Linguist by the grace of God. Biography of Andrei Zaliznyak

Andrey Anatolievich Zaliznyak(born April 29, 1935, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian linguist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Section of Literature and Language of the Department of History and Philology (1997), Doctor of Philology (1965, defending his Ph.D. thesis). Laureate of the State Prize of Russia in 2007. He was awarded the Lomonosov Big Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2007).

Biography

Born in 1935 in the family of engineer Anatoly Andreyevich Zaliznyak and chemist Tatyana Konstantinovna Krapivina.

In 1958 he graduated from the philological faculty of Moscow State University (MGU) (Romano-Germanic department), studied at the Sorbonne under the French structuralist Andre Martinet.

He taught and teaches at the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University (mainly at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), as well as at Aix-en-Provence, Paris (Nanterre) and Geneva Universities.

Since 1987 - Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, since 1997 - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Chief Researcher of the Department of Typology and Comparative Linguistics of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Zaliznyak's wife E. V. Paducheva and daughter Anna Zaliznyak are also well-known linguists.

Contribution to science

Synchronous description of Russian morphology

The first monograph by A. A. Zaliznyak - “Russian nominal inflection” (1967) was an experience of a consistent algorithmic description of the declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals in the Russian language in its written form. The paper touches upon important theoretical problems of morphology, gives strict definitions of the concepts "word form", "grammatical meaning", "grammatical category", "grammatical category", "consensual class", "gender", "accent paradigm", etc. About grammatical categories case, number, gender and consonant class A. A. Zaliznyak wrote special articles where these phenomena are also considered from a typological point of view.

Experience was gained during the compilation of the Russian-French Dictionary, published in 1961. For the convenient use of the dictionary by foreigners, the dictionary was accompanied by a “Brief Essay on Russian Inflection”, which establishes the main schemes of declension and conjugation, including convenient indexing for each word.

The classic “Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language” (1977, 4th ed. 2003), where the exact model of inflection is indicated for 100 thousand words of the Russian language (and a classification of these models themselves) is a continuation of the ideology of the “Russian nominal inflection”. The dictionary compiled by A. A. Zaliznyak by hand became the basis for almost all computer programs for automatic morphological analysis (including information retrieval, machine translation, etc.). These ideas are also used in the Russian Wiktionary to describe the morphology of Russian nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and numerals.

The monograph of A. A. Zaliznyak and his most important works on general and Russian morphology were republished in the book: A. A. Zaliznyak. "Russian nominal inflection" with the application of selected works on the modern Russian language and general linguistics. M.: Languages of Russian culture, 2002.

Birch bark letters and Old Novgorod dialect

Since 1982, A. A. Zaliznyak has been systematically studying the language of birch bark letters, both already known and newly discovered during excavations. He is a co-author of the publication "Novgorod letters on birch bark" - volumes VIII (1986), IX (1993), X (2000), XI (2004). These volumes contain his works devoted to identifying the specific features of the Old Novgorod dialect, its differences from the supra-dialect Old Russian language, the spelling and paleography of birch bark letters, and the methods of their dating. The generalizing work of A. A. Zaliznyak in this area was the book “Old Novgorod Dialect” (1995; 2nd ed. 2004), which presents a grammatical outline of the Old Novgorod dialect and is given with a linguistic commentary (more detailed than in the publication[what?]) texts of almost all birch bark letters.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology, Chief Researcher of the Department of Typology and Comparative Linguistics of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Member of the Parisian (since 1957) and American (since 1985) linguistic societies.

Laureate of the Demidov Prize in 1997 “for research in the field of Russian and Slavic linguistics”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize in 2007 “for fundamental achievements in the study of the Russian language, decoding of Old Russian texts; for a filigree linguistic study of the primary source of Russian poetry "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", convincingly proving its authenticity", the State Prize of Russia for 2007 "for an outstanding contribution to the development of linguistics". He was awarded the Big Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2007 "for discoveries in the field of the Old Russian language of the early period and for proving the authenticity of the great monument of Russian literature" The Tale of Igor's Campaign "".

Born April 29, 1935 in Moscow. He died there on December 24, 2017. He was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

In 1958 he graduated from the Romano-Germanic Department of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, in 1956–1957. Trained at the Higher Normal School in Paris. Until 1960, he studied at the graduate school of Moscow State University, from 1960 until the end of his life he worked at the Institute of Slavic Studies.

In 1965, at the Institute of Slavic Studies, he presented his dissertation "Classification and synthesis of Russian inflectional paradigms" for the defense of the Ph.D. degree, for which he was awarded a doctoral degree.

Since 1973 he has been a professor, he has taught at Moscow State University and a number of foreign universities (Germany, France, Switzerland), in recent years he has regularly lectured at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University about excavations in Novgorod and other cities and about linguistic finds related to them.

Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1987, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1997.

Specialist in the field of general, comparative historical and Russian linguistics, researcher of the problems of Russian and Slavic morphology, lexicology, accentology and dialectology.

A. A. Zaliznyak studied the ancient contacts of the Slavic and Iranian languages, wrote a brief grammatical sketch of Sanskrit, made a significant contribution to the study of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". In the works of the 1960s, summarized in a dissertation and a monograph on Russian nominal inflection, A. A. Zaliznyak considered in detail the issues of morphological theory and morphology of the Russian language, developed and improved the ideas of the Moscow Linguistic School, introduced a new method of grammatical description - a grammatical dictionary. Since the 1970s deals mainly with the history of Russian and other Slavic languages. In 1985, he published a monograph in which for the first time a synchronous analysis of three accentuation systems (Proto-Slavic, Old Russian and modern Russian) was given, and the connections between them were revealed. A. A. Zaliznyak laid the foundation for the study of the Old Novgorod dialect based on the material of birch bark. For many years he studied the language of birch bark letters found during archaeological excavations. A. A. Zaliznyak wrote a linguistic commentary on the four volumes of the fundamental edition of the texts of letters on birch bark, prepared jointly with the archaeologist, academician V. L. Yanin.

Major Publications

Russian nominal inflection. M., 1967 ().

Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language: Inflection. M., 1977 (4th ed., Rev. and add. M., 2003).

"Measure of the righteous" XIV century. as an accent source. Munich, 1990.

Old Novgorod dialect. M., 1995 ().

"The Tale of Igor's Campaign": a linguist's point of view. M., 2004 (2nd ed., Rev. and add. M., 2007; ).

Grammatical sketch of Sanskrit // Kochergina V. A. Sanskrit-Russian dictionary. M., 1978 (4th ed.: M., 2005).

Novgorod letters on birch bark (from the excavations of 1977–1983) Commentary and index to birch bark letters: (From the excavations of 1951–1983) M., 1986 (co-author).

Novgorod letters on birch bark (from excavations in 1984–1989) M., 1993 (co-author).

Novgorod letters on birch bark (from excavations in 1990–1996) M., 2000 (co-author).

Novgorod letters on birch bark (from excavations in 1997–2000) M., 2004 (co-author).

