Background
OBNORSKIY, Sergey was born on June 26, 1888 in Saint St. Petersburg.
OBNORSKIY, Sergey was born on June 26, 1888 in Saint St. Petersburg.
1910 graduate History and Philology Faculty, Saint St. Petersburg University.
From 1912 ed work on Russian dictionary at Russian Academy of Sciences. 1916-1922 lecturer, Permanent’ University. 1922-1941 professor, Leningrad University and Leningrad Teachers’ Training Institute.
1943_46 professor, Moscow State University. 1922-1941 simultaneously worked for Institute of Language and Thought, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences. 1944-1950 director, Institute of Russian Language, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences.
1950-1952 head, History of Russian Language and Dialects Section, Institute of Linguistics, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences. Then headed Orthographic Commission, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences. Studied language of earliest specimens of Russian writing and phonetics and morphology of ancient and modern Russian.
At first followed theories of his teacher, Associate of Arts Shakhmatov but differed with him in 1930's and denied Old Slavic origin of Russian literary language. Belittling the historical originality of linguistic dualism, typical of the ancient times, he sought original sources for the ancient Russian literary language and claimed that it stemmed from East Slavic folk sources. Directed publ of all acad dictionaries of modern Russian and studied orthography, orthoepy and grammatical norms of Russian.
Member, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences from 1939. Member, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Academy of Pedagogical Sciences from 1944. Member Czechoslovakian and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.