Vasilii Ilich Chernyshev

Chernyshev, Vasilii Il’ich

 

Born Dec. 29,1866 (Jan. 10, 1867), in the village of Aleksino, in what is now Vladimir Oblast; died May 21, 1949, in Leningrad. Soviet Russian linguist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931).

Chernyshev graduated from the Kirzhach Teachers’ Seminary in 1886 and taught in village, district, and city schools from 1886 to 1912. He was recruited by A. A. Shakhmatov for lexicological work at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. His main works dealt with lexicology, dialectology, orthography and orthoepy, stylistics, and the methodology of teaching Russian. In 1900 he drew up the most extensive plan to date for a complete dialect survey.

Chernyshev saw in the literary language the complex interrelations between the formal language and various dialect systems (Regularity and Purity of the Russian Spoken Language, 1911). He studied the language and style of E. A. Baratynskii, A. V. Kol’tsov, V. I. Maikov, N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, G. I. Uspenskii, and A. S. Pushkin. He also was the author of a number of textbooks. One of the initiators of the Dictionary of the Modern Russian Literary Language, he was the editor in chief of the first two volumes, which appeared in 1948 and 1950. Chernyshev was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize in 1970.

WORKS

Izbr. trudy, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1970. (Contains bibliography.)

REFERENCES

Vinogradov, V. V. “O trudakh V. I. Chernysheva po russkomu iazyku.” In V. I. Chernyshev, Izbr. trudy, vol. 1. Moscow, 1970.
Protchenko, I. F. “V. I. Chernyshev—uchenyi-iazykoved i metodist.” Russkii iazyk v shkole, 1977, no. 5.

I. F. PROTCHENKO