Literature and bibliography

- (b. 1935) Russian linguist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991; corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1987). Works in the field of grammar, Slavic and Russian accentology, as well as general linguistics, the theory of composing linguistic problems, grammar ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1997), leading researcher at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; was born on April 24, 1935 in Moscow; graduated from Moscow State University in 1958; main areas of scientific activity: Russian and Slavic linguistics, ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

- (b. 1935), linguist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1997). Proceedings in the field of grammar, Slavic and Russian accentology, Slavic Russian paleography, general linguistics, the theory of formulating linguistic problems, Sanskrit grammar, etc.; explored… … encyclopedic Dictionary

Andrey Anatolievich Zaliznyak- Today Academician Andrei Zalinyak was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation. Presenting the awards for 2007, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that the linguist Andrei Zaliznyak made a huge contribution to domestic and world linguistics. ... ... Encyclopedia of newsmakers

Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak A. A. Zaliznyak during a lecture on birch bark letters from excavations in 2008 Date of birth: April 29, 1935 Place of birth: Moscow Citizenship ... Wikipedia

- ... Wikipedia

Andrei Anatolyevich (born 1935), linguist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1997). Works in the field of grammar, Slavic and Russian accentology, Slavic-Russian paleography, as well as general linguistics, the theory of formulating linguistic problems, Sanskrit grammar ... ... Russian history

Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak A. A. Zaliznyak during a lecture on birch bark letters from excavations in 2008 Date of birth: April 29, 1935 Place of birth: Moscow Citizenship ... Wikipedia

Books

Grammatical dictionary of the Russian language. Inflection. About 110,000 words, Andrey Zaliznyak. The "Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language" reflects (with the help of a special system of symbols) modern inflection, i.e. declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, ...
GRAMMAR DICTIONARY OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE, Zaliznyak, Andrey Anatolievich. The dictionary reflects modern inflection, i.e. the declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verb conjugation. The dictionary contains about 100,000 words arranged ...

We thank Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak and the Moomin school
for providing the transcript of the lecture.

I decided that today it's worth telling you briefly about what, in my opinion, is missing in school curricula - about the history of the Russian language.

The course of the history of the Russian language is taught in full at universities, sometimes for a year, sometimes for two years, so you yourself understand what it is in full. To try, however, to tell you something significant about all this in one lesson is a somewhat daring task. But I still think that this is not meaningless, although, of course, it will be necessary to mention various aspects of the matter from such a vast subject very superficially. I hope that in some way this will expand your understanding of how the language was formed, which we all know. I will have to repeat something from what I have already said a little in this audience on a different occasion, since these are related things, but you will bear with me. In the same way, I will have, among other things, to tell some well-known things. A significant part of those present should already know them, but again - be restrained, because for integrity we will sometimes need them. So, the conversation will focus on the main topics that arise in the study of the history of the Russian language.

The first small preliminary digression is to once again (because I have already talked to you about this) to responsibly declare the numerous inventions about the infinite antiquity of the Russian language to be nonsense. The fact that the Russian language existed three thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, seven thousand years ago, seventy thousand years ago - you can find similar statements in various writings. About those who are fond of this kind of fiction, it was wonderfully said that these are theories of how a person came from a Russian.

In fact, the history of any language with a certain name: French, Russian, Latin, Chinese - is the history of the period of time when this name exists. Moreover, we cannot draw any clear boundary that separates the language from the previous stage of its existence. Generational change with small changes from one generation to another occurs continuously throughout the history of mankind in every language, and, of course, our parents and our grandfathers speak the same language from our point of view as we do. We digress from trifles and generally believe that two or four hundred years ago we spoke the same language. And then there are some doubts.

Can you say that our ancestors, who lived a thousand years ago, spoke the same language as we do? Or is it still not the same? Note that no matter how you decide this question, these people also had their own ancestors who lived a thousand, two, three thousand years earlier. And each time from generation to generation, the change in language was insignificant. From what moment can we say that this is already the Russian language, and not its distant ancestor, which - and this is very significant - is the ancestor not only of our Russian language, but also of a number of related languages?

We all know that Ukrainian and Belarusian are closely related to the Russian language. The common ancestor of these three languages existed - by the standards of history - not so long ago: only about a thousand years ago. If you take not a thousand, but three thousand years, five thousand years, and so on deep into antiquity, it turns out that the people to whom we go back purely biologically are the ancestors not only of today's Russians, but also of a number of other peoples. Thus, it is clear that the history of the Russian language proper cannot be extended indefinitely into the depths of time. Somewhere we have to set some conditional start point.

In reality, such a point is almost always the moment when the current name of the language is fixed for the first time. That is, temporary s Here the boundaries turn out to be connected not with the essence of the language itself as a means of communication, but with the fact that the people who speak it call themselves some kind of term. And in this sense, different languages have very different depths of history. For example, the Armenian language is called by the same name hai, as it is now, for several thousand years. Some other languages have relatively recent history in this sense. For the Russian language, this is a period of about a few more than a thousand years, since the first mention of the word Rus belong to the end of the first millennium AD.

I will not go into the complex history of where the word itself came from. There are several theories about this. The most common and most likely of them is the Scandinavian theory, which consists in the fact that the word itself Rus not Slavic in origin, but Old Norse. There are, I repeat, competing hypotheses, but in this case we are not talking about this, it is important that this name itself begins to be mentioned in the 9th-10th centuries. and initially clearly applies not yet to our ethnic ancestors, but to the Scandinavians. In any case, in the Greek tradition the word grew up denotes the Normans, and it begins to denote our Slavic ancestors only from about the 10th-11th centuries, passing to them from the name of those Varangian squads that came to Russia and from which the princes of Ancient Russia came.

Starting around the 11th century. this name extends to the Slavic-speaking population of the territory around Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereslavl South. During a certain period of the history of Eastern Slavs, the term Rus denoted a relatively small area, roughly corresponding to the current north-eastern Ukraine. So, for a long time Novgorodians did not consider themselves Russian at all, did not consider that the word Rus belongs to their territory. In Novgorod birch bark letters, as well as in chronicles, for some time there are stories that such and such a bishop in such and such a year went to Russia from Novgorod, that is, he went south, to Kyiv or Chernigov.

This is easy to trace through the annals. Such word usage is normal for the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. and only in the XIV century. we see for the first time that the Novgorodians, fighting with some of their external enemies, call themselves Russians in the annals. Further, this name expands, and from about the 14th century. it already corresponds to the entire East Slavic territory. And although at this time in this territory there are already the beginnings of three different future languages, they are all equally called Russian.

In a remarkable way, this term narrowed again later: now we call Russian only a part of the East Slavic population, namely, that which can be called otherwise Great Russian. And two other languages in this territory: Belarusian and Ukrainian - have already formed as independent languages, and the word Russian broadly, they are no longer generally applied to them. (True, about two hundred years ago, such word usage was normal that all this is a Russian population, which has a Great Russian part, a Little Russian [now Ukrainian] part, and a Belarusian part.) This is how the expansion first occurred, and then the narrowing of the term “Russian ".

Most of you have an idea about the genealogical tree of the Russian language to one degree or another, but nevertheless I will briefly repeat this information. Now this genealogical tree in a simplified form should be derived from some reconstructed ancient language, called Nostratic, to which the languages of a very significant part of the inhabitants of the globe go back. It has existed for a very long time; estimates vary, but apparently on the order of twenty-five thousand years ago.

