In memoriam Ferenc Kiefer

He was one of the founders of the Department of Theoretical Linguistics and also its first head of department. That the foundation of the Department in the spring of 1990 was so actively supported by world-famous linguists at the time was to a great extent due to Ferenc Kiefer, its head, whose own work was a guarantee of quality for them. Ferenc Kiefer was already a well-known, prestigious linguist in Europe and the United States. He did outstanding work and made lasting contributions to almost all fields of synchronic linguistics.

He analysed various aspects of the grammars of seven (!) languages, published several books and a multitude of papers. As head of department and also as director of the Institute for Linguistics he was a gentle, friendly and enormously supportive boss. He helped younger linguists in every possible way, finding scholarships and grants, as well as commenting on manuscripts, passing on ideas and critical thoughts. He was extremely easy and pleasant to work with, he exuded humour, irony and deep trust in his colleagues, whom he naturally treated as partners.

He was a welcome guest in other departments of the Eötvös Loránd University, but the Department of Theoretical Linguistics was always closest to his heart. The students were enthusiastic about his courses, for example the course "One Hundred Years of Structuralism (1913-2013)", in which he invited the students to make even his own articles the subject of criticism, and the course "New Developments in Linguistics" he gave in 2014/2015. He took it very seriously and considered it of utmost importance for Hungarian linguists to pursue state-of-the-art linguistics as an integral part of international linguistic research and to teach linguistics in the same spirit and according to these standards at universities.

We will preserve his memory and intellectual heritage.

Zoltán Bánréti