@inbook{
author = "Пипер, Предраг",
year = "2022",
abstract = "И у Србији, и у Југославији, и у свету академик Милка Ивић била је
позната као слависта и лингвиста међу највећима које смо икад имали,
као стручњак за питања теоријске лингвистике и науке о српском језику,
посебно синтаксе и семантике, синтаксе реченице, синтаксе падежа, синтаксе глагола, односа између граматике и лексике, когнитивне лингвистике, типологије језика, теорије морфолошких категорија, историје речи
у историји културе, лексичке семантике, историје лингвистике и других
лингвистичких области. Припада кругу најзаслужнијих српских лингвиста у области науке о српском језику, славистике и опште лингвистике., Academician Milka Ivić is regarded as one of the most distinguished Serbian
scholars in the areas of Serbian studies, Slavic studies, as well as general linguistics.
Serbian philology and linguistics of the early- and mid-19th century was predominantly
marked by Vuk Karadžić, that of the first half of the 20th century by Aleksandar Belić,
while that of the second half of the 20th and the early 21st century primarily by Milka
Ivić and Pavle Ivić. There are, of course, many other prominent authors, whose merits
will not be either diminished or disregarded if at times they pass unmentioned.
Nevertheless, in the history of science, much like in space, we are orientated towards
the peaks, which is precisely what represents our subject matter here.
Milka Ivić had demonstrated an outstanding talent for research as early as during
her academic studies in her seminar paper entitled “A Comparison of Vuk’s Language
with Our Present-Day Literary Language” (1947), which was later published in Zbornik
Matice srpske za filologiju i lingvistiku ( Matica Srpska Journal of Philology and
Linguistics) (1957) and became the basis for her book O jeziku Vukovom i vukovskom (On
Vuk’s and Vukovian Language) (1990, 1997), as well as in a great number of other papers
that she had been writing until the latter years of her life concerning the changes in
the Serbian language ranging from the first half of the 19th to the second half of the 20th
century and the beginning of the 21st century, many of which were written from the
perspective of the history of words in the context of the history of culture. In doing so,
Milka Ivić systemically pointed to an area of Serbian studies that was yet to become a
research area, concluding that it was neccessary to produce first the descriptive and
then normative grammar of the contemporary standard Serbian language, as it had
greatly evolved since the times of Vuk Karadžić. During the decades that followed,
Milka Ivić was, apart from her other scientific interests, also committed to achieving
the goals which she had set herself, thereby inspiring others to follow in her footsteps.
The work on the Dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Sciences (SAS) stimulated
the early scientific research of Milka Ivić and even influenced her selection of the topic
of her doctoral dissertation Značenja srpskohrvatskog instrumentala i njihov razvoj
(The Uses of the Serbo-Croatian Instrumental Case and Their Development), which she
had defended in 1953 and which was published in the series of Special Editions of the
Institute for the Serbian Language of SAS in 1954. This book has remained to this day
an unparalleled research study in the field of diachronic syntax and case semantics, a
prime example of the investigation of a nearly unexplored, and at the same time very
complex research area, of scrupulous handling of very extensive and diverse corpus
material and of the original suggested solutions, regarding both the conception of the
monograph as a whole and a number of individual problems.
It was at that time that Milka Ivić started her university career. During the 1950–
1951 academic year, she worked as a substitute for Professor Aleksandar Belić, giving
lectures on General Linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.
In 1955 Milka Ivić was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Department of South
Slavic Languages of the newly founded Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad.
In the course of the same year her husband Pavle Ivić also transferred to the said
Department. With great enthusiasm, the two of them invested their vast erudition,
broad scientific horizons and knowledge of contemporary linguistics into building a
modern, agile and productive scholarly collective that was to become well-known for
their prolific research and contemporary theoretical frameworks. Pavle and Milka Ivić,
along with their collaborators, created a major centre for Slavic studies at the Faculty
of Philosophy in Novi Sad, often referred to as the ‘School of Pavle and Milka Ivić’ or the
‘Novi Sad School of Linguistics’.
She believed that an undisputed starting point in linguistic investigations can be,
and invariably has to be, the actuality of language. She exhibited a rare capacity to
penetrate the seemingly quite ordinary linguistic facts, overlooked by many linguists,
identify a problem to do with the underlying mechanisms of language, and then analyze
it using the theoretical apparatus of contemporary theoretical linguistics so that it
sheds new light not only on the given language (usually Serbian, frequently contrasted
with other languages), but also on the theoretical framework within which the problem
had been resolved. Since her attention was focused on the crux of the matter, rather
than on all the possible descriptive and proscriptive ramifications of the solution, Milka
Ivić’s work often indicated areas in which more extensive research was yet to begin.
In addition, many linguistic papers of Milka Ivić, notably her collection Lingvistički
ogledi ( Linguistic Essays), are considered to be the supreme examples of linguistic
miniatures, a scientific “genre” which, at least in the field of linguistics, would certainly
be more suitable for etymology than syntax, and the one whose main features represent
providing clear and concise presentation of the issue as well as of the argumentation
underlying the solution, with broader theoretical and descriptive or normative
implications.
She focused principally on the issues of lexical semantics and the semantics of
grammar viewed through the prism of their mutual interconnectedness.
Between 1955 and 1959, Milka Ivić lectured at the University of Novi Sad as Assistant
Professor, from 1959 to 1964 as Associate Professor, and in 1964 was promoted to the
rank of Full Professor. She retired on 1 October 1984. She lectured in two subjects –
Contemporary Serbo-Croatian Language and General Linguistics, and also headed the
project “Syntax of the Contemporary Serbian Language”.
