Liya Sergeyevna Levitskaya

Научные труды

• Историческая морфология чувашского языка. М., 1976.

Dear colleagues!
With great sorrow I have to inform all of you that Liya Sergeyevna Levitskaya, an outstanding specialist in Turkic linguistics, comparative grammar of Turkic languages, Turkic etymology, historical phonetics and morphology of Chuvash language, passed away on Friday, 02 October 2009.
Liya Sergeyevna Levitskaya was born 23 November 1931.
She entered the Philological faculty of the Moscow State University in 1948, where she was one of the most talented students of N. K. Dmitriyev. After she graduated from the university she had been working at editorial board of Turkmenskaya Iskra newspaper (1953-1955). Then she worked at oriental studies department of A. M. Gorky Science Library of MSU (1956-1958), and then she went to work to the Institute of Linguistics, to the department of Turkic and Mongolian languages, which was later transformed to the department of Ural-Altaic languages.
Her doctoral thesis (24.06.1966) was “Historical phonetics of Chuvash”. After E. V. Sevortyan's death, Liya Sergeyevna became the head of the board of the Etymological Dictionary of Turkic Languages. Actually she is the only author of no less than 60 percent of dictionary entries in the volumes of the Dictionary issued since that time. Even being retired she appeared to be one of the driving forces behind the volume of Comparative historical grammar of the Turkic languages dedicated to vocabulary (the wordlist was compiled by me and her together, she has developed the format of dictionary entries, and she's the author of 25 percent of that volume). Her health conditions did not allow her to take part in writing the Regional Reconstructions volume, but she had time to collect data on Oguz morphology, so the «Oguz Languages. Phonetics. Morphology – Name» section is presented under Dybo's authorship with Levitskaya's participance.
L. S. Levitskaya's post-graduate students are Judith Dmitriyeva-Salontai, Elena Lebedeva, Oleg Mudrak and me. All of us successfully work in comparative historical turkology and try to evolve Liya Sergeyevna's works on Turkic etymology.
62 science works have been published.
Individual monograph: Historical morphology of Chuvash. (Историческая морфология чувашского языка. М., 1976).
The last large publication: Etymological Dictionary of Turkic Languages. Pan-Turkic and Inter-Turkic Bases Starting with L, M, N, P, S. (Этимологический словарь тюркских языков. Общетюркские и межтюркские основы на Л, М, Н, П, С. М., Восточная литература, 2003). Together with G. F. Blagova, A. V. Dybo, D. M. Nasilov, E. A. Potseluyevsky.
Anna V. Dybo