Indo-European Linguistics Research Articles

Eastern Religions in Eastern Europe: Three Cases from Lithuania

This article provides both historical and ethnographic views of Eastern religion in Lithuania. The historical component is an examination of the evolution of Lithuanian interest in Eastern religions from nineteenth-century studies of Indo-European comparative linguistics and mythology, which linked pre-Christian Lithuanian religion with India and Hinduism, to increasing literary, scholarly and popular interest in India and Asia in the twentieth century, before, during and after Soviet occupation. The ethnographic aspect utilizes fieldwork and interviews to examine three Eastern-inspired religious movements, (Pagan) Romuva, (Hindu) Krishna Consciousness, and (Buddhist) Diamond Way, demonstrating three different adaptations of Eastern religion in Lithuania.

Theory and Practice of Yoga

The following article attempts to bring together two complementary methods of reading the Rg-Veda, that of close textual analysis and that of historical, comparative linguistics. I will offer first a brief survey of the background from which the hymns derive, in terms of reconstructed linguistic ancestors, and then look into the early collection of the hymns. Thereafter a commentary is offered, making special reference to points of interest in historical and comparative linguistics. It will be argued that the study of Indo-European linguistics can illuminate otherwise obscure forms in the oldest texts of the daughter languages, as well as show contexts from which the traditions derive.

Comparative Philology and the Rg-Veda

The following article attempts to bring together two complementary methods of reading the Rg-Veda, that of close textual analysis and that of historical, comparative linguistics. I will offer first a brief survey of the background from which the hymns derive, in terms of reconstructed linguistic ancestors, and then look into the early collection of the hymns. Thereafter a commentary is offered, making special reference to points of interest in historical and comparative linguistics. It will be argued that the study of Indo-European linguistics can illuminate otherwise obscure forms in the oldest texts of the daughter languages, as well as show contexts from which the traditions derive.

A Fragment of the Mythological Discourse of the Pagan Slavs in Orthodox Literature

Textual reconstruction is a very peculiar linguistic discipline and, although scores of scientific publications profess to deal with it, there are still not many theoretical works dealing with its methodological foundations. In a number of works published since the early 1960s, several Russian linguists of the semiological school of Tartu University – V. V. Ivanov and V. N. Toporov – have developed a distinctive approach to textual reconstruction. Their hypothesis of the “basic myth,” as they call the Slavic myth about the duel of the Thunder God (*Perunъ) and his adversary (*Velesъ), is based on the comparative and structural analysis of a huge number of historical and folk texts of many traditions, as well as on typological confirmations and binary interpretations. Linguists such as T. M. Sudnik, T. V. Civ’jan and R. Katičić have been strongly influenced by this school. Actually, these elements are not found in the works of Radoslav Katičić, who has contributed a reconstruction of Balto-Slavic texts connected with pagan fertility rites as correlated with the myth of an incestuous marriage between the son of the Storm God and his sister; however, the way he uses folklore material owes a lot to Ivanov and Toporov.The author of this work focuses on the problem of the possibility of reconstructing mythological discourse as a method of paleolinguistic research. This paper is intended as a synthetic overview of one of the neglected topics of textual reconstruction – the intertextual analysis of literary Old Russian texts. The article is centred on the reconstruction of a fragment of pagan oral discourse on the basis of homiletic and paranetic literature. The result – a fragment of the myth about the Slavic god called *Rodъ – is compared with the theory of Indo-European textual reconstruction on the syntactic and paradigmatic levels and their corresponding contexts in various common Slavic languages. The article aims to use and examine theoretical ideas of this branch of Indo-European linguistics in a practical study of a text and its transformations.

