Elena Georgieva | |
---|---|
Born |
Elena Traycheva Kerpicheva 15 March 1930 Bratsigovo, Bulgaria |
Died | 10 January 2007 Sofia, Bulgaria |
(aged 76)
Nationality | Bulgarian |
Other names | Елена Трайчева Георгиева |
Occupation | linguist |
Known for | Bulgarian syntax studies |
Notable work | Simple word order in sentences in Bulgarian literary language |
Elena Georgieva (Bulgarian: Елена Георгиева, 15 March 1930 – 10 January 2007) was a Bulgarian linguist whose work on Bulgarian syntax revolutionized the way that the Bulgarian language was studied by proposing that the word order was determined by the functional perspective of the subject and its theme.
Elena Traycheva Georgieva was a student of Lyubomir Andreychin and spent her career working for the Institute for Bulgarian Language under the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She was the first administrative specialist assigned to the institute upon its creation. Georgieva taught at several universities, including Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski" and Shumen University and lectured on the Bulgarian language in France. Georgieva's research covered a broad spectrum of modern Bulgarian language, touching on grammar, history, morphology and syntax, and she was a prolific writer of both analysis and textbooks.
In 1974, she published Simple word order in sentences in Bulgarian literary language (Bulgarian: Slovored na prostoto izrečenie v bălgarskija knižoven ezik), which had a profound impact on linguistic studies. It was not the first study of Bulgarian syntax, but it was the first study to show that word order depended not only on the subject matter but also on the intent of the message being conveyed. Instead of routinely conveying words in the format of subject, verb, object, they might be presented in another format to convey emphasis.