We would like to introduce Yekaterina Yakovenko to the members of CIPL and the readers of the Newsletter. Yekaterina has taken the initiative to collect the proceedings and any other publications of the Internal Congresses of Linguists and to publish them on the CIPL website. Because contact with her place of residence and work in Moscow is currently difficult, Camiel Hamans has submitted a number of questions to her in writing.
- What is your current academic position/positions and which positions did you hold before?
I am Leading Researcher of the Department of Germanic Languages at the Institute of Linguistics, the Russian Academy of Sciences. I have been working at the RAS since 2003. I started my post doctorate studies at the Institute of Linguistics in late December 1999, a few days before the millennium. Three years later, when my studies were over, I was offered a position as a Senior Researcher, which I accepted gladly. In 2007 I defended my D. Habil. thesis and in 2009 I got my current position.
- What is your special field? And what are your special duties at the Academy of Sciences (for instance conference organizer/round table organizer etc.)?
I deal with Germanic languages, both early and modern ones. I am carrying out several projects lying in the fields of historical linguistics, contrastive linguistics, translational studies (biblical studies, theory of retranslation, equivalence theory), cognitive linguistics, semantics, geopoetics, and, recently, historiography of linguistics. Most of my projects are at the crossroads of these fields. I devoted many years to the study of English biblical translations, and this project is not over yet. I hope to explore more aspects of grammatical terminology in early Germanic languages (Old English, Old High German, Old Icelandic). Now I am preparing a monograph on the “Memoirs of Princess Dashkova”, which appeared in several English, French, and Russian versions and display quite a peculiar case of retranslation.
Beside my research, I organize conferences, edit their proceedings, review journal articles, and supervise postgraduate projects. I edit a series of books in Gothic under the title “Lingua Gotica”. The fourth volume appeared in 2023 and the fifth one is to appear in 2025.
I am a member of several linguistic societies: SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), ICLA (International Cognitive Linguistics Association), RALK (Russian Association of Cognitive Linguists), RSG (Russian Union of Germanists) and I take an active part in conferences in linguistics, both in Russia and abroad.
- Where did you study and what brought you to study languages/linguistics?
I studied at Kursk University (the former Kursk Pedagogical University) and, as for my postgraduate studies, at Moscow State Pedagogical University. According to my qualifications, I am a teacher of foreign languages. In fact, I have been combining research and teaching all my life. Alongside my academic duties, I teach at some Moscow universities: St Tikhon Orthodox University, the Higher School of Economics (the National Research University), and the State Academic University for the Humanities. Among the subjects I lecture are Introduction to Linguistics, General Linguistics, History of Linguistics, Germanic Studies, Gothic, History of the English Language, and others. I also teach French as a second foreign language. These are part-time jobs, but they take up much time as well. Teaching is another facet of me. I really cannot live without it.
I owe my passion for languages and linguistics to my mother and books. My mother was a university teacher of French. She studied at Rostov University in the 50s; her teachers were former aristocrats, immigrants or their descendants, who miraculously escaped the terror of the October Revolution. My mother’s French was exquisite. She knew French literature perfectly. My mother loved French deeply and devoted her life to spreading it. She retired at the age of 75. It was she who taught me French. I learned my first French word, le tapis (‘the carpet’), when I was four. We often spoke this language at home.
I got interested in linguistics when I was ten or eleven. At that time, I lived in Volkhov, a small industrial town near Leningrad (the name of St Petersburg in the Soviet period). I was an awkward and extremely shy child preferring books to communication. There were some books on popular linguistics in the town library for children, but they could not be borrowed to be read at home. I went to the library twice or thrice a week and stayed in the reading hall for hours, enjoying the very process of studying the basics of linguistics (I still remember those books almost by heart!). In those blessed times children could walk anywhere without being accompanied by adults and their parents did not have to worry about them. I always attended the library alone. The town, cut in two by a mighty river bearing the same name, was small and quiet. I liked staying in the library, but I liked even more the way to it, which took me a quarter of an hour. I needed it just to walk, look around, and think about different things. Now I realize that these were the most precious moments of my life.
- How did you get to know CIPL, Comité International Permanent des Linguistes?
In 2018 I took part in the International Congress of Linguists that was held in Cape Town. I was so impressed with it that, coming back, I dared to ask Andrei Kibrik, Director of the Institute of Linguists, whether it was possible to hold the next ICL in Moscow. I think that my frank question puzzled him. After a moment of hesitation, he answered: “In a month, a representative of CIPL, Camiel Hamans, will come to Moscow to participate in our linguistic forum. You can discuss it with him”. A month later, I met you at the forum. It was the beginning of our collaboration and our friendship.
- Why did you start as a volunteer to collect and publish the archive of the Congresses of Linguists?
Preparing the ICL that was to have been held in Moscow and Kazan in 2023 (it was transferred to Poznań), I felt great responsibility and necessity to keep the tradition, so my interest for the previous ICLs was only natural. However, it was not easy to find all proceedings and programs. Some ICLs displayed their materials on temporary commercial sites, which are no longer available now. Camiel Hamans’ idea was that all ICL proceedings should be kept on the CIPL site and be in public use.
The publication of the archive of the ICL is a matter of great importance. The history of the Congresses is part of the history of world linguistics. Nothing in science is quite new, and exploring the proceedings of the previous ICLs, we can see that the ideas that are being elaborated in linguistics now are based on earlier works. Everything is so closely interrelated that, getting acquainted with the legacy of former periods (or just re-reading them), we can better see the actual state of our science and its perspectives. Turning back helps us go forward.
- How do you collect these publications?
I find them most often in libraries as paper or digital copies. If their copyright has expired, they are in open access. If not, we can only give links to library catalogues or those of publishing houses. Some ICL proceedings, particularly in the 90s, appeared on a CD-ROM and needed reformatting. My friends and colleagues helped me with it.
- What has already been achieved and what still needs to be done?
We have the collection nearly ready, but some proceedings are not formatted yet. I think they will appear on the CIPL site in a few months. Then we will have our archive of ICLs completed.
Thank you so much for all the time, effort and good care you put into this project!
