Prague, Oct 18 (CTK) – University of Vienna professor Stefan M. Newerkla, expert in Bohemian studies, received the Josef Dobrovsky award of merit of the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV CR) from its chairwoman Eva Zazimalova on Wednesday.
Newerkla, who teaches at the university’s Institute of Slavic Studies, has been cooperating closely with the AV CR. From 2012 until 2016, he was a member of its scientific council.
In his habilitation, he studied the linguistic contacts between the Czech, Slovak and German languages and the Czech linguistic borrowing from German.
His own surname, on the other hand, is derived from the Czech word “nevrly”, which means grumpy.
“Almost everyone in Vienna has a Czech surname, including me,” Newerkla said, illustrating the influence of Czech on the German language in Austria.
Apart from Slavic studies, Newerkla also graduated in English and American Studies, later focusing in his doctoral thesis solely on the Czech environment, specifically on the relations between Czech and German in the Czech education system in 1740-1918, when the Czech Lands were a part of the Austrian Empire.
In 2003, he won the University of Vienna’s contest for the post of a professor of the Western Slavic linguistics and was the department’s warrantor since then, AV CR has written in a press release.
Newerkla is the author of a number of books and of over 110 scientific articles. He also co-authored a textbook of Czech. He publishes the Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch journal and he is a member of several councils of Czech professional journals.
He was active in the AV CR committee for the international assessment of its scientific work in 2015 as its chairman.
The Josef Dobrovsky award of merit, named after an 18th century Czech priest and philologist, is granted annually. Last year, it was received by Jana Nechutova, a medieval Latin expert of Brno’s Philosophical Faculty of the Masaryk University.