One of its branches is the Indo-European branch, which includes most of the languages \u200b\u200bof Europe and India, hence the name itself Indo-European languages. In Europe, they are an absolute majority, in India - a significant part, but also, in general, the majority. In the east, these are the Indian and Iranian groups; in Europe - Latin with the Romance languages that arose from it: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian; and the Greek branch, which in antiquity is represented by the ancient Greek language, and now by modern Greek. Further, the Germanic branch: German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, English; and the Balto-Slavic branch, which combines the Baltic languages and Slavic. Baltic is Latvian, Lithuanian and now extinct Old Prussian. Slavic, well known to you, is traditionally divided into three groups: South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic languages.

Now there are some adjustments to this traditional division of the Slavic languages, but the traditional scheme is just that. The South Slavic languages are Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian; Western - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian. And the East Slavic languages, originally united according to the traditional scheme, are Russian (otherwise Great Russian), Ukrainian and Belarusian.

After this general introduction, let us touch on some of the more technical aspects of the history of language. First of all, it should be understood that language is an unusually complex mechanism that includes a number of aspects, each of which may have some specificity and some dynamics and instability. This is primarily a variety of styles of the same language. Within any language there is what can be called high style or good literary language, and there is the opposite pole - vernacular, vulgar speech. Between them there are various kinds of intermediate layers such as colloquial, everyday language. All this is fully observed in the Russian language, including at the present moment, as well as at any moment in history.

This is one side of the matter. The other side of the matter is that any language is heterogeneous in the dialectal sense, in any language there is a wide variety of local dialects, and sometimes even dialects that differ quite a lot from each other. From this point of view, languages can be different, that is, more or less monolithic. There are languages in which the differences are so great that mutual understanding is not at all easy. An example is modern Italy, where the dialect of the extreme south and the dialect of the north, say Venice, differ so significantly that understanding between them, although possible, may well be difficult. And what they have in common is precisely the literary form of the language. The situation is the same in many other languages of the world. It is especially strong in the Chinese language, where the northern and southern dialects in their oral incarnation actually do not provide the possibility of direct mutual understanding.

In some other languages, the situation is more favorable. So, in the Russian language, the differences in dialects are small, the native speaker of the literary language has no special problems in understanding even when communicating with the most distant dialects. Of course, we will not understand some words, in some cases there may be individual misunderstandings, but on the whole, this distance is still relatively small.

But, I repeat, differences between dialects and dialects exist in any language. Thus, several different linguistic mechanisms coexist, interacting with each other and generating various complex effects in the way the central literary form of the language is formed. The literary language, as a rule, to some extent absorbs elements of different dialects. It rarely happens that the literary language exactly coincides with the dialect of, say, the capital of the state, as it sometimes seems at first glance. Similarly, for the Russian language, the situation is such that although our literary language is very close to the dialects of the Moscow region, it still does not completely coincide with them. It absorbed a number of elements more distant to the north, south, east and west.

Further. The complexity of the mechanisms of functioning of any language is determined by the fact that no language exists in complete isolation from its neighbors. Even in such extreme cases as, for example, Iceland, an island country where, it would seem, there are no contacts with its neighbors, there are still some connections. Someone travels from Iceland to the outside world, someone comes to Iceland and brings with them some elements of foreign speech. So even the Icelandic language, although it is more protected from foreign influences than any other, nevertheless, to some extent, perceived these influences.

As for the languages that closely communicate with each other in neighboring territories, then mutual influence and mutual penetration can be very active. It is especially active where there is a two-part, three-part or multi-part population in the same territory. But even if state and ethnic boundaries are relatively clearly defined, contacts are still quite intense. This is expressed, first of all, in the penetration into any of the languages of a certain number of foreign words. And a deeper influence consists in the penetration of some elements of the grammatical structure of neighboring languages.

In particular, the Russian language, which is not separated from its immediate neighbors by any seas, has always been in intensive contact with them both in the direction of the west and in the direction of the east, partly in the direction of the south and even to some extent in the direction of the north, although the population there is no longer so dense. . So in modern Russian there are traces of influences from almost all four corners of the world.

In general, the degree of foreign influences at different moments in the life of a language community or a given state can be very different. It is clear that these influences become especially intense during times, for example, of foreign occupation or with a massive introduction of a new population into some part of the old territory, etc. And in calm periods of weak communication, they will be less intense. In addition, it often happens that more or less foreign influence can be strongly promoted or, on the contrary, opposed by purely internal events in the history of a given community. It is quite obvious that in the last twenty years or so the Russian language has been in a state of unusually active absorption of foreign elements, primarily English, with an intensity many times greater than what it was only half a century ago. This is happening in connection with major social changes, the opening of international contacts on a scale that was unthinkable two or three decades ago. There is an introduction of new technology, new elements of a foreign civilization, etc. We all feel this ourselves.

There have been times like this in the past. There was, say, in the history of the Russian language a period of intensive penetration of elements of the French language, in an earlier era - an intensive penetration of elements of German, and even earlier - an intensive penetration of elements of Polish.

I will give some illustrations of how the modern Russian language was fueled in various ways with words from other neighboring languages. Of course, influences concern not only words, but it is more difficult to talk about it, and words are just a very visual thing.

This story can be started from any point - actually from the Russian language or, delving further into the past, from the Proto-Slavic language. It is possible, generally speaking, to consider even borrowings from the Proto-Indo-European time, but this will be too far for us. If we start with the Proto-Slavic, then it is essential to point out that it contains a significant layer of Germanic borrowings, which were later preserved not only in Russian, but also in all Slavic languages. They took root and became part of the actual Slavic lexicon.

Now, about some of them, it’s even hard for us to believe that these are not native Russian words; but historical linguistics inexorably shows that many words have just such an origin. For example, the word prince, surprisingly, is exactly the same word as the German Konig or English king. Its ancient form kuningaz, which was borrowed, eventually gave the Russian word prince. Or let's say the word bread is the same word as English loaf"bun". This borrowing, most likely, should be attributed to the period of wide expansion of the Goths, when these active Germanic tribes owned vast territories of almost all of modern Ukraine, a significant part of the Balkans, Italy, Spain, part of France, etc. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that in all the languages of these countries there are some traces of the ancient Gothic rule.

It is worth mentioning Crimea specifically, since the Goths lived in Crimea until the 16th century. Dutch diplomat of the 16th century Busback was surprised to find that he understood some of the words in the speech of a Crimean resident speaking an unknown language. It turned out to be the Crimean-Gothic language, the latest remnant of the Gothic language, which had died out in all other places.

Germanic borrowings in Slavic are also, for example, the word regiment or verb buy; in modern German the corresponding Old Germanic words gave Volk"people" and kaufen"buy'.

Here it must be pointed out that if the word is borrowed from German, then the German word in itself about m Germanic was not necessarily native. Often it was itself borrowed from somewhere else. So, the German word that gave the German kaufen, is a borrowing from Latin. And whether the corresponding word is originally in Latin is still a debatable question. After all, it often turns out that Latin words are borrowed from Greek, and Greek words are borrowed from Egyptian.

I'll take a word from another row: emerald. Its initial origins are established not quite reliably. Most likely, the original source was some kind of Semitic language, from where the word was borrowed into Sanskrit. During the campaigns of Alexander the Great, it was borrowed from Sanskrit into Greek, from Greek - into Arabic, from Arabic - into Persian, from Persian - into Turkish, and the Russian word comes from its Turkish form emerald. So here linguistics can establish six or seven stages of the “journey” of this word, which resulted in our Russian word emerald.

