[Ura-list] Valej Kel’makov in memoriam

[Johanna Laakso]

Just reported on social media: Professor Valej Kel’makov, a distinguished scholar and the leading expert of the Udmurt language, passed away today.

Valej (Valentin) Kel’makovič Kel’makov, professor at the department of Udmurt and general linguistics at the Udmurt State University, was born on the 14th of January, 1942, in the village of Tylo (Verxnjaja Jum’ja) in the Kukmor region in the Tatar Republic, in a family of kolkhoz farmers (his father fell in the war).  He studied at the Udmurt State University and taught there from 1971 on. Between 1992 and 1994 he worked as a lecturer of Udmurt in Helsinki and Turku; already before that he had created good connections with colleagues in Hungary, Finland and other countries.

During his academic career, he became an acknowledged expert of Udmurt dialectology and historical phonology, but he also published extensively on many other aspects of the Udmurt language: morphology, syntax, onomastics, history of the Udmurt literary language and Udmurt language studies, etc. – and authored an Udmurt textbook for Finnish students. Reportedly, as late as yesterday colleagues had seen him at the university, diligently working on his current research. He was a member of the CIFU organizing committee and a highly respected and well liked partner in international cooperations. In his recent FB posting, Esa-Jussi Salminen very aptly calls him "a veritable hero of the Finno-Ugric world".

In the name of the whole URA-LIST community: our deepest condolences to all his friends, colleagues and students who are now sorely missing his friendly personality and his uncomparable expertise!

jl

--
Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at • http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/ 







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ura-list/attachments/20231228/a6a50501/attachment.htm>