Lysychenko, Lidiia

Lysychenko, Lidiia [Лисиченко, Лідія; Lysyčenko; née Півненко; Pivnenko], b 24 March 1928 in Kamianka, Trostianets raion, Sumy okruha, d 3 January 2022 in Kharkiv. Linguist specializing in Ukrainian lexicology. On graduating summa cum laude from Kharkiv University in 1951, she commenced her scholarly career investigating the dialects of the Kupiansk and Dvorichna districts of Slobidska Ukraine. Her PhD thesis, defended in 1955 under the supervision of Fedir Medvediev, was a ground-breaking study of the dialects of this region.

In 1955–60, she served as lecturer at the Department of the Ukrainian Language of Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute, and in 1960–67 as reader in the Ukrainian language at Kharkiv University. From 1967 on, she was again professionally linked to Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute, where she directed the Department of the Ukrainian Language (1967–2003) and simultaneously headed the Faculty of Philology (1972–80). In 2003–15 she was a professor at the institute’s Department of the Ukrainian Language. In her managerial posts, she aptly recruited the personnel and had numerous pupils and followers who consider themselves members of Lysychenko’s School. She became the first chairwoman of the Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society (re-established on her own initiative in 1987), and occupied this position until 1991. From 1988 through 2015, she was the editor-in-chief of the Kharkiv-based scholarly journal Linhvistychni doslidzhennia.

Lysychenko’s main contribution to the study of the Ukrainian language was in the area of Ukrainian lexicology, which she first investigated in keeping with the structuralist methodology (her postdoctoral thesis was entitled Semantychna struktura slova v ukraïns'kii movi [Semantic Structure of the Word in the Ukrainian Language, 1978], also published as Leksykolohiia suchasnoï ukraïns'koï movy: semantychna struktura slova [Lexicology of the Contemporary Ukrainian Language: Semantic Structure of the Word, Kharkiv 1977]). Her subsequent book-size studies include Leksyko-semantychna systema ukraïns'koï movy (Lexical and Semantic Structure of the Ukrainian Language, Kharkiv 1997, 2nd ed 2006), Bahatoznachnist' u leksyko-semantychnii systemi: strukturnyi, semantychnyi, kohnityvnyi apekty (Polysemanticity in the Vocabulary’s Semantic System: Structural, Semantic and Cognitive Aspects, Kharkiv 2008), and Leksyko-semantychnyi vymir movnoï kartyny svitu (The Linguistic World View as Reflected in the Vocabulary’s Semantic Structure, Kharkiv 2009). In her later period, she gradually switched to the cognitivist approach while combining it with a close attention to the language’s poetic potential.

She also left a book of memoirs I na tim rushnykovi… (And on that Embroidered Rushnyk...), published in Kharkiv in 2012. Her memoirs cover the period from her childhood to the early 2010s and amply reflect the everyday and professional life of her generation under the Soviet regime, with its underlying worldview and the prevailing social and personal attitudes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Doroshenko, Serhii. ‘Zavzhdy u tvorchomu poshuku’ in Slovo. Dumka. Liudyna: Zbirnyk naukovykh prats' z aktual'nykh problem linhvistyky. (Do 80-richchia vid dnia narodzhennia doktora filolohichnykh nauk, profesora Lidiï Andriïvny Lysychenko) (Kharkiv 2008)
Doroshenko, Serhii and Malenko, Olena (eds.). Linhvistychna shkola doktora filolohichnyx nauk, profesora L. A. Lysychenko (Kharkiv 2013)
Bohdanova, Iryna and Lysychenko, Tetiana (eds.). Lidiia Andriïvna Lysychenko: biobibliohrafiia (Kharkiv 2018)
Shevchenko, Larysa. ‘Ukraïns'kyi movoznavets' L. A. Lysychenko: naukova osobystist' u rytmakh tradytsiї, chasu i kul'tornoï istoriï narodu’, in Linhvistychni doslidzhennia, vyp. 47 (2018)
Malenko, Olena et al (eds.). Profesor Lidiia Andriïvna Lysychenko: zhyttia pid znakom filolohiї. Spohady suchasnykiv (Kharkiv 2023)

Serhii Vakulenko

[This article was written in 2023.]