Some of the foreign borrowings do not cause us any surprise. For example, we call a certain fruit kiwi. It is clear that the word is not Russian. Until relatively recently, no one suspected that such a thing existed. Some 20-30 years ago this word did not exist, because the subject did not exist. That is, when the object itself comes from some distant country, it is quite obvious that it comes along with its name. And then it is quite natural that we call it as it was called there. There are a huge number of such examples in the Russian language, many hundreds. Perhaps even thousands.

But, of course, examples like bread, or regiment, or prince where everything seems to be our own. Let's say words letter is also an Old German loanword. It's the same word as the name of the tree beech. Initially, there were wooden beech plates on which something was carved, and, accordingly, the sign itself carved on them bore the same name. And in Russian there are both words: and beech, and letter Both are borrowed from Germanic.

Another example: word a donkey; but it can still be said about him that this animal is still not found at every turn in Russian lands, that is, it can be classified as exotic animals. But in some other cases it will not work. So, Germanic borrowings are also the words glass, boiler, painter, hut and many others.

I will not list borrowings from Greek, they have been throughout the existence of the Russian language. The most ancient of them concern rather simple words, for example ship or sail. Sail is the same word as Greek pharos, - in the Slavic version. There are a lot of Greek borrowings among the words of the high style. Some of them are borrowed directly (say, Eucharist from the church lexicon), part - by tracing, that is, the transfer of the original word by Slavic means ( blessing, piety etc. - all these are calques, exact equivalents of Greek compound words with their constituent parts).

Throughout a long history, starting from the Proto-Slavic time and further practically to the present day, there has been a strong influence of Eastern languages on Russian. In this sense, the Eurasian position of the Russian language, which, on the one hand, has contacts in the direction of the West, on the other hand, in the direction of the East, is very clearly reflected in the language. Sometimes Eastern borrowings are roughly called Tatar, but this is very conditional. In a broad sense, they are Turkic, since there are many Turkic languages \u200b\u200bthat have been in contact with Russian. This is Turkish, and Tatar, and Chuvash, and Bashkir, and Chagatai - the ancient literary language of Central Asia, and the Kipchak language of the Polovtsy, with whom our ancestors have been in contact since antiquity, and the language of the Pechenegs. So it is often not possible to establish from which particular Turkic language this or that word is borrowed, since these languages are closely related to each other. It is important that this fund of such words in the Russian language is very large.

It is clear that many of these words denote typical Eastern concepts. But there are many words of a more general meaning; so, of Turkic origin, for example, words such as shoe, boar, cap,brick, product, lumber room, Cossack, cauldron, mound.

Often a word is borrowed in a different way than it has in the source language. For example, the word mess, which now stands for a mess, actually does not mean it at all in Turkish: there it is a designation for a certain type of fried meat.

Very often, Turkish or Tatar, like German, turn out to be transmitters for other Eastern languages, in particular, for such a huge source of vocabulary for the entire East as Arabic; another such primary source is Persian, less often Chinese.

Such is, for example, the word watermelon which came to us from Persian through Turkic media.

Note that a linguist can recognize such words as not actually Slavic, even without knowing their origin. Yes, the word watermelon has a structure that is abnormal for Slavic languages: the root of the word consists of two syllables, and with an unusual set of vowels.

Using this word as an example, one can even show how linguists can generally establish that a word came, say, from Turkish into Russian, and not from Russian into Turkish.

This is a typical situation that is useful to understand. The principle here is always the same: if a word is native, then it breaks up into meaningful parts within the framework of a given language and has related words in it. For example, in modern French there is a word snacks It is not, of course, an active word in the French language, but it exists nonetheless. And one could say here too: “Perhaps our word snacks borrowed from French? Why not, if in French and in Russian they say the same: snacks?»

The answer is very simple: snacks- a Russian word, not a French one, because in Russian it is perfectly divided into meaningful parts: prefix per, root cous, suffix to, the ending and. Each of them is meaningful and appropriate. For the root cous you can find other words for the prefix per there are many other examples, there are a huge number of words with the suffix to. And in French, this word falls out of all the norms of the French language. So French words are not built, there is nothing similar.

Here is the main criterion: within the framework of one language, the word is natural, while in other languages it betrays its heterogeneity by a number of signs and there are no words related to it.

The same with the word watermelon. In Persian it is watermelon, where char it's 'donkey', and buza- "cucumber'. Together it turns out" donkey cucumber', and, by the way, it means there not a watermelon, but a melon.

Among the words of Eastern origin, there are also many that may surprise us. We are not surprised that the word emerald foreign: the emerald is really not very common in Russian life. And here is the word fog at first glance it gives the impression of a Russian. Nevertheless, it was born in the Persian language, and there its sound composition has its own foundations. From Persian it passed into Turkish, and from Turkish into Russian. Similar origins are, for example, bazaar, barn, attic.

Sometimes words are misleading. Linguistically interesting in this sense is the word flaw. It denotes a certain defect, shortcoming, and sounds very Russian: something was removed from some object or from some norm, and thus it turned out to be an object with a flaw. It turns out, however, that this is not a Russian word at all, but a borrowing from Persian, either directly or through Turkish.

In Persian, this is a word with a slightly different order of phonemes: ziyan; it means “lack, vice” and is quite derivable from the Iranian lexicon. And flaw is the form that ziyan adopted in Russian, that is, the word has undergone some change, giving it meaning. Indeed, ziyan says nothing to the Russian ear, but flaw this is already almost clear, especially since the meaning is already ready - this is a “flaw”. This is what is called folk etymology: the people slightly correct the foreign word in the direction of greater clarity.

It's great that the word ziyan in a somewhat less explicit form is found in Russian in another word very well known to us - a monkey. A monkey is Arabic-Persian Abuziyan. Word ziyan has a second meaning - "sin, vicious action'. And abu is the ‘father’. So the monkey is the ‘father of sin’, for obvious reasons.

Western languages also contribute to the Russian vocabulary.

First in order is the closest language of the Western world to us - Polish. This is a related language, but it absorbed the words of Western languages much more actively than Russian, firstly, because of its proximity to the Germanic and Romance world, and secondly, due to Catholicism. So the Polish vocabulary is saturated with Western elements incomparably more strongly than the Russian one. But many of them switched to Russian. This happened in the 16th-17th centuries, in the era of active Polish influence. A mass of new words then entered the Russian language; in some cases the Polish form is directly visible, in others it is established only by linguistic analysis. In most cases, however, these are not actually Polish words, but words that in turn came from German, and into German - usually from Latin. Or they came to Polish from French, but got into the Russian language already in the Polish form.

This series includes, for example, the words knight, mail, school, sword- all of them have a Polish form in Russian. Let's say in a word school there would be no initial shk, would cleavage, if it were borrowed directly from Western languages. This is the German transition effect that gives w in Polish, and from Polish it is w goes into Russian.

