15 June 2025
What Professor Olena Pchelintseva values most about Mainz is the quiet, peaceful sky. "After living with constant air raid sirens, you come to appreciate that kind of silence." The Ukrainian-Russian linguist is spending two years at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) through a fellowship from the Philipp Schwartz Initiative – an opportunity made possible and enriched by "wonderful colleagues."
Born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Olena Pchelintseva grew up in Ukraine. She completed a degree in linguistics with a focus on Slavic studies at the University of Kyiv before going on to earn her habilitation at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. "These were formative years," she recalls, "as I worked alongside scholars whose textbooks I had studied." Later she completed her habilitation at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and now holds the chair of Ukrainian Language and General Linguistics at Cherkasy State Technological University.
Her early research focused on Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism. "In Cherkasy, we observed a gradual, almost imperceptible shift back toward the Ukrainian language in public life," she explains. "Many people in the region speak Russian, but Ukrainian is the language of their parents and grandparents – and it has been slowly returning to public spaces." The war that began in February 2022 has significantly accelerated this shift.
For Pchelintseva personally, everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. "Those early months were full of fear, sirens, empty shelves in stores, and complete darkness," she recalls. "Due to constant power outages, I often walked home through pitch-black streets. No traffic lights, no streetlamps – just total darkness. You couldn't even see your own hand." The university came to a standstill as well, with many international students returning home.
From emergency aid to academic refuge
"Shortly after the war began, I received a letter from a colleague in Mainz, Professor Björn Wiemer," she recalls. The JGU professor of Slavic linguistics drew her attention to the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Named after a Jewish scholar who fled Nazi Germany for Switzerland in the 1930s and later supported other persecuted academics, the program enables at-risk researchers to continue their work at a German university or research institution through a full fellowship.
"That application, which Professor Wiemer supported in every possible way, kept me mentally stable in the first months of the war," says Pchelintseva. "While many of my colleagues were paralyzed by fear, focusing on the project gave me a sense of direction."
In addition to the application, her first year of war was filled with volunteer work: helping displaced families find housing, cooking for them, and offering psychological support. At the same time, she developed new teaching materials for Ukrainian as a foreign language. Eventually, her fellowship was approved, and in August 2023 she moved from Cherkasy to Mainz.
Rediscovering everyday normalcy
At Mainz University, Pchelintseva joined the Institute of Slavic, Turkic, and Circum-Baltic Studies. Here she came to appreciate peace in all its forms. "The constant fear that enemy soldiers might come and harm us finally faded," says Pchelintseva. "And then there were all the things you usually take for granted – electricity, heating, internet. You learn to truly value them once they're gone."
In the peaceful environment of Mainz, she was able to resume her research. At the heart of her work are verbal nouns – nouns that are derived from verbs. "Verbal nouns combine the form of a noun with the meaning of a verb," she explains. Examples in English include "running" from "to run" and "decision" from "to decide".
Pchelintseva compares how verbal nouns differ across Slavic languages. "Even though these languages are closely related, the patterns vary significantly from east to west – both in number and frequency of use. For the Russian verb 'повторить' – 'to repeat', there is usually just one verbal noun, which is 'повторение' – 'repetition'. In Ukrainian and Bulgarian, there are often two; in Polish or Czech, there are sometimes up to four. In fact, verbal nouns occur almost twice as frequently in West Slavic languages like Polish, Czech, and Slovak as they do in East Slavic languages like Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. And I keep asking myself for an explanation."
Ukrainian as a foreign language
Olena Pchelintseva attributes the differences to more than just pronunciation or external linguistic influences. In her view, the root cause lies in the internal structure of each language. "Whether a verb lends itself to becoming a noun depends on how strongly it expresses temporal boundaries," she summarizes her hypothesis.
A feature of Slavic languages, not found in German or English, is that verbs often signal whether an action is ongoing or completed. "If a verb clearly marks a time limit, then – metaphorically speaking – it feels uncomfortable in noun form," she explains. In Russian, where such time boundaries are especially pronounced, verbal nouns are harder to form. In Polish, on the other hand, where the focus is more on process and effectiveness, verbal nouns are more diverse and more commonly used.
Pchelintseva finds the academic environment in Mainz deeply enriching. She values the exchange with scholars like Björn Wiemer and colleagues from the Department of History and from Slavic literature and cultural studies. "The appreciation for my work here is incredibly motivating." Alongside her research, Pchelintseva teaches Ukrainian language courses for students and faculty, delivers guest lectures across Europe, and continues to publish her academic journal "Language: Codification, Competence, Communication." She has also co-authored two Ukrainian textbooks for foreign learners, with a third forthcoming from the Berlin-based publisher Frank & Timme.
Art from Cherkassy
Pchelintseva also brought a powerful art exhibition from Cherkasy to Germany, launched by a group of Ukrainian art students in the early days of the war. "Under the title VOLNANOVA, which translates roughly as 'free and new', a creative movement emerged using art to protest against the war," she explains. The initiative is supported by art academies across Ukraine, including institutions in Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, and even occupied Kherson.
"It was difficult to bring the exhibition to Mainz," she says. "The journey from Ukraine now takes two full days due to the war, and my colleagues Professor Inna Yakovets and lecturer Tetiana Isaienko carried the heavy posters themselves. But the overwhelming interest from students and faculty here at Mainz showed us that art is indeed a universal language."
Olena Pchelintseva's fellowship will end in a couple of weeks. Whether she will return to Ukraine remains uncertain. "I will go wherever I am needed and where I can contribute with my knowledge." Mainz, she says, has been an open and supportive place. "I'm deeply grateful to JGU and to all the colleagues who supported me. They gave me the chance to do what I love most: exploring Slavic languages, even in difficult times."
Text: Anja Burkel