Arvid Genetz

Arvid Oskar Gustaf Genetz (July 1, 1848 Impilahti - May 3, 1915 Helsinki) was a Finnish politician, poet and linguist. He was a member of the Senate of Finland from 1901-1905. His best known poems are "Herää Suomi”, ”Karjala” and ”Väinölän lapset”, written using the pseudonym 'Arvi Jännes'. His brother was the Finnish composer Emil Genetz.

Family

Arrvid Genetz and his wife Eva (née Arppe ) had six children: sons Juho, Arvi, Niilo and Paavo, and daughters Laura and Helvi. Saima Harmaja is Laura's daughter.

Career

Genetz graduated from the gymnasium in 1866, graduated from the University of Helsinki as a candidate doctor in 1871 and received his doctorate in 1877 . He initially worked as a Finnish and Swedish teacher at the Lyceum, and then serves as a lecturer at the University of Helsinki in the School of Finnish language and literature, in 1877 . Genetz served Professor August Ahlqvist, and he was elected to the chair held by Professor Ahlqvist after the death of Finnish language and literature professor in 1891 . Genetz rival for this position was his colleague Eemil Nestor Setälä.

A year later that the position was split in two—Finnish language and literature, and separately Finno-Ugric language research studies. The latter was the specialty of Genetz, and Setälä became the professor of Finnish language and literature. Genetz worked as a professor until 1901.

In order to investigate Finno languages, Genetz made several expeditions to the White Sea region of Karelia and Siberia.

Genetz has been considered a pioneer of modern morphology, as he described the Sami morphological variations in a modern way, using principles later employed in generative linguistics to understand both the deep and surface structure of the language, separating the description of the models. In historical linguistics, he was the first one who realized that the Sami exchanged a large number of loans words with the Baltic Finnish languages.

Poetry

• Muistoja ja toiveita ystäville jouluksi (Weilin & Göös 1889)
• Muutamia Arvi Jänneksen runoja (Kansanvalistus-seura 1892)
• Toukokuun-lauluja (KS 1897)

References

External links

• Works by Arvid Genetz at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Arvid Genetz at Internet Archive
• Arvid Genetz at 375 Humanists. 22.6.2015.