There are a number of Swedish loanwords, for example herring, herring. One of the wonderful Swedish loanwords is the word Finns. Because, as you may know, the Finns not only do not call themselves Finns, but, strictly speaking, a normal, not very trained Finn cannot even pronounce this word, because there is no phoneme in the Finnish language f. Finns call themselves suomi; a Finns- this is the name that the Swedes called them. phoneme in swedish f is, and it occurs frequently. In Swedish, this is a meaningful word, with the meaning "hunters'," seekers' - from the Swedish verb finna"to find' (= English. find). This word has entered not only the Russian language, but all the languages of the world, except Finnish. So the country is called by the Swedish name - this is such a particularly refined case of foreign borrowing.

The next cultural and lexical onslaught on the Russian language was made by the German language, mainly in the 18th, partly in the 19th century. True, in Peter's time - along with the Dutch. In particular, most of the maritime terms are borrowed from the Dutch language - in accordance with the hobbies of Peter I and with his direct ties with Holland, where, as you know, he even worked as a carpenter. The words cruiser, skipper, flag- Dutch. There are dozens of such words.

There are even more German words, as the German influence was wider and longer lasting. And again, some of them are easily identified as German, for example the hairdresser. But there are also words of German origin that you would never recognize without special analysis. About the word plane it definitely does not occur to me that this is not a Russian word: it seems that it is so named because it has something cut down or cut down. In fact, they do something else, however, we perceive it as a very good name. It's actually a German word. Rauhbank- "cleaning board".

Another tricky word baking sheet on which they are fried. A completely Russian type of word. But it's German Bratpfanne- "frying pan". Simplifying and Russifying, Bratpfanne gave not just a Russian, but a folk Russian word baking sheet. There is also an option baking sheet- also not random and even older.

Painter, dance, patch, soldier, pharmacy and many others - all these words came directly from the German language, but now they have taken root very well.

Next, 19th century gave an extensive layer of French borrowings. Many of them have taken root quite well, let's say bottle, magazine, nightmare, courier, scam.

Continuing this list, one could also cite Portuguese, Spanish, old English borrowings. And there is nothing to say about new English - you yourself, perhaps, can name them more than linguists.

Thus, you see how strongly neighboring language arrays influence the vocabulary of a language. In particular, for the Russian language, this story includes communication with at least two dozen languages. And if we count isolated cases, then with long-distance connections there will be dozens more.

Now let's move on to the next topic: let's talk about stylistic differences within the Russian language at different points in its history. It turns out that in this respect the Russian language has been in a difficult situation since ancient times.

For all languages with a certain cultural tradition, it is normal that there is a language of high style, perceived as more elevated, more refined, literary. And this situation is not always the same. So, there are languages where one of the variants, dialects, dialects that exist within the same language, which for some reason has received more prestige, is used as a high style. In Italy, for a long time, the dialect of Florence was considered the most prestigious and, accordingly, the Tuscan dialect since the time of Dante was taken as the most refined, highly literary form of speech on the Apennine Peninsula.

And in some languages, a situation arises when not their own language, but some foreign one is used as a high-style language. Sometimes it may not even be related to its own, then this is pure bilingualism. But more often there are examples of this kind using another language, closely related to the one spoken by the people. In the Romanesque world throughout the Middle Ages, Latin was used as a high language, despite the fact that the own languages of these Romance peoples come from Latin and Latin is close to them to some extent. Not enough to understand, but, in any case, they have a lot of common words.

Sanskrit played a similar role in India. It was used along with those languages that had already gone very far from the Sanskrit state and were used in everyday communication. In essence, there is something similar in the current Arab world, where there is the classical Arabic language of the Koran, which is already very different from the living languages of Morocco, Egypt, Iraq. The high language, which is considered the only one suitable for a certain type of texts - religious, highly solemn - remains classical Arabic for the Arab world. And for everyday communication there is the language of the street.

A similar situation was in the history of the Russian language. I gave foreign examples to show that this is not a unique case, although, of course, the situation is far from being the same in all languages. In the history of the Russian language from the time when we are dealing with the word Russian, two Slavic languages exist and are used: Russian proper and Church Slavonic.

Church Slavonic is, in essence, the Old Bulgarian language, closely related, but still not identical to Russian. It was the language of the church and of any text requiring stylistic loftiness. This left an imprint on the further development of the Russian language throughout its history and continues to influence to some extent to this day. The Russian language turned out to be, as it were, linguistically bifurcated into the natural that arose in the everyday, colloquial language, and that which corresponded to Russian forms and syntactic turns in the Church Slavonic language.

Of course, you know the most striking difference: this is the so-called full agreement and disagreement. Fullness is side, watchman, Coast, head With -oro-, -here-, -olo-, and disagreement - country, guardian, shore, chapter. The Russian form has two vowels here, and the Church Slavonic one.

Now we do not perceive the word at all country as something alien to us. This is a normal part of our natural vocabulary with you. And it's natural for us to say chapter of the book, and it does not occur to me that this is something imposed. We don't feel like talking book head, just like we won't try to name a country side.

The Russian language throughout its history has absorbed a huge number of Church Slavonic words, which occasionally mean the same thing as in Russian, but almost never one hundred percent. Sometimes it's just not the same at all; So, head and chapter- these are completely different meanings, they could well be called words that have nothing in common with each other. In other cases, it's just a stylistic nuance, but it is clearly felt. Let's say enemy and enemy is, of course, more or less the same in meaning, but in the word enemy there is a connotation of nationality, folklore, poetry, which in the word enemy missing.

The modern Russian language has used these Church Slavonic units as separate words or separate variants of the word, and thus has already mastered them.

The same thing happened in the history of the Russian language with syntactic constructions. And here it must be said that, since for most of the history of the Russian language it was Church Slavonic that was literary and high, our literary syntax is much more Church Slavonic than Russian.

This is where I really express my disappointment. Because now, in many respects, that authentic folk Russian syntax, which is best seen on birch bark letters, has been lost. In many respects, they are admired precisely by the fact that there are absolutely no Church Slavonic turns in them - this is pure colloquial Russian. Unlike our literary language. The Russian literary language at every step uses syntactic devices that are not found in the living language, but come from Church Slavonic.

First of all, almost all participles: doing, doing, who saw, seen etc. The only exception is the short forms of the passive participles of the past tense. Made is the Russian form drunk is the Russian form. And here is the full form: made- already Church Slavonic. And all the sacraments on -yushchy, -ing Church Slavonic, which is already evident from the fact that there are suffixes -usch-, -yusch-. I did not say this, but you probably know yourself about the ratio of Church Slavonic sch and Russian h. Night, power- Church Slavonic night, be able- Russian. For -yushchy, -ing, -ing Russian correspondences, therefore, would be - uchy, -yuchy, -yachiy. They are in Russian, but in Russian they are no longer participles, but simply adjectives: ebullient, dense, standing, sedentary, recumbent. Their meaning is close to participles, but still not the same with them. And the real participles, which can be used in syntax precisely as a verb form (and which we really learned to use as a convenient syntactic tool, because they help us, for example, save ourselves from unnecessary words which the), represent Church Slavonicism.

