«РАБОТАЛ СОЗНАТЕЛЬНО ДЛЯ БУДУЩИХ ПОКОЛЕНИЙ»: АКАДЕМИК О. Н. ФОН БЁТЛИНГК И РАЗВИТИЕ СРАВНИТЕЛЬНО-ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО ЯЗЫКОЗНАНИЯ В XIX ВЕКЕ

Abstract

The article considers the biography and scientific work of O. N. Böhtlingk, a prominent Russian linguist and academi-cian. The topicality of the research comes from the persistent scientific interest in the history of linguistics and its branches, as well as ongoing examination of scientists’ biographies from the standpoint of narrative linguistic historiog-raphy. The author of the article looks at different sides of the scientist’s work, paying special attention to his Sanskrit and Turkic studies. It is well known that an overwhelming majority of his works were in Sanskrit studies. O. N. Böht-lingk’s most outstanding works in this area were the Sanskrit-German dictionaries. “The Great Petersburg Dictionary” was published in St. Petersburg in seven volumes between 1855 and 1875, its concise version was issued in the period from 1879 to 1889. His Turkic studies are no less significant: his work on the Yakut language has become and still remains one of the first fundamental ones. The novelty of the paper is explained in the following statement: O. N. Böhtlingk’s scientific works paved the path for further development of more than only these two branches of linguis-tics. His numerous works have become the factual and methodological basis for the development of comparative his-torical linguistics, not only of Indo-European languages but also of other language families. The academician’s works written in the middle and at the end of the century, turned out to be relevant and in demand in the frame of other lin-guistic paradigms. Of particular interest to the author is also the linguist's social circle, which included not only major scholars from the German diaspora in the Russian capital, but also the most prominent representatives of Sanskrit studies and comparative historical linguistics, whose recognized center was Germany.