Lyubov Sova


Ljubov Zinovjevna Sova is a Russian philologist notable for contributions in the field of linguistics and orientalistics. Her main fields of professional interest include linguistics, African philology, semiotics, typology, Slavic languages and journalism.

Education

Sova was born in 1937 in Kharkov in what was then Soviet Ukraine. Her educational achievements include:
Sova has worked progressively as an assistant professor, full professor and leading full professor at the Leningrad Branch of the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1964 to 1990. Since 1990, she has worked as a writer and journalist, and has been editor of the Berlin journal Good Evening! since 1997. She has also continued to work in academia as a visiting professor at various colleges and universities in Berlin.

Research

Sova's main areas of experience and expertise include analytical linguistics, African philology, Russian language and literature, Slavic languages, semiotics, general, historical, typologic and computational linguistics, syntax, semantics, philosophy and journalism. Sova was among the first researchers to apply computer analysis to the area of philology, and in her D. Habil. thesis, created a theory that she termed "Analytical Linguistics" to apply techniques of constructive mathematics to linguistic materials. Her work has been described as "extending the aims of the generative grammars, set its aim to describe the apparatus of extracted axioms" and was a key factor in the reconstruction of the Proto-Bantu language and the description of the evolution of the Bantu languages.

Publications

Sova is the author of 200 published and unpublished works, two novels and thirteen scientific monographs, including:

Scientific monographs