Our Memory Archive: Remembering Professor Larissa Vassilyevna Shishkova (03/10/1926 — 01/08/2009)

Abstract

The article presents an essay on the life and an review of scientific heritage of Professor Larissa Vassilyevna Shishkova (1926–2009), a famous expert on Germanic languages whose pedagogical and research activities for more than half a century were associated with the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute, now Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. Based on biographical data, memoirs of colleagues and analysis of works, this article recreates the portrait of the scientist, whose formation took place in the post-war years and in the time of the formation of the Leningrad linguistic school. The first part outlines the key milestones of Professor Shishkova’s biography: childhood in Samara, accelerated studies at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, her studies at the Faculty of Philology under the guidance of outstanding linguists (V. F. Shishmarev, V. M. Zhirmunsky, L. R. Zinder) and her many years of work at the Herzen University. The main focus of the article is on scholar’s scientific concept, which represented the basic principles of functional grammar. It is noted that her doctoral dissertation on syntactic structures with coordinative connection, as well as her works on the variability of language form and the interaction of vocabulary and grammar, anticipated ideas later developed in the framework of functional grammar theory. L. V. Shishkova’s contribution to the educational process is separately considered: her textbooks on phonetics, theoretical grammar and syntax of the German language are current textbooks to this day, and also serve as a basis for the creation of new textbooks. The research activities of L. V. Shishkova’s graduate students demonstrate not only their fidelity to tradition but also the methodological significance of the approach she proposed. The concluding part of the article contains an overview of the professor’s key publications and dissertations, demonstrating the breadth of her research interests — from historical syntax to the communicative-pragmatic aspects of language. The article emphasizes the enduring significance of L. V. Shishkova’s works for modern German studies.