Less well known is another phenomenon of this kind. In everyday conversation, we often deviate from how we should write if we handed over our literary essay to the editor. And you wouldn't get approval if in your school essay you started a sentence like this: Do you know what I saw yesterday?. Meanwhile, the initial a - this is a completely normal form of colloquial Russian speech: And here's what I'll tell you. And after that, there was this and that. In live speech a almost most sentences begin. And this is exactly what we observe in birch bark letters. Word a at the beginning of a phrase means something like this: "Here's what I'm going to tell you now." But in the norms of the Church Slavonic language this word was absent. The Church Slavonic norm not only did not use it, but also forbade it. That is, it prohibited, of course, not in the sense of a state edict, but in the sense of editorial pressure, which is still in effect. Editor you this a cross out now.

Excuse me, this is outdated now, there are almost no editors now. But in the recent past, editors were an essential part of any publishing business. It is now that a mass of books comes out with monstrous misprints and flaws of all kinds, because they were not edited at all; a new era has come with an inattentive attitude to the quality of the text. But even a relatively recent era required the actual observance of the Church Slavonic norm, although the editor, of course, did not know this. Russian literature also observes this norm, despite the fact that the same authors in everyday speech, referring to their own children or wife, spoke, of course, in normal Russian, almost every sentence starting with a.

Such details show that the duality of the Russian language, which has two sources: Russian and Church Slavonic, is expressed not only in the choice of words and in their forms, but also in syntax. And Russian literary syntax is thus noticeably different from Russian colloquial syntax.

Not without reason, about 25 years ago, a new direction in the study of the Russian language arose - the study of Russian colloquial speech. They began to write their own grammars for it, they began to describe it as if it were a separate independent language, with respect for every element of what is really heard. The very possibility and the very need to approach this in this way is largely a consequence of this ancient situation that developed in the tenth century, more than a thousand years ago, when a related, but different language, Church Slavonic, came to Russia as a literary and high language.

I'll move on to the next aspect.

This is that aspect of the history of the Russian language that is related to dialects and dialects, to dialect division and interaction. I outlined the traditional scheme in the most general form above. It consists in the fact that around the tenth century. there was a single Old Russian language, also known as East Slavic, from which, over time, by branching, developing some differences, three modern East Slavic languages \u200b\u200bare originated: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. And in each of these three languages, according to the traditional scheme, there are even thinner branches. The Russian language has, say, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Novgorod, Kursk dialects, Siberian dialects, etc. In Ukraine, a number of dialects can also be distinguished; the same in Belarus. And inside, for example, a block of Vologda dialects, still small groups of some districts or even sometimes individual villages stand out. Here is a tree that branches from a powerful trunk to the smallest branches at the end.

This is a simple traditional scheme. But in it, as I have already warned you, you will have to make some adjustments. To a large extent, these adjustments arose after the discovery of birch bark letters.

Birch-bark letters, which in their vast majority come from Novgorod, showed that in Novgorod and the surrounding lands there was a dialect that was more different from the rest than was imagined before the discovery of birch-bark letters. In it, even some grammatical forms were not the same as in the classical Old Russian language known to us from traditional literature. And, of course, there were some of their own words.

At the same time, an amazing, unexpected and unpredictable event from the point of view of the representations that existed before the discovery of birch bark letters was as follows: it turned out that these features of the Novgorod dialect, which distinguished it from other dialects of Ancient Russia, were most clearly expressed not at a later time, when, it would seem, they could already gradually develop, but in the most ancient period. In the XI-XII centuries. these specific features are presented very consistently and clearly; and in the XIII, XIV, XV centuries. they weaken somewhat and partially give way to more common features for ancient Russian monuments.

More precisely, the statistics simply change. So, in the Old Novgorod dialect, the nominative case of the masculine singular had the ending -e: livestock- this is the Novgorod form, in contrast to the traditional form, which was considered common Russian, where the same word had a different ending: in antiquity -ъ, and now zero. The difference between the common Old Russian livestock and Novgorod livestock found from ancient times. And the situation looks like this: in the letters of the XI-XII centuries. the nominative singular masculine form in about 97% of cases has an ending -e. And the remaining 3% are easily explained by some extraneous reasons, for example, the fact that the phrase is church. From this we can conclude that in the ancient period the end -e was practically the only grammatical arrangement for the nominative singular. And in letters of the XV century. the picture is already significantly different: approximately 50% livestock and 50% livestock.

Thus, we see that the features of the Old Novgorod dialect partially lose their brightness with the passage of time. What does this mean and why was it such news and surprise for linguists?

This means that, along with the traditional scheme, which looks like a branching tree, the opposite phenomenon must also be recognized in the history of languages. The phenomenon that something originally united is divided into several parts is called divergences, that is, splitting, divergence. If, however, the opposite occurs, that is, something originally different becomes more similar, then this convergence- convergence.

Little was known about convergence, and its very existence in the history of dialects and dialects of the Old Russian language was practically not discussed in any way and did not attract attention. Therefore, the evidence of birch bark letters turned out to be so unexpected. If in the ancient Novgorod birch bark letters of the XI-XII centuries. type endings livestock make up 100%, and in the 15th century - only 50%, and in the remaining 50% there is a central (it can be conditionally designated as Moscow) ending livestock- this means that there is a convergence of dialects. Partial rapprochement, the Novgorod dialect still does not completely lose its features, but already expresses them inconsistently, in contrast to antiquity, when it was consistent. We see a typical example of convergence, that is, the convergence of what was originally different.

And this forces us to thoroughly reconsider the traditional scheme of how the dialect relations of Ancient Russia were arranged. We have to admit that in the X-XI centuries, that is, in the first centuries of written history, on the territory of the Eastern Slavs, the division was not at all the same as one might imagine on the basis of today's division of languages: Great Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. It ran very differently, separating the northwest from everything else.

The northwest was the territory of Novgorod and Pskov, and the rest, which can be called the central, or central-eastern, or central-east-south, simultaneously included the territory of the future Ukraine, a significant part of the territory of the future Great Russia and the territory of Belarus. Nothing to do with the modern division of this territory into three languages. And it was a really profound difference. There was an ancient Novgorod dialect in the northwestern part and some more familiar classical form of the Old Russian language, which equally united Kyiv, Suzdal, Rostov, the future Moscow and the territory of Belarus. Relatively speaking, the zone livestock to the northwest and the zone livestock in the rest of the territory.

Scott and livestock is one of the very significant differences. There was another very important difference, which I will not talk about now, because it would take a very long time. But it is just as solid, and the territorial division here was exactly the same.

It may seem that the northwestern part was small, while the central and southern parts were very large. But if we take into account that at that time the Novgorodians had already colonized a huge zone of the north, then in fact the Novgorod territory turns out to be even larger than the central and southern ones. It includes the current Arkhangelsk region, Vyatka, the northern Urals, the entire Kola Peninsula.

And what will happen if we look beyond the Eastern Slavs, look at the West Slavic territory (Poles, Czechs) and the South Slavic territory (Serbs, Bulgarians)? And we will try to somehow continue the revealed line of separation in these zones. Then it will turn out that the northwestern territory is opposed not only to Kyiv and Moscow, but also to the rest of the Slavs. In all other Slavs, the model is presented livestock, and only in Novgorod - livestock.

Thus, it is revealed that the northwestern group of Eastern Slavs is a branch that should be considered separate already at the level of Proto-Slavism. That is, Eastern Slavism developed from two initially different branches of the ancient Slavs: a branch similar to its western and southern relatives, and a branch that is different from its relatives - Old Novgorod.

