MOSCOW DIALECTOLOGICAL SCHOOL: ORIGINS, METHODS AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS (On the 60th anniversary of the publication of the academic work “Russian dialectology”)

This article traces the development of the Moscow School of Dialectology and Linguistic Geography, founded by R. I. Avanesov. It briefly reviews academic works that embody the school’s ideas and methodology, contributing to the fruitful and systematic work on regional atlases and the consolidated Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (DARYA). Particular attention is paid to the evolution of classifications of mother dialects: from the traditional dialectal division of K. F. Zakharova and V. G. Orlova to the structural-typological classification of N. N. Pshenichnova and the multidimensional scaling method of I. A. Marchenko.
It is shown that traditional field recordings are being integrated into multimedia dialect corpora, which allow for the analysis of different levels of dialects, such as morphosyntax, and for the comprehensive study of oral discourse. The resource “Prosody of Russian Dialects” is presented as an example of an innovative approach. The article concludes with a discussion of the current understanding of the term “regiolect” and the distinction between the concepts of “regiolect” and the regionally specific variant of the literary language. The article demonstrates the continuity of the school’s methods and their adaptation to modern technological capabilities.