Stefan Georg
Encyclopedia
Stefan Georg is currently Privatdozent
Privatdozent
Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

 at the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

 in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

, Germany, for Altaic Linguistics and Culture Studies.

Background

Georg earned an M.A. in Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...

 Linguistics, Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...

 and Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...

 Linguistics at Bonn University (1990), and later completed his Ph.D. (Central Asian Studies, Indo-European and Manchu
Manchu
The Manchu people or Man are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels , they came to power in China and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which...

 Studies), with a descriptive grammar of the Thakali
Thakali
The Thakali are ethnolinguistic group originated from the Thak Khola region of the Mustang District in the Dhaulagiri zone of Nepal. Thakali, like Mutanggi their ancestors, culture and traditions are traced back to ancient himalayan region...

 language (a Tibeto-Burman language of Mustang
Mustang District
Mustang District, a part of Dhawalagiri Zone, is one of the seventy-five districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, with Jomsom as its headquarters, covers an area of 3,573 km² and has a population of 14,981....

 in Mid-Western Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

), at the same institution (1995).

Research

Since 1992, Georg has been engaged in linguistic fieldwork and the writing of descriptive grammars of unwritten/endangered/understudied languages. Apart from a grammar of a Thakali
Thakali
The Thakali are ethnolinguistic group originated from the Thak Khola region of the Mustang District in the Dhaulagiri zone of Nepal. Thakali, like Mutanggi their ancestors, culture and traditions are traced back to ancient himalayan region...

 dialect, he has co-authored a grammar of Itelmen (Chukchi–Kamchatkan language family) and written a grammar of Ket
Ket language
The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family...

 (Yeniseian languages
Yeniseian languages
The Yeniseian language family is spoken in central Siberia.-Family division:0. Proto-Yeniseian...

), as well as shorter grammatical descriptions of the Mongolic Ordos dialect
Ordos dialect
The Ordos dialect of Mongolian is spoken in the Ordos City region in Inner Mongolia. It is also sometimes classified as a language within the Mongolic language family or as a dialect of the Southern Mongolian standard language...

 and Huzhu Mongghul (a variety of the so-called Monguor group).

He has published widely on problems of language classification, especially on the controversy surrounding the Altaic hypothesis (the putative genetic relationship between the Turkic
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families to which Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

 and Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 are sometimes added). He belongs to the critics of this hypothesis and argues for a non-genetic, areal interpretation of the commonalities between these languages. Other fields of interest he is active in include Palaeosiberian, Tibeto-Burman languages, Indo-European and Kartvelian linguistics and linguistic typology
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...

.

Publications

  • Georg, Stefan, Peter A. Michalove, Alexis Manaster Ramer
    Alexis Manaster Ramer
    Alexis Manaster Ramer is a Polish-born American linguist .He has published extensively on syntactic typology Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956) is a Polish-born American linguist (PhD 1981, University of Chicago).He has published extensively on syntactic typology Alexis Manaster Ramer (born 1956)...

    , and Paul J. Sidwell (1999): "Telling general linguists about Altaic." Journal of Linguistics 35:65–98. Mongolian translation: Ерөнхий хэл шинжлэлчид алтай судлалын тухай. Алтай Судлал/Studia Altaica I/2001: 174-215 (transl.: P. Ajuulzhav/G. Tujaa/O. Sambuudorzh).
  • Georg, Stefan (1999/2000): Haupt und Glieder der altaischen Hypothese: die Körperteilbezeichnungen im Türkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen (= Head and members of the Altaic hypothesis: The body-part designations in Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic'). Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, neue Folge B 16: 143–182.
  • Georg, Stefan (2001): Türkisch/Mongolisch tengri “Himmel/Gott” und seine Herkunft. Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 6: 83-100.
  • Georg, Stefan (2002): Altaic Languages. In: David Levinson and Karen Christensen (eds.): Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 86-87.
  • Georg, Stefan (2003) Ordos. In: J. Janhunen (ed.): The Mongolic Languages. London: Routledge: 193-209.
  • Georg, Stefan (2003a): Mongghul, in: J. Janhunen (ed.): The Mongolic Languages. London: Routledge: 286-306.
  • Georg, Stefan (2003b): The Gradual Disappearance of a Eurasian Language Family – The Case of Yenisseyan. In: M. Janse and S. Tol (eds.): Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive Approaches. Amsterdam: Benjamins: 89-106.
  • Georg, Stefan (2008): Yeniseic languages and the Siberian linguistic area In: A. Lubotsky, J. Schaeken and J. Wiedenhof (eds.): Evidence and Counter-Evidence. Festschrift Frederik Kortlandt, Vol.I. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
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