Sergei Nikolaev (linguist)


Sergei Lvovich Nikolaev is a Soviet and Russian linguist, specialist in comparative historical linguistics, Slavic accentology and dialectology. Author of a number of books and articles on Indo-European studies, accentology, and Slavic dialectology. Doctor Nauk in Philological Sciences.

Biography

Nikolaev graduated from the philological faculty of Tver State University and Moscow State University.
Since 1986, he works at the Institute for Slavic and Balkan studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1987, he has been the head of regular dialectological expeditions in the area of East Slavic subdialects.
In 1992, he received a doctoral degree with a dissertation comprising the totality of his works, and now heads the group of Slavic glottogenesis.

Contribution to linguistics

Sergei Nikolaev is a specialist in Slavic and Indo-European comparative historical linguistics. The scope of studies covers Slavic, Balto-Slavic and Indo-European historical accentology, comparative grammar of North Caucasian languages, hypothetical Sino-Caucasian macro-family of languages, hypothetical Amerindian macro-family.
Nikolaev connects the linguogeography and historical dialectology of Slavic languages with the problems of. In East Slavic dialectology, he established a number of the oldest dialect isoglosses. Reconstruction of the placement of these isoglossae on the territory of the oldest Slavic settlement showed their connection with the archaeological areas of large Proto-Slavic tribal associations.
As a result of the field studies of the East Slavic dialects, the Institute has collected an East Slavic phonetic library and an archive of dialect recordings.
Experimental research of phonetics and prosody of East Slavic dialect systems on a computer allowed Nikolaev to discover a number of new and poorly studied phenomena in modern East Slavic dialects.
Nikolaev published and prepared for printing more than 80 works with a total volume of more than 240 author's sheets. He is the author of the etymological dictionary of North Caucasian languages, one of the authors of the series "Fundamentals of Slavic accentology", a participant in the international Internet projects "Evolution of language" and "tower of Babel".
For more than 20 years, Nikolaev has been the leader and organizer of complex linguistic expeditions to the East Slavic dialects and to the archaic Old Shtokavian dialects of the Serbo-Croatian language, author of special field programs on East Slavic historical dialectology.
He made presentations at four International Congresses of Slavists, a number of International and Russian conferences, for 10 years taught a course and led a seminar on “Historical Linguogeography of East Slavic Languages” at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University.
Nikolaev was nominated three times as a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2004, he was awarded the Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Slavic Studies Slověne = Словѣне.
In 2014, after placing the accents, Nikolaev confirmed 's idea of syncretic polyrhythm The Tale of Igor's Campaign.

Contribution to the study of butterflies

After studying lepidopterology in 1964–1966, he first discovered in 1968 a significant population of Polyommatus damone in the Altai. In 1970, in Tuva, he caught two new taxa of the Satyrinae genus Oeneis. During 1980–1985, he collected a large collection of Lepidoptera in the Tver Oblast, now located in the Siberian zoomuseum, and described the presumably new taxon Erebia polonina. Together with Yuri Korshunov, he wrote articles on North Asian Oeneis and Erebia.