Similar to the South and West Slavic zones - this is primarily the Kyiv and Rostov-Suzdal land; and it is essential that, at the same time, we do not see any essential differences between them for the ancient period. And the ancient Novgorod-Pskov zone is opposed to all other zones.

Thus, the current Ukraine and Belarus are the heirs of the central-east-south zone of Eastern Slavism, which is more linguistically similar to Western and Southern Slavism. And the Great Russian territory turned out to consist of two parts, approximately equal in importance: northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) and central-eastern (Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, Moscow, Ryazan).

As we now know, these were the two main components of the future Russian language in dialect terms. At the same time, it is not easy to say which of these two parts took part in the creation of a single literary language to a greater extent. If you count by signs, then the score is about 50 to 50.

As already mentioned, the central and southern dialects of the Old Russian language differed from Novgorod in a number of important features, but did not differ from each other in any significant way. The new borders between the future Great Russia and the future Ukraine, together with Belarus, largely coincide with the political borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the XIV-XV centuries, when the expansion of Lithuania led to the fact that the future Ukraine and Belarus were under the rule of Lithuania. If you map the borders of the possessions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 15th century, it will be approximately the same border that now separates the Russian Federation from Ukraine and Belarus. But the fifteenth century - this is a later time in relation to our ancient articulation.

Let us consider more specifically a number of dialectal phenomena and their correspondence in the modern literary Russian language.

Words with root type structure whole, with initial ce-(from former cѣ-), are typical for the central-eastern region. In the northwest, these roots had an initial ke-. Behind this is a very important phonetic phenomenon, which can be talked about at length; but here I must confine myself to a simple statement of the fact. Another related fact is that in the northwest they spoke On the hand, while in the east it was on the hand. Now we're talking whole, but On the hand. This is nothing but a combination of whole that comes from the east, so On the hand which comes from the northwest.

The nominative singular masculine form in the northwest was city(as well as livestock). And in the east she was city. The modern literary Russian form, as we see, comes from the east.

Genitive singular feminine: in the northwest - sister, in the east - sister

Prepositional case: in the northwest in the ground, on a horse, in the east - into the lands, on horseback. Literary forms - northwestern.

Plural feminine (take the example of a pronoun): in the northwest - my cow, in the east - my cows. The literary form is oriental.

Former dual number two villages is the northwestern form. Eastern form - two villages

help, eastern help. Literary form - northwestern.

Third person present tense of the verb: in North-west lucky, in the east - lucky. The literary form is oriental.

Imperative: northwestern take, eastern - you're lucky. Literary form - northwestern.

Northwestern gerund carrying, eastern - luck. Literary form - northwestern.

You see that the ratio is really about 50 to 50. This is what our modern Russian language is morphologically. This is a clear result of the convergence of the two main dialects - like a deck of cards, where the two halves of the deck are inserted into each other.

Linguistics in some cases can give, if not a definitive, then a conjectural answer, why in some points the northwestern member of the pair won, and in others the eastern one. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. But this is not the most important.

First of all, the very fact that the modern literary language obviously combines the features of the ancient northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) dialect and the ancient central-east-south (Rostov-Suzdal-Vladimir-Moscow-Ryazan) dialect is essential. As I have already said, this fact was unknown before the discovery of birch bark letters. A much simpler scheme of a tree branching by pure divergence was presented.

From this follows, by the way, a very significant consequence for some of today's not linguistic, but social or even political ideas. This is that the slogan, popular in present-day Ukraine, of the primordial ancient difference between the Ukrainian branch of the language and the Russian one, is incorrect. These branches are, of course, different. Now these are, of course, independent languages, but the ancient articulation did not take place at all between Russian and Ukrainian. As already mentioned, the Rostov-Suzdal-Ryazan language zone did not differ in any significant way from the Kiev-Chernigov zone in antiquity. Differences arose later, they date back to a relatively recent, by linguistic standards, time, starting from the XIV-XV centuries. And, on the contrary, the ancient differences between the northwest and the rest of the territories have created a special situation in modern Russian, where elements of two originally different dialect systems are combined.

Please questions.

E. Shchegolkova ( Grade 10): You spoke about the place of foreign languages. What is it like in English in India?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes, the current English language in India does indeed have a special position, since it is not just a foreign language along with the local one. In India, as you know, there are a huge number of languages, it is believed that up to two hundred. Thus, in some cases, the only way to communicate between Indians is that both will know English. The English language in this situation finds itself in a functionally very special role not only as an imposed foreign language, but also as a means of communication. So this is somewhat similar to the situations that I described, but in view of the multilingualism of the country, the case is perhaps special.

- You said that before the XIV century. Novgorodians did not call their language Russian. Is there a word that the Novgorodians used to call their language and themselves?

A. A. Zaliznyak: They called themselves Novgorodians. It is well known that the question "Who are you?" the normal answer of a simple person - a peasant, a fisherman - who lives somewhere permanently, will be: "We are Volgars, we are Vologda, we are Pskov." He will not say that he is Russian, Tatar or French, but will name a relatively narrow area. This is not a nation or a special language, it is essentially a territorial indication. For example, it was difficult to get Belarusians to call themselves Belarusians, because they are used to talking about themselves: Mogilev, Gomel etc. Only special propaganda brought them to their consciousness that they should call themselves Belarusians. This concept was actually formed very late.

G. G. Ananin ( a history teacher): Did I understand correctly that you associate the formation of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages exclusively with the political moment of the Polish-Lithuanian influence?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Not exclusively. Exceptional - that would be overkill. But it defined the boundaries of the division. As always happens in different parts of the territory, there, of course, various phonetic and other changes naturally occurred. And they were not connected with political reasons. But some separation from each other of the two communities, which began to develop separately, was largely political. And the actual linguistic development was, of course, independent.

– Why did two languages develop: Ukrainian and Belarusian?

But this is a very difficult question. It is being very hotly and sharply discussed now in Ukraine and Belarus. The differences between these languages are significant. At the same time, the Belarusian language as a whole is much more similar to Russian than to Ukrainian. The proximity between the Belarusian language and the South Great Russian dialects is especially great.

The situation is also complicated by the fact that Ukraine is a large country, while Belarus is not very big. And someone may be tempted to look at it as such a small appendage of the great Ukraine. But historically it has been exactly the opposite. Historically, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania used the language, which is correctly called Old Belarusian. Although the Lithuanian princes were Lithuanians by origin and spoke Lithuanian in everyday life with their servants, in all other cases of life they spoke Old Belarusian. And all state activity in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was carried out in the Old Belarusian language; sometimes it is also called Western Russian. So culturally, the selection of Belarus precedes the allocation of Ukraine. This creates extremely difficult problems, which I would not even like to formulate here, since whatever I say should cause a protest from the opposite side.

- When can we talk about separating the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages from Russian? At least a century.

A. A. Zaliznyak: Not from Russian. This is a division of what is called Western Russian or, otherwise, Old Belarusian, which had a Ukrainian dialect in the south. There was a purely linguistic emphasis, simply as a function of time. Conscious selection by some writers, writers, consciously calling themselves Belarusians or Ukrainians, occurs rather late, around the 18th century.

