This subject area is divided into several sections in our course. First, General Sources for materials on Slavic Linguistics including works that cover one or more of the branches, East, West, or South Slavic as well as works on proto-Slavic, and second, sections for each individual language. Old Church Slavic and Church Slavic have their own page in this course which includes a section for Cyril-Methodian studies. Eventually there will also be a section dealing with resources for Baltic linguistics, for these languages come under the domain of Slavic and East European librarianship and we often have to answer questions in this area. Many general Western sources will have materials pertinent to Slavic linguistics, so be sure not to overlook them as potential sources of information, but for the most part, this guide covers items either in a Slavic language or about Slavic linguistics in particular. We will not cover the main general linguistics sources published in the West. Regardless of whether you consider Slavic vernacular sources and/or Western sources, there is an overabundance of material in this field so our guide is meant to be just that, a guide, not a comprehensive list.
What kinds of resources exist for the study of Slavic and East European linguistics? Bibliographies, of course, are abundant and extremely helpful. We include many in our various pages devoted to linguistics, including a number of specialized ones such as bibliographies of world linguistic conferences, of linguistic atlases, and philological bibliographies of Slavistika, Russistika, Bohemistika, etc. But beyond bibliographies, there are other reference genres that you should be aware of. For example, grammars and dictionaries are essential sources that may provide primary data as well as bibliographic data. However, encyclopedias, which are essential tools for other disciplines, are relatively sparse in the field of Slavic linguistics. Sometimes general vernacular encyclopedias will have articles about languages, schools, or noted linguists, but special subject encyclopedias for this topic in Slavic are rare. In the past decade a few have been published, but not all languages have their own. There are also few guides to the sources in this area, with bibliographies of bibliographies being the more common genre for an overview of the topic. New genres such as bibliographic websites and subject portals are included in our descriptions only if they have authority and a reasonable depth of coverage.
Several types of materials pertinent to linguistic research are not covered in these pages. For example, rather than describing the linguistic atlases for each language, we rely on an annotated bibliography of linguistic atlases presented in the section for General Resources for Slavic Linguistics to cover that material. No bilingual dictionaries are annotated here since there are so many and everyone has their own preferences. Thus, not only are there no Russian-English dictionaries, but also no Ukrainian-Russian or Czech-German dictionaries listed in these pages. But there are a number of bibliographies of Slavic dictionaries annotated in this course that cover these items. These bibliographies cover dictionaries of special terminology such as dictionaries of library science terms for Russian and other types of grammatical dictionaries like dictionaries of verbal stems or of lexical difficulties so we excluded them rather than decide which grammatical phenomena deserve to be mentioned. The types of dictionaries presented in this course are standard reference sources such as major Academy of Science dictionaries, historical and etymological ones. Some major dialectal dictionaries are also annotated here. Sources about Slavic personal and geographic names are not included in the linguistics sections of this course (look for these sources in a forthcoming section on genealogy), but many of the bibliographies described here will present material of interest in the field of onomastics.
Slavic linguistics is a good example of a discipline in which the bibliographic resources are not necessarily produced according to the common arrangement of the field. For example, scholars often become specialists in one branch of Slavic, courses are taught on the common linguistic features of one branch, but there are comparatively few bibliographic items devoted to just one Slavic branch. Usually the sources cover all of Slavic or only a particular language. Within the sources themselves for all of Slavic linguistics, however, material is commonly arranged by branch as well as by language. The page entitled General Resources for Slavic Linguistics contains materials on Slavic linguistics as well as a section detailing resources for Balkanistika.
- General Resources for Slavic Linguistics
- Resources for Czech and Slovak Linguistics
- Resources for OCS and Church Slavic
- Resources for Bulgarian Linguistics
- Resources for Russian Linguistics
- Resources for Ukrainian Linguistics
- Resources for Serbian and Croatian Linguistics
- Resources for Non-Slavic Languages of Eastern Europe
The the following key may be helpful when perusing the pages in this section:
- East Slavic – Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian
- West Slavic – Czech, Slovak, Polish, Serbian
- South Slavic – Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene (Balkanistika covered under General Resources), Old Church Slavic
- Baltic – Latvian, Lithuanian
- Non-Slavic – Hungarian, Albanian, Estonian, Others
Although the purpose of this course is to introduce Slavic reference materials and other reference materials that specifically deal with Slavic content, it is important to remember that many of the general humanities resources offered by university libraries can be extremely useful for the study of Slavic linguistics. For example, the Modern Language Association International Bibliography online is an essential tool for Slavists because it indexes vernacular sources as well as western language sources in this discipline. Explore your library’s reference room and online databases in addition to using the sources annotated in this course. Also have a look at the following general guide to basic reference resources in the field of linguistics.
Linguistics. A guide to the reference literature.
DeMiller, Anna L. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1991. 396 p.
U of I Library Call Number: Oak Street Facility 016.41 D395l
This work is an annotated guide to the various reference books for the study of linguistics. It covers dictionaries, databases, bibliographies of bibliographies, professional associations, core periodicals, atlases and other genres. Although there are sections for the study of Slavic and other language families, this source provides good coverage of resources that can be helpful for the study of linguistics in general. There is also a section for resources devoted to specialized topics in linguistics besides specific languages. Some of these include sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and semiotics, among others. Entries include complete bibliographic information as well as a detailed annotation of the contents and structure of the book. There are indexes for author, title and subject. See the entry below which begins the section on core periodicals.
