Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak died

Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak died (April 29, 1935 - December 24, 2017). The linguist, who managed to become the standard for professionals, with regard to the scientific conscientiousness, thoroughness and details of the analysis and, this was especially striking, clarity, clarity and shortness of the presentation.

The bullet belonged to the infrequent type of a scientist evolving from a wide range of interests to a narrow topic. He began, on the one hand, as a structuralist (although this label himself was alien to him), on the other, as a comparative-Indo-Europeist. In the 1960s, he communicated closely with the Moscow nostratic circle (the well-known “pranosthetic” quatrain was placed on the tombstones of V.M. Illich-Svitych at the suggestion of Zaliznyak). In the last decades, he has focused his efforts on studying the corps of the ancients of birch bark letters. It can be said that the scientific path of the stall went from the epoch -making grammatical dictionary of the Russian language (later formed the basis of computer linguistic packages), from the historical analysis of Indo -Iranian and Germanic languages, from, finally, the development of the theoretical apparatus of linguistics to the accentological reconstruction of the Old Russian and further to the decryption of individual letters on the fragments of birch bark. Like the rest of the scientists of this type, such a gradual narrowing was associated with a chisel with the need to “squeeze out” any topic that he touched. Almost always, he was brilliantly succeeded in, and, indeed, the followers of the chip was usually little left to finish in certain scientific tasks.

It makes no sense to list the regalia of Zaliznyak, it is easier to read about this on the page of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences , in which the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.A. Zaliznyak for many years worked in a rather modest position of the chief researcher, or in Wikipedia . Onzlav’s website, the main monographs of Zaliznyak, in particular, are posted in open access, interesting for the general reader “From the notes of amateur linguistics” (M., 2010) and “The Word of Igor’s Regiment”: Linguist's View ”(M., 2008).

Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak

An important feature of the chip was an unwillingness to make the principles and fall into any personal conflicts. This caused a certain isolation of the ground from the life of the Moscow Scientific Community. Zaliznyak did not hold posts, in fact did not have graduate students and students, did not act as a wedding general at conferences or in the editorials of magazines. He was elected to the Academy not because he worked with his elbows or went over his head, but as a representative of large scientists who, with their proper, provide the authority and scientific weight of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Perhaps in some situations, such a scrupulousness of the stall seemed even excessive and irrational for the development of science. But he fundamentally refused to act as a manager, refused social tasks, deliberately limiting his public service to enlightenment.

Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak rightfully took his place among the largest philologists in Russia of the 20th century. Eternal memory.

Alexey Kasyan (Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences),
Anna Polivanova (RSU)