ШИРОТА УМА, СИЛА ВООБРАЖЕНИЯ И АКТИВНОСТЬ ДУШИ – ВОТ ЧТО ТАКОЕ ГЕНИЙ (К ЮБИЛЕЮ ЭМИЛИИ АГАФОНОВНЫ БАЛАЛЫКИНОЙ)
BREADTH OF MIND, STRONG IMAGINATION, AND ACTIVE SOUL MAKE UP A GENIUS (ON THE BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF EMILIYA AGAFONOVNA BALALYKINA)

Summary/Abstract: This paper marks the birth anniversary of Doctor of Philology, Honored Scholar of the Republic of Tatarstan Emiliya Agafonovna Balalykina (b. 1937). Her long research and teaching work is associated mainly with the Kazan University. However, E.A. Balalykina is also a very famous researcher far beyond the borders of Russia. Her studies on language history, modern Russian language, and comparative linguistics are distinguished for an innovative approach to the analyzed linguistic phenomena, as well as by the profundity and importance of the obtained results. Here, an attempt has been made to describe the life of an extraordinary person by offering an insight into the main periods and events of her life, to show the profundity of her research results in Russian (modern and historical) and comparativehistorical word formation. At the Balto-Slavic background (with involvement of all Slavic languages and Lithuanian language, which is most valuable for such comparison), the key reasons for affinity of the languages at the level of word formation, which is often inconsistent with their genetic affinity, were identified, thereby suggesting that certain Slavic and Baltic languages can be divided into groups based on the similarity in the development of adjective formation types. The origin of certain adjectival morphemes was revealed, which is not in line with the traditional views on this problem. Furthermore, the idea of Professor V.M. Markov on the necessity to single out a new branch of Russian studies, grammatical lexicology, was further developed. To make this idea a reality, the grammatical contradictions in the modern Russian language and the “dead ends” in nominal declension and word formation associated with them were studied. In conclusion, a list of publications (papers, abstracts, and conference proceedings) of the recent 10 years covering the urgent problems of grammar and lexicology and candidate and doctoral dissertations defended under the guidance of E.A. Balalykina has been provided. The main areas of research of E.A. Balalykina and her followers have been discussed: Russian and comparative-historical word formation, semantic word formation, enantiosemy, grammatical lexicology. E.A. Balalykina has been characterized as a brilliant lecturer and speaker, good organizer, talented and loyal leader, skillful storyteller, wise mentor, and strong human with a kind heart.

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