– The modern Russian language has developed as a result of convergence. Are there other examples of the same convergence?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes there is. Now I am not very sure that I will immediately give you such a thing so that there is a balance of the components. Because balance is a unique case. And if we are not limited only to those examples where there really is an balanced participation, then, of course, this is literary English. The Old English zones varied quite a bit in language, and the enormity of modern English orthography is largely a product of that. Say why what is written bury, read take? But simply because they are different dialect forms. The dialect had its own pronunciation, but at the same time the old spelling remained, in which there should have been a different reading. There are many such examples in English. Although, of course, in English it is not so bright.

- Can you still give some explanation, a small example, why the northwestern or eastern form won?

A. A. Zaliznyak: An example can be given, but not a small one. Because I will have to back off so far that it will be half a lecture. You are asking me a very difficult task. I can only try to describe the scheme of what would have to be explained here. I would then have to consider not only illustrative examples, but the whole system of declension in one dialect and the whole system of declension in another. In each it is about fifty phenomena. And I would show that if at a certain point such and such a change occurs, then this will generally create a more consistent system. But you yourself understand that if I now begin to analyze fifty of those phenomena and fifty others, then the audience will not approve of you a little.

A. B. Kokoreva ( geography teacher): I have a question about verbs withdraw and gape. Does linguistics allow such a thing that in different, completely unrelated languages, one-sounding words can arise?

A. A. Zaliznyak: It could be by accident, of course. Moreover, it is unbelievable that this does not happen anywhere. It's unlikely, but every unlikely event will ever happen.

A. B. Kokoreva: Then the question arises, what is the proof that the word withdraw is Persian in origin?

A. A. Zaliznyak: The fact is that this word is fixed in the monuments in the form flaw recently, and in the XVI century. it is written ziyan.

– Can we talk about a separate Pskov dialect? Are there any borrowings from there?

A. A. Zaliznyak: I constantly spoke to you either about the Novgorod or the Novgorod-Pskov dialect. In fact, there is some linguistic difference between Novgorod and Pskov. And this difference is remarkable in such a way - perhaps this is unexpected against the background of what I told you - that the real purity of the Novgorod dialect is observed in Pskov. The true 100% Northwestern dialect is represented precisely in Pskov, while in Novgorod it is already slightly weakened. Apparently, this can be explained by the fact that Novgorod is already on the way from Pskov to the east, to Moscow.

For example, if the Novgorod-Pskov dialect is somewhat crudely described as a set of 40 characteristic phenomena, then it turns out that in Pskov all 40 are represented, and in Novgorod - 36 from this list. Pskov in this sense is the core of the dialect.

Dialectologists know that the Novgorod region is an interesting area for research, but still greatly spoiled by the many migrations that began with Ivan III and took place especially intensively under Ivan IV. In contrast to the Pskov zone, which remarkably preserves antiquity in the villages - better than anywhere else.

So you very correctly named the Pskov dialect, it is indeed one of the most linguistically valuable. It is not for nothing that a wonderful dialect dictionary, one of the two best, is the regional dictionary of the Pskov dialect. The dialect is chosen in particular for this reason, and the vocabulary is very sensibly done. It is not finished yet, but has many dozens of issues.

Thus, it is a dialect that has its own face and value. Some words can be borrowed from there. But it is difficult to say with certainty that there was no such word in Novgorod. You can say that there was a word when you once found it in some village. But to say that in some area there was no word - do you understand how much it takes to assert this?

- This is Persian. gape- same root as ours gape?

A. A. Zaliznyak: No, there is not gape, there is already a ready word ziyan. It is not the same root as Russian, it is of a different origin. It's a noun and gape as a verb it is actually a Russian word.

- A word burden associated with monkey?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Not, burden this is a Russian word. Normal about- and -bond, how in prisoner. There is consonance, but the words are from completely different sources.

E. I. Lebedeva: Thank you very much, Andrey Anatolievich!

Photo of a 10th grade student of the M-T school Anastasia Morozova.

"Elements"

In contact with

Classmates

The news of the death of Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak was a blow to many scientists, as well as a large number of his students. Unfortunately, this is true - the outstanding linguist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology died on December 24, 2017.

It is impossible to list the awards of the academician - there are a lot of them. For philology as a science, Andrey Anatolyevich did the unbelievable and was faithful to it all his life. For more than 50 years, Zaliznyak worked as a teacher at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, instilling in students not just a love for the language, but an incredible interest in its history, word formation, and comparative linguistics. Language was not just a tool for him, it was an exorbitant research field, closely connected with all the changes of time.

Zaliznyak had a fantastic education, which he improved and refined throughout his life. A man-encyclopedia, the brightest, clearest mind, he, already having scientific degrees, continued to study! Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak was born in 1935, graduated from the Romano-Germanic department of the philological faculty back in 1958, studied at the Sorbonne, and in the 1990s he was a lecturer at the Universities of Paris and Geneva. For many years he worked at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, doing a complex and interesting science. His name in the world of linguistics meant so much that the universities of Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden, England and Spain allocated the best hours for lectures by the visiting Russian professor Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak.

The world of a professor-philologist is special. Philology cannot exist outside the world and space; it is permeated with the tape of time like no other science. The first monograph by Andrei Zaliznyak was "Russian Nominal Inflection", which was devoted to the study and description of the algorithms for declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals in Russian in its written form. That is, in fact, it was devoted to what students have been studying since the second or third grade, although they do it in a simplified form. In fact, all of us, not to mention the students, studied “according to Zaliznyak”.

The scientist also did a great deal of work with dictionaries. In particular, Zaliznyak worked on the classic "Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language", where for 100 thousand words of the Russian language the exact inflection model is indicated. If at least once you have had a chance to look in the dictionary for the correct spelling of a word in one form or another, you can be sure that you have worked with his magnificent and practically important work! Besides. On the basis of this dictionary, compiled by the scientist by hand, almost all computer programs for automatic morphological analysis were created!

From the beginning of the 1980s, Andrey Anatolyevich began to study birch bark letters closely. Many scientific articles were created by him as a result of this work, and in 2000, when the Novgorod Code, the oldest book of Russia, was found during excavations in Veliky Novgorod, the scientist began to study it, and discovered very interesting information that relates to the first years Christianity. He, a little later, practically proved the authenticity of the famous "Tale of Igor's Campaign", refuting the arguments of scientific opponents who tried to prove the opposite.

The loyalty of the scientist to the chosen science is admired all the time. But most importantly, he never rested on his laurels and was an incredible workaholic, you definitely cannot do without mentioning one of his awards: in 2007, Andrei Zaliznyak became the winner of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology with the wording "for outstanding contribution to the development of linguistics."

An amazing scientist, a sensitive person, a strict but consistent and responsible mentor, Andrey Zaliznyak will always be remembered by his colleagues and relatives. And many of us do not even realize that we all, to a certain extent, turned out to be his students, who studied his works, aimed at deep research and improvement of linguistics and linguistic history.

A big loss for science and Russia. Irreparable loss for family. Blessed memory ... We will remember.

Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Doctor of Science in Physiology and Theory of Language, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Education, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Professor of the Department of General Linguistics of St. Petersburg State University expressed her condolences:

- By the nature of my activity, I came across Andrei Anatolyevich many times, I saw him at work, although I did not personally know him. But, of course, I studied his scientific works well. He is truly a brilliant scientist, the greatest of all the linguists of our time. And, in addition, this is a very powerful personality (more…).