Vulf Plotkin, D.Sc. (Philology)
Professor
of English and General Linguistics
e-mail: vulf@netvision.net.il
Born: April 2, 1927, in
Rogatchev (USSR), now Rahatchow (Belaruś).
Languages: Yiddish (first), English,
Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian,
German, Polish, Romanian.
Degrees: M.A. in English Philology
from the Institute of Foreign Languages
in Leningrad (1948–53);
Ph.D. in 1959 and D.Sc. (Philology) in 1969 from Leningrad (now St.
Petersburg) University.
Professional activities:
(1953–89) Professor of English, Germanic and
General Linguistics at universities and pedagogical institutes in Petrozavodsk,
Novosibirsk, Chişinău, Moscow, Tula (USSR).
(1989–92) Linguistic researcher at the Siberian
branch
of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.
(1993–2007) Linguistic consultant at the
Institute for Industrial Mathematics
in Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Publications: 14 monographs, over 100
papers.
The latest books:
The
Evolution of Germanic Phonological Systems: Proto-Germanic, Gothic,
West Germanic, and
Scandinavian. Edwin Mellen
Press, 2008. ISBN 0773450203.
A new approach is proposed to fundamental problems of phonology, based on following the principles of general systemics in linguistic exploration. It is then applied to the evolution of Germanic phonological systems since the separation of Proto-Germanic from Proto-Indo-European, concluding with modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. The several divergent evolutionary lines appear to have been continuous cause-and-effect chains. The root causes of phonological evolution are shown to lie in the restructurings on the systemic tier of phoneme constituents, i.e. ultimate phonological quanta.
The language system of English. BrownWalker
Press, 2006. ISBN 1581129939.
A description of the English language as a dynamic system in the evolutionary process of radical typological restructuring, which has deeply
affected its constituent subsystems – grammatical, lexical and phonic.
This website contains my following writings:
On languages
Как устроен
английский
язык.
On the role of genetic, areal and ethnocultural factors in the formation
and evolution of Yiddish.
Über die Rolle von genetischen, arealen und ethnokulturellen Faktoren
in Entstehung und Evolution des Jiddischen.
On the typological evolution of the Danish morphological
system.
Consonantal duration in the Eastern
Scandinavian phonological systems.
On phonology
Systems of ultimate
phonological units.
The kinakeme
as the ultimate unit of language.
The ultimate phonological unit as the smallest morpheme shape.
Sound distinction: universal inventories of phonic substance
or language-specific
systems?
On political history
Что и зачем
испытала Россия в XX
веке.
The whys and wherefores of the trials that Russia went through in the
20th century.
On geopolitics
Recurrent geopolitical patterns: the Grand Chessboard and
its no less grand,
albeit smaller precursor.