Sergei Evgenyevich YAKHONTOV (1926-2018)

By Alain Peyraube

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The Russian linguist Sergei E. Yakhontov (Sergej Evgen’evič Jaxontov, Yǎhóngtuōfū 雅洪托夫 in Chinese) passed away on January 28, 2018. He was 91 years old. Jaxontov undoubtedly was one of the best scholars of his generation in Chinese linguistics, and a distinguished researcher in comparative and general linguistics as well.

Graduated in 1950 from the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University, Sergej E. Jaxontov has been a student of Alexandr Alexandrovič Dragunov (1900-1955, Lóng Guǒfū 龙果夫 in Chinese) and has further advanced many ideas and insights of his professor, creating what is now known as the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) School of Sino-Tibetan linguistics.

As early as in 1960, he made decisive contributions to Old Chinese phonology, proposing the medial *-l- as a consonant and a rounded vowel *o (hypothesis that Old Chinese had no freely occurring medial *-w-) predicting the existence of rhyming distinctions not recognized in the traditional analysis, which led him to submit a seven-vowel system with rather restricted distribution. (See the translation of Jaxontov’s (1960) paper in Norman’s (1970) English translation and also Jaxontov (1983, 1986))

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Sergej E. Jaxontov is no longer with us to transmit his knowledge and understanding of the Chinese language and its historical development. He was a great linguist and his death leaves a large void in our field that will be hard to fill.

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