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Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928)
Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928) 777 Lambrecht K (1994). Information structure sentence form: topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Levinson S C (2000). Presumptive meanings: the theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Li C & Thompson S A (1979). ‘Third person pronoun and zero anaphora in Chinese discourse.’ In Givo´n T (ed.) Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax. New York: Academic Press. 311–335.
Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928) N N Kazansky, Institute for Linguistic Studies, St Petersburg, Russia ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov is a Russian philologist, linguist, and specialist in Indo-European linguistics, semiotics and history of culture. His research covers topics in Slavic, Baltic, Indo-European, and Russian linguistics as well as general linguistics, poetics, folklore, mythology, and culturology. Toporov was one of the pioneers of semiotic research in the USSR. His semiotic views were formed in the course of his occupation with linguistics of Slavic and other Indo-European languages. Toporov was a permanent member of Tartu semiotic school and a contributor of all issues of Papers on Sign Systems. Among the works written by him are structural descriptions of Sanskrit and Pali grammar, a few studies on Hittite texts, an etymological dictionary of Old Prussian, and numerous etymological papers. Toporov’s Ph.D. dissertation was devoted to the expression of locativity in Slavic and Baltic languages; in 1989 he was conferred a doctoral degree (doctor habilis) honoris causa for the total of his published works. Born in Moscow (Russia) on August 8, 1928, Toporov is married to Tatjana Ja Elizarenkova, a specialist in Indic culture and languages, and a translator of Rig-Veda into Russian. His two daughters are philologists: Tatjana V. Toporova, an author of three books, is a specialist in old Germanic languages; Anna V. Toporova deals with Romance languages. Toporov works at the Institute for Slavistics (Russian Academy of Sciences), where he has been a member since 1990. His research was marked with a number of prestigious awards, including the National Award of USSR, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Award, and the Andrej Belyj prize. Toporov graduated from the Moscow State University; while in Michail N. Peterson’s class his studies included Indo-Aryan, Baltic, and other IndoEuropean languages; professors Nikolaj K. Gudzij
and Piotr S. Kuznetsov also had a formative influence on his personality as a scholar. Further stimulus to the formation of Toporov’s linguistic views was given by the visit by Roman Jakobson to Moscow in 1956; during this visit Jakobson gave a number of talks and introduced the audience to a totally new range of ideas, including recent trends in mathematics (for example, those of Khinchin). The same year, in September, Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, Piotr S. Kuznetsov, and Vladimir A. Uspenskij launched a seminar on mathematical methods, cybernetics, and semiotics at the Moscow State University. This seminar gave the impetus for the development of a mathematically rigorous way of linguistic thinking for many scholars, including Igor A. Melchuk and Vladimir Toporov. Toporov has maintained a keen interest in semiotics and the structural approach to linguistics all his life. Toporov took part in field expeditions, put a number of Ket texts on record (see Ketskij Sbornik, 1969) and worked on a general problem of genetic and areal relations between the Paleoasiatic languages of Siberia and the languages of central and southern Asia (including Himalayan languages). As a result of these investigations he published a study on the linguistic geography of Yenisei and another one on the Iranian influence on the indigenous languages of Siberia. The work done by Toporov on the problem of Slavic ethogenese deserves a special mention. In 1965, together with Oleg N. Trubachev, he published a book on the toponymy of the Dnepr area (Toporov and Ivanov, 1965); he also studied the toponymy of Moscow region, where he managed to trace a number of Baltic names (according to Toporov, Slavic languages are a branch of the Baltic language family). Toporov published extensively on topics in IndoEuropean mythology, in particular, the basic myth concerning the storm-god slaying the serpent. In this connection Toporov undertook a comparison of a number of folklore motives and technical terms of Slavic and Indo-Iranian religious beliefs. He produced numerous articles for the encyclopedia World Myths (1981–1982, 1st edition), several studies of the
778 Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928)
mythological beliefs related to mushrooms, ladybird, beaver, bee, and on other religious faiths going back to Slavic paganism and Indo-European poetics (a summarizing work was Toporov and Ivanov, 1974). In several publications Toporov analyzed the structure of riddles and charms. Since the 1960s, Toporov has published numerous works on Russian writers and poets of the 19th to 20th centuries and the poetics of their œuvre. Among this set of his works are studies on Pushkin and his predecessors (Zhukovsky, Batjushkov and Karamzin), on akmeists’ poetry (with T. V. Tsivjan), and on intertextual connections between Russian and European writers (Pushkin and Goldsmith, akmeists, and Ge´ rard de Nerval). Topics in Old Indic classical literature have been addressed in Toporov’s writing as well, for instance his 1998 book on Sudraka’s Mrcchakatika (The little clay cart; Toporov, 1998a), his study of dialogue structure of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, and his study of the plot in Vergil’s Aeneid (‘Aeneas: the man of his destiny’). Some of Toporov’s works are devoted to the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic text (1998b), and the reconstruction of the earliest historical situation in Kiev (beginning of the 10th century), based on the letter from the genizah of Cairo synagogue. Two characteristics of Toporov as an etymologist are, first, his attention to textual reconstruction (namely, the reconstruction of a sign system in general) and its possible fragments and variants; secondly, Toporov admits the possibility of multiple etymologies, whereby several stages of a word’s semantic development and possible contexts can be reconstructed. Following the ideas of Benveniste, Toporov lays special emphasis on the coincidence in semantics between different traditions. See also: Balto-Slavic Languages; Hittite; Indo–European Languages; Indo–Iranian; Jakobson, Roman (1896–1982); Ket; Mel’uk, Igor Aleksandrovic (b.1932); Pali; Russian; Sanskrit; Slavic Languages.