Manfred Mayrhofer’s Studies on Indo-Aryan and the Indo-Aryans in the Ancient Near East: A Retrospective and Outlook on Future Research

Abstract Around 100 years ago, the surprising discovery of linguistic traces of an older stage of the Vedic language in the ancient Near East caused an increasing amount of interest in various academic disciplines such as Indo-European linguistics, oriental studies (Assyriology), and Egyptology, among others. In default of a historical name, this language became known as “Indo-Aryan” in the ancient Near East over the course of the 20th century. Its relatively small text corpus, documented in cuneiform archives across the Eastern Mediterranean cultures, contains about two or three dozen termini technici; among them divine names, personal names, legal terms and—proportionally high in comparison to the overall number of the Indo-Aryan textual evidence—terms related to horses and chariots. The scholarly interest circled around linguistically possible Indo-Aryan influences on non-Indo-Aryan languages and cultures in the eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, including Anatolia, and Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period and the New Kingdom; among them, the hypothesis of the introduction of horses and chariots into the ancient Near East. During the 1930s and 1940s political and ideological developments, especially in German-speaking countries, influenced perspectives and results of studies on Indo-Aryan in the ancient Near East by introducing non-linguistic approaches and methodologies. Manfred Mayrhofer has dedicated a significant part of his long and successful academic career to the linguistic and bibliographical research of Indo-Aryan and its reception in scholarly studies. This retrospective attempts to review specific aspects of Mayrhofer’s studies on Indo-Aryan and the Indo-Aryans in the ancient Near East and adjacent areas and to provide an outlook on further tasks and research deriving from his legacy.

An Inventory of Tibetan Sound Laws

Scholars of Indo-European historical linguistics have long found it convenient to refer to well known sound changes by the name of the researcher who first noticed the correspondences the sound change accounts for. Because of the proven utility of such named sound laws in Indo-European linguistics, the explicit listing and naming of sound laws in the Tibeto-Burman family could be expected to bring similar benefits.

Formations of the perfect in the Sabellic languages with the Italic and Indo-European background

The problem of the origin of the Sabellic perfects (in the older literature called Oscan-Umbrian) has been discussed at length very often in Indo-European linguistics ever since the 19th century and the monumental work of Robert von Planta (1892–1897). Still, to this very day it remains a mystery. Various hypotheses have been proposed but none of them explained everything clearly and without problems. Especially intriguing is the fact that the multiple formations of the perfect found in Sabellic languages (reduplicated, simple, -f-, -tt- and -nky-perfects) perform essentially the same function of the preterite tense, being the syncretism of both the Proto-Indo-European aorist and perfect, similarly as in Latin. In the present article the author seeks to present the compelling hypotheses of the origin of the formations of the perfect in the Sabellic languages, evaluate them according to their supposed probability and present the most probable solution to the problem. The Sabellic perfects are classified into groups and each group is discussed as to its origin and development with the Indo-European background in mind. This is followed by some reconstructions underlying the attested forms. The Sabellic formations treated in this article are the reduplicated perfect, long-vowel perfect, s-perfect, simple perfect, -f-perfect, -tt-perfect, -k-perfect, -nky-perfect and the Sabellic future perfect with the characteristic -us- suffix. The discussion is closed by conclusions and the appendix with the complete list of the attested forms of the perfect.

Four-gender systems in Indo-European

A long-established tenet of Indo-European linguistics says that grammatical gender systems all along the history of this language phylum were maximally tripartite and generally tended toward a reduction of gender contrasts. In this article, we shall show that this widely-held idea overlooks the existence of four-gender systems in a substantial part of the Romance language family, a fact that has in turn gone unnoticed so far. We shall provide an analysis of the relevant Romance data, a sketchy comparison with other four-gender systems described in linguistic typological research, and a detailed reconstruction of how the gender systems in question might have developed in the Latin-Romance transition.

