BORDERZONE OF THE PSKOV DIALECT AS A UNIQUE FACTOR OF PRESERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE “OWN” THROUGH THE CENTURIES (reading monuments and recording the modern folk speech)

Significance of dialects as the source of information on their speakers accounts for the interest to this national asset. It is not a coincidence that modern philology of the second half of the 20th century has revealed affinity of dialectology and ethnography, which Alexander Gerd paid special attention to. The article written also in memory of the deceased colleague, the researcher interested in this subject, touches upon issues of the unique Pskov dialect located in the peculiar area of borderzone: neighborhood of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages in the past and the present. This neighborhood resulted in formation of the characteristics that lead to prominent academic discoveries in the Slavic studies of the second half of the 20th century in the field of final reasoning of certain facts (the problem that the major late 20th — early 21st‑century researchers were engaged in: enigma of such words as егла ‘ель’ [fir-tree — transl.]) or detection of new peculiarities-puzzles and their relatively fast “revolutionary” solution (like кеп instead of цеп). Boris Larin’s idea to create the Pskov Regional Dictionary with Historical Data resulted in collection of the wealth funds of the Pskov Regional Dictionary modern and historical card-catalogue — the source of evidence, countercheck, and confirmation of already made solutions or expanse for possible detection of new solutions.