Bibliography Bushuj A M, Sudnik T M & Tolstaja S M (1989). Bibliographicheskij ukazatel’ po slavjanskomu i obshemu jazykoznaniju (Bibliography on Slavic and General linguistics): Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov. Samarkand. POLYTPOPON. k 70-letiju (1998). Vladimira Nikolaevicha Toporova. Moscow. [Festschrift to Toporov on the occasion of his 70th birthday.] Moscow: Indrik, 1998.
Ivanov V V (2003). Akademik Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov (k 75-letiju so dnja rozhdenija) // Izvestija OLJa (3). Toporov V N (1961). Lokativ v slavjanskih jazykah (Locative in Slavic languages). Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences. Toporov V N (1975–1990). Drevneprusskij jazyk: Slovar (Dictionary of Old Prussian) (5 vols). (A–L). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N (1994). O mifopoeticheskom prostranstve: izbrannye statji (On mythopoetical space: selected articles) Pisa: ECIG. Toporov V N (1995). Mif, ritua, simvol, obraz: issledovanija v oblasti mifopoeticheskogo: izbrannoe (Myth, ritual, symbol, image: selected studies in mythopoetics). Moscow: Progress-Culture Publishing Group. Toporov V N (1995–1998). Svjatost’ i svjatye v russkoj duhovnoj kulture (Holy ones and holiness in Russian spiritual culture) (Vols 1–2). Moscow: Gnozis, Shkola Iazyki russkoi kul’tury. Toporov V N (1998a). Drevneindijskaja drama Shudraki ‘Glinjanaja povozka’: priglashenie k medlennomu chteniju (Old Indic drama ‘The little clay cart’ by Sudraka: invitation to close reading). Moscow: Nauka, OGI. Toporov V N (1998b). Predystoria literatury u slavjan. Opyt rekonstrukcii: Vvedenie k kursu istorii slavjanskikh literatur (The prehistory of Slavic literature, an attempt at a reconstruction: introduction to a course on the history of Slavic literatures). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N (1998c). Strannyj Turgenev (chetyre glavy) (Weird Turgenev: four chapters). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N (2004). Issledovanija po etimologii i semantike (Studies in etymology and semantics) (Vol. I). Moscow: Jazyki Slavjanskoj Kul’tury. Toporov V N & Elizarenkova T J (1965). Jazyk Pali (The Pali language). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1965). Slavjanskie jazykovye modelirujushie semioticheskie sistemy: Drevnij period (Slavic modeling semiotic language systems ancient period). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1968). Sanskrit. Moscow: Nauka. [English translation of work originally published in 1960.] Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1974). Issledovanija v oblasti slavjanskikh drevnostej: Leksicheskie i phraseologicheskie voprosy rekonstrukcii tekstov (Studies in Slavic antiquities: lexical and phraseological issues in reconstruction of texts). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1995). ‘Bednaja Liza’ Karamzina: Opyt prochtenija (K dvuhsotletiju so dnja vyhoda v svet) (N. M. Karamzin’s ‘Bednaja Liza’: an attempt at reading; on the occasion of bicentenary of its first publication). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N & Trubachev O N (1962). Lingvisticheskij analiz gidronimov Verhnego Podneprovja (Linguistic analysis of river names in the area of High Dniepr). Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences.