The contribution of C.C. Uhlenbeck to Eskimo-Aleut linguistics

C.C. Uhlenbeck was a Dutch linguist especially known for his work on comparative Indo-European linguistics, Basque and the Blackfoot Algonquian language. However, he also made some groundbreaking contributions to the comparative linguistic study of the Eskimo-Aleut family. Uhlenbeck was the first to suggest that the Eskimo language family and the Aleut language represent daughter branches of a common ancestor. Also, he was the first who approached the possible relationships between the Eskimo-Aleut language family and the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic language families in a systematic manner in publications. His work attracted the attention of Eskimologists like Bergsland, Fortescue, Hammerich and Thalbitzer, and it put these long-distance comparative issues on the research agenda. Uhlenbeck never did any fieldwork on Eskimo-Aleut and his work is based entirely on sources written by others. His Eskimo-Aleut work is not generally known, since, being written mainly in Dutch, it is not readily accessible to most Eskimologists.

Links to Pagan Ritual in Medieval Irish Literature

This article uncovers links to pagan Irish rites which can be deduced from excerpts in the form of lists from medieval literature. There are three presented here: from Aidedh Ferghusa Maic Léti (Death of Fergus Mac Leide, c. 1100 A.D.), from Buile Shuibhne (Frenzy of Suibhne, 17th century manuscrits), and from the Book of Leinster (Lebar na Núachongbála, 11th century). It is seen in all cases that, when list items are rendered in a language ancestral to Irish (henceforth termed Goidelic) and recited in order, poems result which describe pagan rituals. This Goidelic is reconstructed on the basis of Indo-European linguistics and well-known sound laws governing the evolution of the Irish tongue. It will be seen that the Goidelic language used herein has much the same grammatical structure demonstrated by early ogam inscriptions in Ireland and even by Gaulish itself. Furthermore, the prosody and scansion of these Goidelic poems match features seen in a Gaulish inscription datable to c. 0-300 A.D. discovered at Chamalières, France in 1971. We will also notice some recurring features in these poems: (a) The desired outcome is stated only in the vaguest terms, if at all. (b) Each poem constitutes a recitation addressed to the god or goddess by a “witness” or “master of ceremonies” acting on behalf of other participants. (c) Duality in the ritual is readily apparent; e.g., a sacred double fire, or rites and recitations at two sites, etc. (d) A sacred locale is emphasized before the deity where the wishes of the performers ought not to be refused.

Einige grundsätzliche Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Indogermanistik resp. alteuropäischer Namenkunde mit einigen Fallbeispielen

During the last decades a big gap has opened between onomastics on the one side and Indo-European linguistics on the other, because the progresses made in Indo-European linguistics have not been integrated into the study of onomastics any longer in a sufficient way. The article tries to close this gap by giving an outline of some of the main features of modern Indo-European linguistics. Those features are then used to reexamine the etymologies of several presumably rather old river-names and of one of the Indo-European words for "water". This sometimes leads to a reevaluation of existing etymologies. The author hopes that this article might be seen as an incentive for researchers in onomastics to care more about the findings of Indo-European linguistics again.

Typological Assessment of Reconstruction: Did Indo-European Have Inclusive and Exclusive First Person Plural Personal Pronouns?

Typological Assessment of Reconstruction: Did Indo-European Have Inclusive and Exclusive First Person Plural Personal Pronouns?This brief article attempts to apply current typological theory about the structure of person-marking paradigms to reconstructions of early Indo-European personal pronoun declension and early Indo-European verbal conjugation in order to determine whether or not such application can shed light on the traditional debate about whether or not an inclusive/exclusive opposition can be ascribed to the protolanguage. Despite the demonstrated positive value of typology in assessing the plausibility of reconstructions, the conclusion reached here is that current typological theory is very limited in its ability to resolve this particular issue of historical/comparative Indo-European linguistics.

