Less-known pages of the history of Georgian-Baltic scientific relations: George Akhvlediani and Jānis Endzelīns

Abstract

Professor George Akhvlediani (1887-1973) was the great Georgian scholar with multiple interests. He worked in several areas of linguistic inquiry. He wrote major works on general linguistics, general and experimental phonetics, speech therapy, Indo-Europeanand Kartvelian languages, some of them being seminal. After having received higher education at Kharkiv and Petrograd universities, Akhvlediani returned to his homeland and became one of the founders of Tbilisi University (26/1/1918). He pioneered in such disciplines as general linguistics and general phonetics. He was in charge of the Department of General Linguistics which played a historical role in the emergence and development of the linguistics thought in Georgia. It should be noted that Jānis Endzelīns (1873-1961), the great Latvian philologist and linguist, immensely contributed to Akhvlediani’s training as a scholar. He has been aknowledged as a major expert of the Baltic languages and an ornament in the field of comparative-historical linguistics. George Akhvlediani was awarded a gold medal for his oeuvre “An essay of the history of liquid and nasal consonants in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Slavic languages”. Professor Endzelīns wrote a comprehensive review on the work and highly appreciated it. George Akhvlediani always recalled the consideration and care shown by Jānis Endzelīns with great gratitude, evidenced by their correspondence. Five letters, sent by Endzelīns to Tbilisi, addressed to Akhvlediani, are kept in the Museum of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.