Li C & Thompson S A (1979). ‘Third person pronoun and zero anaphora in Chinese discourse.’ In Givo´n T (ed.) Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax. New York: Academic Press. 311–335.
Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928) N N Kazansky, Institute for Linguistic Studies, St Petersburg, Russia ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov is a Russian philologist, linguist, and specialist in Indo-European linguistics, semiotics and history of culture. His research covers topics in Slavic, Baltic, Indo-European, and Russian linguistics as well as general linguistics, poetics, folklore, mythology, and culturology. Toporov was one of the pioneers of semiotic research in the USSR. His semiotic views were formed in the course of his occupation with linguistics of Slavic and other Indo-European languages. Toporov was a permanent member of Tartu semiotic school and a contributor of all issues of Papers on Sign Systems. Among the works written by him are structural descriptions of Sanskrit and Pali grammar, a few studies on Hittite texts, an etymological dictionary of Old Prussian, and numerous etymological papers. Toporov’s Ph.D. dissertation was devoted to the expression of locativity in Slavic and Baltic languages; in 1989 he was conferred a doctoral degree (doctor habilis) honoris causa for the total of his published works. Born in Moscow (Russia) on August 8, 1928, Toporov is married to Tatjana Ja Elizarenkova, a specialist in Indic culture and languages, and a translator of Rig-Veda into Russian. His two daughters are philologists: Tatjana V. Toporova, an author of three books, is a specialist in old Germanic languages; Anna V. Toporova deals with Romance languages. Toporov works at the Institute for Slavistics (Russian Academy of Sciences), where he has been a member since 1990. His research was marked with a number of prestigious awards, including the National Award of USSR, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Award, and the Andrej Belyj prize. Toporov graduated from the Moscow State University; while in Michail N. Peterson’s class his studies included Indo-Aryan, Baltic, and other IndoEuropean languages; professors Nikolaj K. Gudzij
and Piotr S. Kuznetsov also had a formative influence on his personality as a scholar. Further stimulus to the formation of Toporov’s linguistic views was given by the visit by Roman Jakobson to Moscow in 1956; during this visit Jakobson gave a number of talks and introduced the audience to a totally new range of ideas, including recent trends in mathematics (for example, those of Khinchin). The same year, in September, Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, Piotr S. Kuznetsov, and Vladimir A. Uspenskij launched a seminar on mathematical methods, cybernetics, and semiotics at the Moscow State University. This seminar gave the impetus for the development of a mathematically rigorous way of linguistic thinking for many scholars, including Igor A. Melchuk and Vladimir Toporov. Toporov has maintained a keen interest in semiotics and the structural approach to linguistics all his life. Toporov took part in field expeditions, put a number of Ket texts on record (see Ketskij Sbornik, 1969) and worked on a general problem of genetic and areal relations between the Paleoasiatic languages of Siberia and the languages of central and southern Asia (including Himalayan languages). As a result of these investigations he published a study on the linguistic geography of Yenisei and another one on the Iranian influence on the indigenous languages of Siberia. The work done by Toporov on the problem of Slavic ethogenese deserves a special mention. In 1965, together with Oleg N. Trubachev, he published a book on the toponymy of the Dnepr area (Toporov and Ivanov, 1965); he also studied the toponymy of Moscow region, where he managed to trace a number of Baltic names (according to Toporov, Slavic languages are a branch of the Baltic language family). Toporov published extensively on topics in IndoEuropean mythology, in particular, the basic myth concerning the storm-god slaying the serpent. In this connection Toporov undertook a comparison of a number of folklore motives and technical terms of Slavic and Indo-Iranian religious beliefs. He produced numerous articles for the encyclopedia World Myths (1981–1982, 1st edition), several studies of the
778 Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich (b. 1928)
mythological beliefs related to mushrooms, ladybird, beaver, bee, and on other religious faiths going back to Slavic paganism and Indo-European poetics (a summarizing work was Toporov and Ivanov, 1974). In several publications Toporov analyzed the structure of riddles and charms. Since the 1960s, Toporov has published numerous works on Russian writers and poets of the 19th to 20th centuries and the poetics of their œuvre. Among this set of his works are studies on Pushkin and his predecessors (Zhukovsky, Batjushkov and Karamzin), on akmeists’ poetry (with T. V. Tsivjan), and on intertextual connections between Russian and European writers (Pushkin and Goldsmith, akmeists, and Ge´ rard de Nerval). Topics in Old Indic classical literature have been addressed in Toporov’s writing as well, for instance his 1998 book on Sudraka’s Mrcchakatika (The little clay cart; Toporov, 1998a), his study of dialogue structure of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, and his study of the plot in Vergil’s Aeneid (‘Aeneas: the man of his destiny’). Some of Toporov’s works are devoted to the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic text (1998b), and the reconstruction of the earliest historical situation in Kiev (beginning of the 10th century), based on the letter from the genizah of Cairo synagogue. Two characteristics of Toporov as an etymologist are, first, his attention to textual reconstruction (namely, the reconstruction of a sign system in general) and its possible fragments and variants; secondly, Toporov admits the possibility of multiple etymologies, whereby several stages of a word’s semantic development and possible contexts can be reconstructed. Following the ideas of Benveniste, Toporov lays special emphasis on the coincidence in semantics between different traditions. See also: Balto-Slavic Languages; Hittite; Indo–European Languages; Indo–Iranian; Jakobson, Roman (1896–1982); Ket; Mel’uk, Igor Aleksandrovic (b.1932); Pali; Russian; Sanskrit; Slavic Languages.