A History of Ancient Greek. From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: A History of Ancient Greek. From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity Vit Bubenik A.-F. Christidis. A History of Ancient Greek. From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xli+1617. US $250.00. ISBN 9780521833073. This massive volume (1617 pages) is a revised and augmented translation of the Greek edition Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας από τις αρχές έως την ύστερη αρχαιότητα, published by the Centre of the Greek Language and the Institute of Modern Greek Studies (Manolis Triandafyllidis Foundation), Thessaloniki in September 2001. The present volume was edited by the late Professor Anastassios-Fivos Christidis (1946–2004) with the assistance of Maria Arapopoulou and Maria Chriti, and is the product of international cooperation involving 81 scholars (linguists, philologists, historians, jurists, theological scholars and archaeologists) from 13 European and North American countries (Greece, Cyprus, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany, Northern Ireland, USA and Canada). It is organized into nine parts with three appendices; each of the nine parts is introduced by the editor Christidis: Part I: The Language Phenomenon (8 chapters) Part II: The Greek Language: Language and History (25 chapters) Part III: The Ancient Greek Dialects (11 chapters) Part IV: Ancient Greek: Structure and Change (15 chapters) Part V: Greek in Contact with Other Languages (17 chapters) Part VI: Translation Practices in Antiquity (7 chapters) Part VII: Language and Culture (19 chapters) Part IX: The Fortunes of Ancient Greek (9 chapters) The volume as a whole is introduced by Christidis (1–23) with some thoughts on the historiography of the Greek language starting with D. Mavrofrydis’s Δοκίμιον Ιστορίσας της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης (1860) all the way down to the impact of modern linguistics (esp. in the study of syntax), achievements in Indo-European linguistics (the discovery of Tocharian, the decipherment of Hittite), and the study of the relationship between Modern Greek and the Balkan languages (the Balkan Sprachbund). [End Page 73] Part I (27–152), written by the Greek scholars T.-S. Pavlidou, E. Kouvelas, S.L. Tsohatzidis, K. Kotsakis, D. Kati and K. Nikiforidou, is devoted to general issues of the phenomenon of language: its nature, the units and levels of its analysis, language and the brain, the acquisition of language and the nature and causes of its change. In Part II (153–382), J.P. Mallory (Belfast) surveys in Chapter 2 (170–178) four general models which were proposed for the IE “homeland” and geographical dispersions: (a) the region from the southern shores of the Baltic as far as the Black Sea and the Caspian within the Mesolithic framework of 6000 B.C.; (b) Anatolia between 7000 and 4000 B.C., with the “wave of advance” of farming communities (famous Neolithic sites such as Çatal Hüyük are held as examples of PIE settlements); (c) the Danube region during the Late Neolithic Age; and (d) the popular “Kurgan” theory locating a homeland in the steppe lands of the Ukraine/South Russia between 4500–3000 B.C. The Indo-Europeanization of Greece could have taken place as early as between 3500–3000 B.C. (after the establishment of a Neolithic economy in Greece) or in the break between Early Helladic II and III (2300–2200 B.C.) or as late as the period immediately prior to the emergence of the Mycenaeans (ca. 1600 B.C.) According to Mallory, it is possible to correlate the hypothesis of the three successive “waves” of Achaeans, Ionians and Dorians with changes in material culture around 2200 B.C., 1600 B.C., and 1200 B.C. Y. Duhoux (Louvain) examines the vexed problem of the rich linguistic substratum for the formation of the Greek language (Chapters 8–10) in terms of direct (inscriptional evidence in Cypro-Minoan, Eteocypriot, Eteocretan, the stele of Lemnos, Linear A tablets) and indirect evidence in the Greek lexicon: words with the endings -ινθοϲ (e.g., ἀϲάμινθοϲ; cf. Linear B a-sa-mi-to “bath-tub”), theonyms (e.g., Ἀθήνη; cf. Linear B a-ta-na-), toponyms and hydronyms with endings -α/ι/υνθοϲ, -ϲϲόϲ, -ττόϲ. Ten chapters (15–25) in this part are devoted to the long history of the Greek language: Linear B (by J. Chadwick), the Dark Ages, the introduction and history of the alphabet, the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods, the rise of Koine, and the Greek world...

Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (review)

Reviewed by: Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult Jerzy Linderski Roger D. Woodard . Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult. Traditions. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. xiv + 296 pp. Cloth, $50. In all cultures gods claim possessions on Earth. Two divine realms stand out: time and space. A perceptive scholar aptly described the religious feasts, in Rome the feriae and dies festi, as "temporal possession of gods" (Jörg Rüpke, Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: Die Geschichte der Repräsentation und religiösen Qualifikation von Zeit in Rom [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995], 492). Divine space manifested itself in Rome in two distinct forms: there were places (loca) that were sacred (sacra), places that were holy (sancta), and places that were both sacred and holy (on this distinction, see more below). Roman cult of the period illuminated by literature and monuments was a confluence of Indo-European inheritance, Etruscan and Greek elements, and home-grown Italic, Latin, and Roman innovations. The Indian component of the Indo-European tradition has been brought into prominence by the voluminous publications of Georges Dumézil and his theory of the tri-functional Proto-Indo-European society: the three spheres were those of worship and legal writ, war, and work, with the classes of priests/governors, warriors, and producers and with the corresponding patron deities. In India we have Mitra and Varuna, Indra, and the As;vins and the castes of brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, and wayśya. Georges Dumézil demonstrated great ingenuity in applying this Indian scheme to Rome; see especially his summa, Archaic Roman Religion (English trans.: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). This theory has captivated many, especially among the linguists and popularizers; Woodard is its ardent supporter. Students of Roman history and religion following the lead of Arnaldo Momigliano (and the indologist Jan Gonda) have been generally cautious; see recently Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome I: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 14–16: while granting that "Dumézil's work has prompted much useful discussion about individual festivals or areas of worship in Rome," they do not find any compelling evidence for his overarching scheme and observe that all this "theorizing shows us once more how powerful in accounts of early Roman religion is the mystique of origins and schemata" (cf. in a similar vein, but concerning archaic Rome in general and in particular the views of Kurt Latte, Jerzy Linderski, Roman Questions II [Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007], 31–33, 595–96). Woodard has made his name with studies in Greek and Indo-European linguistics; his previous forays into the realm of Roman religion were the notes to the Penguin translation of Ovid's Fasti (2000) and a piece on "The Disruption [End Page 125] of Time in Myth and Epic" (Arethusa 35 [2002]: 83–98). The current book is to a great extent a measured polemic against skeptics and unbelievers, but Woodard's ultimate goal is more ambitious: his objective is not only to present a clear summary of Dumézil's arguments but also "to jump forward from that Dumézilian platform and to offer a new understanding of Roman and . . . primitive Indo-European religious structures and phenomena," an understanding which "differs appreciably from Dumézil's own interpretations" (ix). The book consists of five chapters. Here is a synopsis: I. "The Minor Capitoline Triad" (1–58). In the Capitoline temple built by Tarquinius Superbus, the reigning triad was that of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Now there were in Rome fifteen priests called flamines, three of whom were Maiores: the priests of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus—Flamen Dialis, Martialis, and Quirinalis. That here we have before us another, earlier triad was already recognized by Georg Wissowa (Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2d ed. [Munich: C.H. Beck, 1912], 154); for Dumézil and Woodard this is the prime exhibit of the original trifunctional scheme of law and religion, war, and production/fecundity. But Woodard discovers still another minor triad. Before Jupiter's temple was built, various deities had inhabited the hill. Two of them, Juventas and Terminus, despite all the religious ceremonies and entreaties, refused to relocate, and...

Verba Docenti. Studies in historical and Indo-European linguistics presented to Jay H. JASANOFF by students, colleagues, and friends. Ed. by A. J. Nussbaum

Verba Docenti. Studies in historical and Indo-European linguistics presented to Jay H. JASANOFF by students, colleagues, and friends. Ed. by A. J. Nussbaum

Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of William R. SCHMALSTIEG. Ed. by Ph. Baldi & P.U. Dini

Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of William R. Schmalstieg. Ed. by Philip Baldi & Pietro U. Dini. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004, gr.-8°,xlvi, 302 S. (ASTHoLS. Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 254.) Geb. 105 €/126 $.

