Vitalij V. Shevoroshkin, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics
1932–2023
Vitalij Victorovich Shevoroshkin, Professor Emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, died in Zurich, Switzerland, on December 22, 2023.
Professor Shevoroshkin, originally from Georgia, in the former Soviet Union (USSR), earned his B.A. from Moscow State University and his Doctorate and Doctorat d’Etat from the USSR Academy of Sciences. He joined the University of Michigan as a professor in 1979 after teaching at the University of Maryland and Yale University, and retired from active faculty in 2009.
Professor Shevoroshkin made significant contributions to the study of world languages, particularly by exploring the relationship between the Indo-European languages and other language groups. His major books in this area include Study in the Decipherment of Carian Inscriptions, The Lydian Language, and Sound-chains in the World’s Languages.
He authored scores of articles and also edited a seminal series of books on the reconstruction of ancient languages, including Reconstructing Languages and Culture and Languages and their Speakers in Ancient Eurasia, as well as volumes on Dene-Sino-Caucasian, Austric and Amerind languages. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and garnered many awards for his work on ancient languages including NSF and NEH grants, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a University Faculty Recognition Award. In his honor, the volume Indo-European, Nostratic, and Beyond: Festschrift for V.V. Shevoroshkin was published in 1997.
Professor Shevoroshkin played a key role in the teaching of ancient languages and of Russian linguistics at the University. In Linguistics, he offered courses on Indo-European, Anatolian Languages, the indigenous languages of the Americas, as well as on historical linguistics and the genetic relations among languages. In the Slavic Department, he taught the core linguistics courses: Old Church Slavonic, Russian Phonetics, History of Russian and Structure of Russian. His erudition and enthusiasm enriched the work of the departments in which he taught over a period of thirty years.
Vitalij Shevoroshkin is survived by his son, Alexey Shevoroshkin, who was fortunate enough to be with him at the time of his death.
