Alexander V. Vovin is an American linguist and philologist in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

University of Hawaii at Manoa

The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a public, co-educational university and is the flagship campus of the greater University of Hawaii system...

, where he is a Professor of East Asian Languages and the acting chair of the department from August 1, 2009.

Alexander Vovin earned his M.A. in structural and applied linguistics from the Saint Petersburg State University

Saint Petersburg State University

Saint Petersburg State University is a Russian federal state-owned higher education institution based in Saint Petersburg and one of the oldest and largest universities in Russia....

 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

Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari

, also known as , is an eleventh century Japanese monogatari that tells about a chūnagon who discovers his father has been reborn as a Chinese prince. He visits his reincarnated father in China and falls in love with the Hoyang Consort, consort to the Chinese Emperor and mother to his reincarnated...

(ca. 1056). After serving as a Junior Researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies (1987–1990), Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 (1990–1994), Miami University

Miami University

Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

 (1994–1995), and Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Hawai’i (1995–2003), he became the full professor at the same university. He has also been a visiting professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

The , or Nichibunken , is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the National Institutes for the Humanities...

, Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

 (2001–2002, 2008), and a visiting professor at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany (2008–2009).

Alexander Vovin is an authority on Japanese historical linguistics (with emphasis on etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

, morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, and phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

), and Japanese philology of the Nara period

Nara period

The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...

 (710–792), and to a lesser extent of the Heian period

Heian period

The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

 (792–1192). His most current and ambitious project involves the complete academic translation into English of the Man'yōshū (ca. 759), the earliest and the largest premodern Japanese poetic

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

 anthology, alongside with the critical edition of the original text and commentaries. He is also a leading Western specialist on the moribund Ainu language

Ainu language

Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....

 in northern Japan, and he is also well known for his seminal work on Inner Asian languages

Altaic languages

Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...

, especially those only preserved in Chinese transcription, as well as on Old

Old Korean

Old Korean corresponds to the Korean language from the beginning of Three Kingdoms of Korea to the latter part of the Unified Silla, of which period is roughly from 1 AD to 1000 AD. There are many theories to differentiate the Korean language histories. It is distinct from Proto-Korean , which is...

 and Middle Korean texts.

External links

• Alexander Vovin at The Linguist List, Eastern Michigan University
  Eastern Michigan University
  Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Ypsilanti is west of Detroit and eight miles east of Ann Arbor. The university was founded in 1849 as Michigan State Normal School...
  
  
• Alexander Vovin at the East Asian Languages and Literatures department, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
  University of Hawaii at Manoa
  The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a public, co-educational university and is the flagship campus of the greater University of Hawaii system...
  
  
• Prof. Dr. Alexander Vovin at Sektion Sprache und Literatur Japans, Ruhr University Bochum (dead link) Alexander　VOVIN at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
  International Research Center for Japanese Studies
  The , or Nichibunken , is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the National Institutes for the Humanities...
  
   (dead link) Alexander VOVIN at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
  International Research Center for Japanese Studies
  The , or Nichibunken , is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the National Institutes for the Humanities...
  
  (dead link)