In Novi Sad, Milka Ivić actively participated in the organization of academic and
scholarly life and work at the Faculty of Philosophy as well as in Matica Srpska, where
she was a member of the Committee of the Department of Literature and Language, the
president of the Chair of Matica Srpska, a member of the editorial board of the Matica
Srpska Journal of Philology and Linguistics, in addition to other high-level duties.
Apart from her university professorship, Milka Ivić spent a considerable amount of
time specializing abroad and attending scientific conferences, especially as a member
of the Commission for the Study of the Grammatical Structure of Slavic Languages of the International Committee of Slavists. She was in direct contact with many eminent
linguists and Slavists and a welcome guest at many universities. She had refused every
opportunity to pursue a university career abroad in favour of continuing to live and
work in her home country.
The high regard in which Milka Ivić has been held in linguistic circles is reflected
in the fact that as far back as 1972 her work on non-omissible determiners in Slavic
languages was included in the selected readings on the structuralist theory of syntax
(edited by Fred Householder), as well as in the fact that her papers were published in
the top-ranking Slavic periodicals and collections of papers.
In the following decades, Milka Ivić served as a Visiting Professor at many
universities in Europe, the USA and Japan, and also attended some of the major Slavic
and linguistic scientific conferences at home and abroad.
Apart from the monographs Značenja srpskohrvatskog instrumentala i njihov
razvoj ( The Uses of the Serbo-Croatian Instrumental Case and Their Development),
and Pravci u lingvistici ( Trends in Linguistics), Milka Ivić also authored the books
Lingvistički ogledi (Linguistic Essays) (1983, 1995, 2008), O jeziku Vukovom i vukovskom
(On Vuk’s and Vukovian Language) (1990, 1997), O zelenom konju: novi lingvistički ogledi
(About a Green Horse: New Linguistic Essays) (1995), Lingvistički ogledi, tri (Linguistic
Essays, Three) (2000), Red reči: lingvistički ogledi, četiri (Word Order: Linguistic Essays,
Four) (2002), O rečima: kognitivni, gramatički i kulturološki aspekti srpske leksike:
lingvistički ogledi, pet (On Words: Cognitive, Grammatical and Culturological Aspects
of Serbian Lexis: Linguistic Essays, Five) (2005), Jezik o nama: lingvistički ogledi, šest
(What Language Says About Us: Linguistic Essays, Six) (2006), as well as over four
hundred other scientific papers (see her personal bibliography above).
Her lectures on General Linguistics prompted her to write the well-known book
Trends in Linguistics, which is the most widely translated book in Serbian linguistics.
In 1983 Milka Ivić had published the first volume of her Linguistic Essays in the
edition “Twentieth Century Library”, founded by Ivan Čolović, and the subsequent
years saw the release of another five volumes in the same edition, each bearing the
same title but different subtitle, depending on their respective subject matter.
Milka Ivić’s Linguistic Essays b est c omplement t he i ssues, s tyle a nd l anguage o f
her Trends in Linguistics. In that sense, the thesis regarding the specific features of
the structure of the scientific linguistic opus of Milka Ivić can be viewed on a broader
plane than that of comprising the six volumes of linguistic essays.
After the first publication of Trends in Linguistics, which were later expanded so
as to reflect the mainstream trends in the development of general linguistics of the
latter decades, the other research works of Milka Ivić could also justifiably be viewed as
parts of the same whole, united by the essentially identical or similar methodological
approach.
Having studied the language system for over six decades, Milka Ivić closely
observed the evolution of language and the development of the science of language. The
three main areas of her research interest were Serbian, that is, Serbo-Croatian, Slavic
languages, and the linguistic theory and methodology in its historical development,
as well as in its synchronic state. In the investigations of Milka Ivić, the broader issues
were for the most part interrelated, the main difference between them lying in what represented their main focus. Milka Ivić had always taken the linguistic reality as a
starting point in her research, and her inclination to deal with theoretical issues did
not divert her from writing about language relying on concrete linguistic facts.
In Serbia, Yugoslavia and the world at large, Milka Ivić was recognized as one of
our greatest Slavists and linguists of all time, as an expert in the fields of theoretical
linguistics and Serbian studies, especially regarding syntax and semantics, sentence
structure, syntax of the cases, syntax of the verb, the interface of lexis and grammar,
cognitive linguistics, language typology, theory of morphological categories, history
of words in the history of culture, lexical semantics, history of linguistics and other
linguistic areas.
Academician Milka Ivić was an invaluable member of the editorial boards of
a number of linguistic journals at home and abroad. She was especially devoted to
editing the journal Južnoslovenski filolog (The South Slavic Philologist), acting as its
editor-in-chief from 1974 to 2007 (it being the journal in which she had published her
first scientific papers in 1949).
Milka Ivić was elected a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
(SASA) (1976), of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters (1976), of the Saxon
Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1979), and of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences
and Arts (1983).
She was elected a full member of the SASA on 15 December 1983, and delivered her
accession speech entitled “On Distinguishing Between the General and Concrete Event
Structures” at the SASA ceremonial session on 11 October 1984.
She served on the editorial boards of the international journals Acta Linguistica
Hafniensia (International Journal of Linguistics) (Copenhagen), and Съпоставително
езикознание (Contrastive Linguistics) (Sofia).
On her retirement, Academician Milka Ivić continued her scientific work principally
within the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, while maintaining strong connections
with the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, Matica Srpska and other institutions with
which she had previously collaborated.",
publisher = "Београд : Српска академија наука и уметности",
journal = "Живот и стваралаштво жена чланова Српског ученог друштва, Српске краљевске академије и Српске академије наука и уметности",
booktitle = "Милка Ивић : (1923-2011), Milka Ivić : (1923–2011)",
pages = "21-65",
number = "Том 2",
url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_14788"
}
