Radoslav Katičić

Radoslav Katičić(pronounced[rǎdoslaʋkâtitʃitɕ];3 July 1930 – 10 August 2019) was aCroatianlinguist,classical philologist,Indo-Europeanist,SlavistandIndologist,one of the most prominent Croatian scholars in thehumanities.

Radoslav Katičić
Born	(1930-07-03)3 July 1930 Zagreb,Yugoslavia
Died	10 August 2019(2019-08-10)(aged 89) Vienna,Austria
Main interests	Slavic studies Comparative linguistics Croatian studies Slavic mythology Indology Classical philology

Biography

Radoslav Katičić was born on 3 July 1930 inZagrebwhich was part ofKingdom of Yugoslaviaat the time.In 1949, he graduated at the classicalgymnasiumin his home town.

At theFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb,he received a degree in Classical Philology in 1954. The same year he started working as a part-time librarian at the Seminar for Classical Philology at the same faculty. His first scientific works were onAncient Greekphilology andByzantine studies.

As astipendistof the Greek government, he visitedAthensin 1956-57, and in 1958 he was elected as an assistant at the Department for Comparative Indo-European Grammar at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.

In 1959, he received his Ph.D. with the thesisPitanje jedinstva indoeuropske glagolske fleksije('The question of unity of Indo-European verbal flexion').During the period of 1960-61, he was a stipendist of theAlexander von Humboldt FoundationinTübingen.After returning to his main university, he became adocenton Indo-European and general linguistics. Soon after, he served as a head of the newly formed Department for General Linguistics and Oriental Studies. In 1966, he became an associate, and, in 1973, a full professor. Beside general and Indo-European linguistics, he also taught Old Iranian andOld Indicphilology.

In 1976, he became a full professor of Slavic philology at theUniversity of Vienna,Austria.

In 1973, he was selected as an extraordinary member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (nowCroatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), and, in 1987, he became a full member. In 1981, he became a corresponding member of theAustrian Academy of Sciences,in 1989, becoming a full member, and since 1989, serving as a head of the renownedBalkan Commission.In 1984, he became a member of theAcademy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina,in 1987, a member of theNorwegian Academy of Science and Letters,and in 1991, a member of theAcademia Europaea.In 2011, he became a member ofAccademia Nazionale dei Linceiand in 2012, ofAcademy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo.In 1989, he received anhonorary doctoratefrom theUniversity of Osijek,and in 1999, an honorary degree and professorship at theEötvös Loránd UniversityinBudapest.

In 2005, he became the head ofCouncil for Standard Croatian Language Norm.He served in that role until council's abolition in 2012.

Work

In the past twenty years he chiefly researched on the topic of history ofCroatiangrammar, philology, early Croatian Middle Ages, engaging in extensive synthetic research of the key periods of history of Croatian literature and the reconstruction ofProto-Slavicceremonial texts, sacral poetry of mythological content, and legislative literature. Some aspects of his work meet criticism, primarily his puristic approach to the linguistic terminology,theprimordialistview of nations,and subjectivity in articles on language policy.Besides, his syntactic description has been judged negatively by other Croatian syntacticians.

Katičić's scholarly contributions which consists of more than 150 titles (books and papers) can be divided in five fields:

• GenerallinguisticsandPaleo-Balkanstudies (mainly based on transformational grammar approach), consisting of works written in English:
  • A Contribution to the General Theory of Comparative Linguistics(the Hague-Paris, 1970)
  • The Ancient Languages of the Balkans, 1-2(the Hague-Paris, 1976)
• Linguistic-stylistic works on aspects and history of various European (Ancient Greek, Byzantine) and non-European literatures:
  • Stara indijska književnost/Old Indian literature(Zagreb, 1973)
• Numerous studies on Croatian language history, from the inception of theCroatsin the 7th century onwards. Katičić has charted the meanderings in the continuity of Croatian language and literature, from the earliest stone inscriptions andGlagoliticmedieval literature in theCroatian recension of Church Slavonicto the works ofRenaissancewriters such asMarin DržićandMarko Marulić,who wrote in a Croatian vernacular. He also explored language standardization and wrote a syntactic description of modern Croatian (Sintaksa hrvatskoga književnoga jezika/Syntax of Standard Croatian,Zagreb, 1986), based on texts by contemporary authors such asMiroslav KrležaandTin Ujević.
• Synthetic works that explore the beginnings of Croatian civilization in a multidisciplinary fashion based on philology,archeology,culturology,paleographyand textual analysis:
  • Uz početke hrvatskih početaka/Roots of Croatian roots(Split 1993)
  • Litterarium studia(Vienna-Zagreb, 1999, in German and Croatian)
• Reconstruction of Proto-Slavic sacral poetry and Slavic pre-Christian faith:
  • Božanski boj: Tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine(Zagreb, 2008)
  • Zeleni lug: Tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine(Zagreb, 2010)
  • Gazdarica na vratima: Tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine(Zagreb, 2011)
  • Vilinska vrata: I dalje tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine(Zagreb, 2014)
  • Naša stara vjera: Tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine(Zagreb, 2017)

External links

• Academician Katičić's homepage
• Katičić's biography,at theMatica hrvatska's website
• "Katičić, Radoslav",Croatian Encyclopaedia(in Croatian), 2020
• Ježić, Mislav (2009),"Katičić, Radoslav",Croatian Biographical Lexicon(HBL)(in Croatian),Miroslav Krleža Lexicographical Institute