L. E. Kalnyn’: foundations of her scholarship’s hypertext

Abstract

The works of renowned Slavicist Ludmila Kalnyn’ constitute an integral hypertext, exhibiting the movement of ideas, goals, and methods of studying Slavonic dialects in the second half of the 20th c. and the early 21st c. These works feature innovative methodologies and techniques of dialect research, such as her precise technique of modelling individual subdialects (i.e. actual communicative dialect systems) and dialect language (i.e. a construct comprising individual subdialects); this promising method has proved to be effective and has been adopted by other dialect researchers. Furthermore, she formulated a range of problems solution of which was aimed to the structure and functioning of dialects, their status in the national language stratigraphy, and areal characteristics of items and phenomena found in dialects. The scope of dialect modelling includes subdialect phonological systems, syllable-internal structure and syllabification, and word as both the field and the factor of phonetic changes. Her modelling technique involves the sequential use of sets of distinctive features of the objects under study, also taking into account the regularity of manifestation of features in dialect speech and conditions of their neutralization. Empirical databases were created regarding Slavonic (viz. Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian and Sorbian) dialects, including their systemic descriptions. Special attention was given to the status of modern dialects against the background of other strata of the national language, and to their role in forming and present-day development of literary language. In her research, Kalnyn’ has demonstrated: – the advantage of the exhaustive systemic description of a dialect based on the system of distinctive features over descriptions of random subdialectal features against the background of standard language, the importance of uncontradictory explication of preconditions and chronotope of the origin of structural and functional specificity of modern Slavonic dialects; – the importance of joint approach combining synchronic systemic description with the elucidation of the history of every structural element and phenomenon, establishing their spread within national and general Slavonic continuum as a means of achieving the completeness of dialectal knowledge; – the heuristic value of identification and detailed analysis not only of entities and phenomena widely spread within a dialectal continuum, but also of locally limited ones of the ancient origin or, on the contrary, resulting from recent innovations; – the necessity for comprehensive dialectal studies of consistently considering social, historical, and cultural circumstances of a subdialect’s functioning within society. Many years of her active participation in the work on The General Slavonic Linguistic Atlas (including the identification and development of its theoretical foundations, production of numerous phonetic maps, especially interpretative and generalizing ones), analysis of phonetic Slavonic areas determined the dynamics of her views on many phenomena of Slavonic phonetics. At the same time, working in the international collective, and organizing international conferences dedicated to problems of Slavonic dialectology, led to the dissemination of L. E. Kalnyn’s ideas, theoretical generalizations, and practical experience. The trajectory of this experience’s emergence is insolubly linked with the conceptual development of present-day Slavonic dialectology.