The concept of syntax by O.bB. Sirotinina

Professor of Saratov State University Olga Borisovna Sirotinina lived a long and fruitful life. The author of more than 700 scientific works, she is known in Russia and beyond as a scholar who was at the origins of the Saratov linguistic school of real functioning of language units. Her areas of interest are quite broad: the syntax of modern Russian, vocabulary and grammar of colloquial speech, communicative studies, and speech ecology. The results of her research on the syntactic system of the modern Russian are reflected first of all in her own course of lectures on syntax and in her dissertation research on the role of word order in oral and written Russian speech. The syntactic concept of O. B. Sirotinina, based on the principles of traditional Russian grammar, is characterized by close attention to the real functioning of syntactic units, therefore it relies on innovative ideas of communicative and semantic syntax for its time, as well as on the achievements of Saratov linguists in the field of studying the grammar of spoken language. The ideas of O. B. Sirotinina on the distinction between the linguistics of language and the linguistics of speech, on the identification of communicatives as independent syntactic units, the semantic and formal complication of simple sentences, and the functions of word order in colloquial speech have been fruitfully developed in the works of her students and followers. Her Lectures on the Syntax of the Russian Language and Word Order in the Russian Language remain relevant and are successfully used in university teaching of syntax, as evidenced by their repeated reprints and citations in textbooks and scientific articles.