Bibliography Bushuj A M, Sudnik T M & Tolstaja S M (1989). Bibliographicheskij ukazatel’ po slavjanskomu i obshemu jazykoznaniju (Bibliography on Slavic and General linguistics): Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov. Samarkand. POLYTPOPON. k 70-letiju (1998). Vladimira Nikolaevicha Toporova. Moscow. [Festschrift to Toporov on the occasion of his 70th birthday.] Moscow: Indrik, 1998.
Ivanov V V (2003). Akademik Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov (k 75-letiju so dnja rozhdenija) // Izvestija OLJa (3). Toporov V N (1961). Lokativ v slavjanskih jazykah (Locative in Slavic languages). Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences. Toporov V N (1975–1990). Drevneprusskij jazyk: Slovar (Dictionary of Old Prussian) (5 vols). (A–L). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N (1994). O mifopoeticheskom prostranstve: izbrannye statji (On mythopoetical space: selected articles) Pisa: ECIG. Toporov V N (1995). Mif, ritua, simvol, obraz: issledovanija v oblasti mifopoeticheskogo: izbrannoe (Myth, ritual, symbol, image: selected studies in mythopoetics). Moscow: Progress-Culture Publishing Group. Toporov V N (1995–1998). Svjatost’ i svjatye v russkoj duhovnoj kulture (Holy ones and holiness in Russian spiritual culture) (Vols 1–2). Moscow: Gnozis, Shkola Iazyki russkoi kul’tury. Toporov V N (1998a). Drevneindijskaja drama Shudraki ‘Glinjanaja povozka’: priglashenie k medlennomu chteniju (Old Indic drama ‘The little clay cart’ by Sudraka: invitation to close reading). Moscow: Nauka, OGI. Toporov V N (1998b). Predystoria literatury u slavjan. Opyt rekonstrukcii: Vvedenie k kursu istorii slavjanskikh literatur (The prehistory of Slavic literature, an attempt at a reconstruction: introduction to a course on the history of Slavic literatures). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N (1998c). Strannyj Turgenev (chetyre glavy) (Weird Turgenev: four chapters). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N (2004). Issledovanija po etimologii i semantike (Studies in etymology and semantics) (Vol. I). Moscow: Jazyki Slavjanskoj Kul’tury. Toporov V N & Elizarenkova T J (1965). Jazyk Pali (The Pali language). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1965). Slavjanskie jazykovye modelirujushie semioticheskie sistemy: Drevnij period (Slavic modeling semiotic language systems ancient period). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1968). Sanskrit. Moscow: Nauka. [English translation of work originally published in 1960.] Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1974). Issledovanija v oblasti slavjanskikh drevnostej: Leksicheskie i phraseologicheskie voprosy rekonstrukcii tekstov (Studies in Slavic antiquities: lexical and phraseological issues in reconstruction of texts). Moscow: Nauka. Toporov V N & Ivanov V V (1995). ‘Bednaja Liza’ Karamzina: Opyt prochtenija (K dvuhsotletiju so dnja vyhoda v svet) (N. M. Karamzin’s ‘Bednaja Liza’: an attempt at reading; on the occasion of bicentenary of its first publication). Moscow: RGGU. Toporov V N & Trubachev O N (1962). Lingvisticheskij analiz gidronimov Verhnego Podneprovja (Linguistic analysis of river names in the area of High Dniepr). Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences.