” (1982). The base concept of nominative progression and the systemic view of naming, which opened a whole new direction for word formation – nominative linguistics. Under his supervision a strong school of derivation and onomastics was formed at the Grodnev state university. Nikitevich’s works had a strong influence on Kazakh linguistics’ development. Since 1949, he worked as an assistant, and later as a senior lecturer in the Department of Russian Language at the Kazakh State University (Alma-Ata). From 1953 to 1976, he was an associate professor in the Department of Russian Philology at the same university. His ideas were further developed by his student, Doctor of Philology L. K. Zhanalina, who founded in Kazakhstan a line of research devoted to studying nomination as a form of speech activity. In her works “Nomination and Word-Formation Relations”, “Integrative Word Formation, and Comparative Word Formation in Russian and Kazakh” Nikitevich’s theory was expanded within the context of Kazakhstan’s bilingual environment. Thanks to this, the Kazakh school of nominative linguistics was established in national scholarship, combining the traditions of Russian studies, Turkology, and cognitive semasiology. V. M. Nikitevich’s ideas influenced research on the lexico-semantic and onomastic systems of the Kazakh language (in the works of T. Zhanuzakov, A. Aitbaev, G. Smagulova, and others). His concept of nomination became a methodological foundation for analyzing the linguistic worldview, terminology, and categories of national culture in Kazakhstan.
A PowerPoint presentation about his biography is linked.