Armeniaca: Comparative Notes (review)

Reviewed by: Armeniaca: Comparative notes by Frederik Kortlandt Marc Pierce Armeniaca: Comparative notes. By Frederik Kortlandt. With an appendix on the historical phonology of Classical Armenian by Robert S. P. Beekes. Ann Arbor, MI: Caravan Books, 2003. Pp. ix, 251. ISBN 0882061062. $75. This volume reprints a number of the author’s earlier studies on Armenian, with an emphasis on ‘problems [End Page 686] of relative chronology and the reconstruction of earlier stages of development’ (vii). There is also a ‘systematic presentation of … [Armenian] historical phonology’ (133), written by Kortlandt’s Indo-Europeanist colleague Robert S. P. Beekes. The articles have been re-typeset, there is now a consolidated bibliography, and commentaries have been added to some of them, indicating where K has modified his opinions about various issues (for example, in his commentary on the second paper in the book, ‘A note on the Armenian palatalization’ (10–12), K writes ‘I now think that the final velar of hing ‘five’ was taken from the ordinal’ (12)). The articles themselves are generally brief, ranging in length from two to nine pages. Each, however, contains an original solution to a problem of Armenian linguistics, whether it be the development of the Armenian word for ‘blood’, the ‘Great Armenian puzzle’ (which has to do with the proposed development of Indo-European *dw to Armenian rk, as in erku ‘two’), or the earliest relationships of Armenian and Albanian. I do wish that K had expanded his argument at various points, since some of the essays are rather terse, and even a sentence or two would have increased their value for the reader who is not as well versed in these topics as K himself so obviously is. (I am not the only reader to have thought this; Beekes comments in the preface to his historical phonology that he often urged K to ‘add a few words [to his papers] to make them more easily understandable’ (133), but that K generally refused, ‘pointing out that everything had been said already in the text’ (133).) Beekes’s historical phonology offers a useful survey, treating issues such as the earliest Armenians, Armenian dialects, accent, prothetic vowels, and the development of Indo-European laryngeals, and also presents a detailed relative chronology, illustrated with copious examples. The volume itself is generally well designed, despite some disconcerting typos and a somewhat irregular print quality. In sum, this is a useful collection of articles, and will be of value for those interested in Armenian and comparative Indo-European linguistics. Marc Pierce University of Michigan Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America

Nikolai Marr and the idea of a unified language

Nikolai Marr’s idea of the class-character of language assumes that language mechanically reflects the characteristics of the socio-economic basis. Marr argued that typological similarities between different languages are not based on ‘blood relationship’ but derive from the fact that all languages have developed through the same stages corresponding to the stages in the development of the socio-economic basis. For Marr, national oppression resulted from ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ definitions of such concepts as language and nation. His aim was to battle against oppression by replacing ‘racial’ definitions proposed by Indo-European linguistics with his non-ethnic and ‘sociological’ understanding of the concepts.

Some Remarks on a Eurasian Etymology from an Indo-European Point of View

This study presents a critical analysis of the hypothesis of M. M. Tatar on the origin of the Turkic word sarmysak, “garlic”. Taken by itself, Tatar's hypothesis looks plausible, but much more Indo-European evidence is needed in order to decide whether it is valid or not. During the investigation based on recent achievements of Indo-European linguistics, a more exact form of Proto-Indo-European lexeme “(wild) garlic”will be reconstructed; both more precise and new etymologies will be offered to New Persian, Khotanese, Sanskrit, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Hungarian words. The context of the assumed borrowings into Turkic and Mongolian languages will be drawn more exactly.

