Victor Friedman received his B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Reed
College in 1970 and his Ph. D. in both Slavic Languages and Literatures and in
General Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1975. This was the first
joint degree granted in the Division of the Humanities at Chicago, and his dissertation,
“The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative” won the Mark Perry Galler
prize for the best dissertation in the Humanities Division that year. From 1975
to 1993 he taught in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he chaired the Department from 1987 to 1993. In 1993
he moved to the University of Chicago, where he is Andrew W. Mellon Professor
in the Humanities with a joint appointment in Linguistics and Slavic Languages
and Literatures and an associate appointment in Anthropology. He has over 200
publications, and The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative
(Slavica, 1977) was the first book on Modern Macedonian published in the United
States.
Friedman has done fieldwork in the Balkans for over thirty-five years and has
received research grants from Fulbright-Hays, IREX, ACLS, NEH, APS, etc. In 1982
he received the "1300 Years of Bulgaria" jubilee medal for contributions
to the field of Bulgarian studies. In 1991 and again in 2003, he was awarded the
University of Skopje Gold Plaque for contributions to the field of Macedonian
studies, and in 1994 he was elected to the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1995 he was elected to Matica Srpska, and in 2004 he was elected to the Academy
of Arts and Sciences of Kosova. During the Yugoslav Wars of Succession, he worked
as a Senior Policy and Political Analyst for the Analysis and Assessment Unit
of the United Nations Protection Forces stationed in former Yugoslavia (summer
1994), joined a fact finding mission for the South Balkan Project of the Center
for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations (1995-1997), consulted
for the International Crisis Group (1997), and did some work with the United States
Institute for Peace (1999-2000). He has been a visiting scholar at Cornell (Balkan
linguistics, LSA summer institute 1997), University of Skopje (Balkan Identity,
1999), Central European University-Budapest (Romani linguistics 1999, 2001, 2003),
Kyoto University (Balkan linguistics, 1999), National University of Malaysia (Southeast
Europe/Southeast Asia: Comparative Perspectives, 2000), University of Helsinki
(Balkan linguistics, 2000), University of Prishtina (Balkan and Caucasian linguistics,
2002), and LaTrobe University (Research Center for Linguistic Typology, Balkan
linguistics, 2004).
Friedman’s research centers on grammatical categories (particularly the verb),
language contact, and sociolinguistics (especially problems of variation and standardization)
in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Owing to the intimate connections of language
with politics and ethnic identity in these parts of the world, his work has of
necessity been interdisciplinary. His publications deal with the following languages:
Albanian, Aromanian (Vlah), Azeri, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (especially the Torlak
dialects), Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Judezmo, Lak, Macedonian, Megleno-Romanian,
Romani, Romanian, Russian, Tadjik, Turkish.
His recent books are the following: Macedonian. (Languages of the World/Materials 117). Munich: LinCom Europa.
60 pp. 2002. Turkish in Macedonia and Beyond: Studies in Contact, Typology, and Other Phenomena
in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. xvi+191 pp. 2003. Studies on Albanian and Other Balkan Languages. Peja: Dukagjini. 546
pp. 2004.
For a full list of his publications, click here.
Work in progress: various articles and a book entitled The Balkan Languages
(with Brian Joseph, to be published in the Cambridge University Press Green
Series)
Some day, some day: Nasreddin Hodja: A multilingual, cross-cultural, transnational
reader.
