Viktoriia Iartseva

Born Oct. 21 (Nov. 3), 1906, in St. Petersburg. Soviet linguist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968).

Iartseva graduated from the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute in 1933 and became a professor in 1943. She served as director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1971 to 1977.

Iartseva’s principal works are devoted to several areas of historical and general linguistics. She has dealt with the history of the English language and problems in the formation and development of literary languages in The Historical Morphology of the English Language (1960), The Historical Syntax of the English Language (1961), and The Development of an English National Literary Language (1969). In addition to investigating types of language variation, she has examined problems in linguistic typology and language classification in such works as Languages of the World: Problems of Description and Classification (1971). Her works in general linguistics include On the Comparative Method of Language Study (1960), The Interrelationship of Grammar and Vocabulary in the Language System (1968), and On the Territorial Foundation of Social Dialects (1969).

Iartseva’s series of studies of the Celtic languages initiated the systematic development of Celtic studies in Soviet linguistics. Her publications in this area include Old Irish and Other Celtic Languages in the System of Indo-European Languages (1940). Iartseva has also examined questions in historical stylistics and literary criticism and is the author of Shakespeare and Historical Stylistics (1964).