Gabdulkhay Akhatov

Gabdulkhay Khuramovich Akhatov (Russian: Габдулха́й Хура́мович Аха́тов; Volga Tatar: Габделхәй Хурам улы Əхәтов; September 8, 1927 – November 25, 1986) was a Soviet Tatar Linguist, Turkologist and an organizer of science (earning his first Ph.D in 1954) and then a second doctorate of Philology in 1965, attaining professorship in 1970.

Akhatov graduated with honors from Kazan State Pedagogical Institute in 1951 and later from graduate school in 1954.

He became a member of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and was also chairman of the specialized boards for doctoral and master's theses in a number of universities across the now-defunct USSR.

Akhatov was the founder of a number of research institutions, including the modern scientific school of Tatar dialectological and the phraseological Kazan school.

Although Gabdulkhay Akhatov was a Volga Tatar, he immersed into studying of the phonetic peculiarities of Siberian Tatar language of the indigenous population of Siberia, the Siberian Tatars.

His son Aydar Akhatov (born 20 June 1957) is a Russian state, political and public figure, Economist, a second doctorate in Economics, Ecologist and Lawyer.

In his classic fundamental research work "The Dialect of the West Siberian Tatars" (1963) Akhatov wrote about Tobol-Irtysh Siberian Tatars, a western group of Siberian Tatars, who are indigenous to the Omsk and Tyumen Oblasts.

After a comprehensive integrated analysis of the phonetic system, the lexical composition and the grammatical structure, the scientist concluded that the language of the Siberian Tatars was a separate language from the beginning, and it is one of the most ancient Turkic languages.

He put the dialects of the Siberian Tatar language into two categories; one of Baraba and Tom Tatars which he named dialects of Eastern Siberian Tatars, while dialects of Tyumen and Omsk Oblasts he named dialects of Western Siberian Tatars.

By studying the phonetic peculiarities of the dialect of the local population of Siberia, Professor G.Akhatov first among the scientists discovered that certain dialects of Siberian Tatar have developed a merger of the phonemes “tch” and “ts”, which in his opinion, resulted from the influence of Kipchak language.

Akhatov, for the first time in Turkic studies, gave a theoretically consistent and systematic description of the idiomatic expressions of the Volga Tatar language.

He is the author of the widely known book - "Phraseological Dictionary of the Tatar Language" (1982).

For more than 30 years, Professor Akhatov headed the department of Tatar philology at various universities and institutes in Russia.

Akhatov also did research on the general theory of language.

He published a fundamental work on the main sign of paired words, explored and thoroughly investigated the nature of the double negative in the Turkic languages, and also discovered and formulated the law of pairing in Turkic languages.

Akhatov trained over 40 doctors and candidates of sciences, and published about 200 scientific papers.

He was a true polyglot.

He knew more than two dozen languages.

A number of his scientific works were highly praised at the XIII International Congress of Linguists (ICL) (Tokyo, 1982).

Akhatov organized and led several dialectological expeditions and was the author of fundamental scientific works, dictionaries, textbooks, manuals and programs for dialectology, phraseology, and lexicology.

He was a recipient of the Medal "For Labour Valour" and the Medal "Veteran of Labour".