Dr. Henry Leeming, 1920-2004

SEER,Vol. 83, No.3, uly2005 Dr Henry Leeming I 920-2004 HENRY(HARRY) LEEMING,who had a distinguished career as Lecturer, and then Reader, in Comparative Slavonic Philology at the School of Slavonic Studiesin the Universityof London at a timewhen his subject was held in high esteem there, died at home in London on Christmas Day 2004. The eldest child of Thomas Leeming and Mary Ellen Leeming (nee Dunne), he was born on 6January I920 in Manchester, where he was also educated at St Bede's Grammar School. His aspirations to study classics at the University of Manchester were realized by means of a scholarship from Manchester City Council stipulatingthat he firstwork for a year as an assistantin a Manchester school. He matriculated in I939 and, despite the outbreak of war in September that year, completed his firstyear of study.In August 1940 he was calledup and aftertrainingwas assignedto the Royal Engineers on bomb-disposal work in London. In summer I942, having been transferredto a unit dealingwith railtransport,he wasposted to Egypt. He sailed on the Queen Mary, which was carryingsuppliesand troop reinforcementsin preparationfor the Battleof El Alamein. In summer I943 he was transferredto Baghdad, where he attended a course in teaching English and later that year he became a liaison officer and teacher of Englishwith the Polish Second Corps. This was not his first involvement with the Slavonic languages, for he had learned a little Russianfrom one of the mastersat St Bede's. Even so, Leeming'stime with the PolishArmy in the Middle East and Italywas a crucialfactor in his development. In December I946, afterdemobilization,he returnedto Manchester, where he completed his classics degree in I949, specializing in IndoEuropean philology. His Slavonic interests (and a scholarship) now drew him to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, where in I 952 he took a second BA, this time in Russian, specializing in Comparative Slavonic Philology. He embarked on a PhD, supervised by ProfessorW. K. Matthews, and in 1955 he was appointed to the staff of the School as lecturer. Two years later, in connection with his research, he made his firstvisit to Poland, where among the many Slavistshe met was Monika Didiakin, his futurewife. His thesis on Polish-Latin loan-words in pre-Petrine Russian was approvedfor the degree of PhD in I96 I, but it was not until 1976 that partof the materialassembledforthe thesiswaspublishedasRola j,zyka polskiegow rozwojuleksykirosygskiej do rokuI1696: wyrazypochodzenia 494 DR HENRY LEEMING lacin'skiego i roman'skiego (Wroclaw, I976). Owing largely to the years spent on war service and in taking a second BA, but partly to his uncompromising insistence on getting things right, the fruits of Leeming'sresearchbegan to appearrelativelylate. However, fromhis first articles, published in the I96os, the originality and rigour of his approach were evident. His interests were centred on historical lexicology and a collection of his contributions to this field was published as Historical andComparative Lexicology oftheSlavonic Languages (Krakow,200 i). He also had a literaryside, which was expressedin his many translations,mainlyfromSlovene. In i985 at the age of sixty-fivehe reluctantlyretired.In retirement, however, he blossomed and was not without honour in the countries whose languages he studied. He was a correspondingmember of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU) from I985 and of the Polish Academy of Arts (PAU) from i 99i. In I996 his overall achievement was acknowledged by the FestschriftCollectanea Slavica, publishedin Krakowand containing a bibliographyof his worksup to that time (I 62 items,pp. I I-24). Leeming was an inspiringteacher. In his hands, what seemed to be linguisticvagaries turned out to be capable of rational interpretation; but he had a tentative, semi-Socraticstyle of argument, preferringhis pupilsto drawtheirown conclusions. It is thusfittingthat his lastbook (H. Leeming and K. Leeming [eds], Josephus' JewishWaranditsSlavonic Version, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2003), written in collaboration with his daughter Kate, purports not to answer the question whether the Slavonic version'sdivergencesfrom the Greekreflectthe lost Aramaic original, but merely to make it possible for readersto form their own judgement. HertfordCollege, Oxford GERALD STONE ...