# Adam Suprun

Adam Suprun (October 24, 1928 – August 18, 1999) was a linguist, professor, Slavist, Habilitated Doctor of Philological Sciences, Habilitated Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences and Honored Scholar of the Republic of Belarus. He was Head of the Department of Theoretical and Slavic Linguistics at the Belarusian State University.

## Life

Adam Suprun was born on October 24, 1928 in Poltava, Ukraine. He studied at the Kyrgyz National University, graduating in 1952. In 1955, at the Moscow State University, he defended his doctoral thesis entitled Words with Numeral Roots in Modern Russian Literary Language.
In 1961, a monograph entitled Старославянские числительные [Old Church Slavonic Numerals] was published. In 1966, at the University of Leningrad, he defended his habilitation thesis entitled Славянские числительные: Становление числительных как особой части речи [Slavic numerals. The formation of numerals as a specific part of speech].
In 1966, at the Belarusian State University, he founded the Department of Theoretical and Slavic Linguistics, which he headed for over 30 years. Adam Suprun created the university Slavic studies in Belarus: it was on his initiative that all Slavic languages were taught at the Philological Faculty of the Belarusian State University, and in 1993, the specialisation Slavic philology was opened.
In 1981, at the Belarusian State University in Minsk, Suprun defended his second habilitation thesis entitled Glottodidactic Issues of Teaching Russian in Belarusian Schools and obtained a habilitated doctorate in pedagogy. Suprun was often invited to give lectures and presentations by universities and research centres in Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Denmark, Spain, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, United States, Finland, Croatia, Czech Republic, etc. Since 1958, he was a participant of all International Congresses of Slavists and a member of the Belarusian Committee of Slavists.

## Research interests

In Slavic studies Adam Suprun remains a recognized authority in the field of etymology, studies of the Polabian language, lexicology and typology of Slavic languages, psycholinguistics, glottodidactics, and text linguistics. Adam Suprun is an author of over 600 publications, of which over 60 are books and brochures. One of the important areas of his research interests was the study of Slavic languages in lexical and grammatical aspect in diachrony and synchrony. His systematic and diachronic research on numerals and quantity categories in Slavic languages is well known.
Adam Suprun initiated the development and applying of statistical methods in the study of linguistic phenomena. Under his supervision, five frequency dictionaries were created on the material of various Belarusian discourse types.
Lexicon has always been one of Adam Suprun’s priority interests: he was the editor-in-chief of frequency and associative dictionaries. Adam Suprun initiated the use of mathematical and statistical methods in lexicology. Under his leadership, a whole group of scholars used the new methods of lexicon research. The collective work Методы изучения лексики [Methods of Lexicon Research] edited by the Suprun, is still recommended for working with lexical material. The book presents his two original articles. In the book "Лексическая типология славянских языков"[Lexical Typology of Slavic Languages], the author identifies parameters for characterising lexicons of the Slavic languages (including micro-languages):
* volume of vocabulary;
* proportion of the most frequent words in the text;
* parts of speech in the dictionary;
* morphemic structure of the words and methods of word formation;
* the degree of semantic similarity of the most frequent lexemes;
* the nature and content of various types of semantic groups;
* the specificity of the hyponym-hyperonym relationship in the lexical groups;
* stylistic stratification of vocabulary;
* data on word associations;
* lexical compatibility.
Adam Suprun’s works in Polabistics are widely known, too.
A special place in Adam Suprun’s scientific heritage is occupied by his works in Belarusian linguistics. In 1967, he published four works on the history and modern Belarusian language. The issue of Belarusian-Russian bilingualism was the subject of numerous works by Suprun; co-authored Russian language textbooks in schools with Belarusian as the language of instruction were reissued many times.
Since 1968, Suprun was involved in a new trend – psycholinguistics – and became one of the authors of the famous collective monograph Основы теории речевой деятельности [Basics of the Theory of Speech Activity]. This scientific area was finally reflected in his book Лекции по теории речевой деятельности [Lectures on the Theory of Speech Activity]. Associative experiments were a continuation of work in the field of Psycholinguistics. It was A. Suprun’s students who compiled associative dictionaries of the Belarusian; Latvian; Kyrgyz and Turkish languages.
Text linguistics was also among the research interest of A. Suprun, as evinced by the posthumously published book Исследования по лингвистике текста [Research in the Text Linguistics].
Suprun was a permanent co-author of the Etymological Dictionary of the Belarusian Language (Этымалагічны слоўнік беларускай мовы, 1978–2017).
A. Suprun’s textbooks include at least three scripts of lectures on linguistics, the first in the USSR and still the best Введение в славянскую филологию [Introduction to Slavic Philology], reissue – 2019. The chapter Жизнь древних славян по данным их языка [The life of the ancient Slavs according to their language] has been republished as a separate item after the Suprun’s death.

## Scientific school

Adam Suprun was an outstanding teacher: over 60 doctoral theses were defended under his supervision, and he was a consultant for 10 habilitations. Students of Prof. Suprun and students of his students teach at all universities in Belarus and at universities in Austria, Hungary, India, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Arab and African countries.
Professor Adam Suprun died on August 18, 1999 in Minsk. The members of the Department of Theoretical and Slavic Linguistics at the Belarusian State University, including his students and students of his students, published and reissued Suprun's works. In 2003, the book Память и слава: К 75-летию со дня рождения профессора А. E. Супруна was published in the Memoria et Gloria series [Memory and Glory: on the 75th Anniversary of the Birth of Professor A. Suprun]. The book contains a complete bibliography of the scholar and articles on the Polabian language, which are a bibliographic rarity. Ten years later, in the series Моваведы Беларусi [Linguists of Belarus], Выбраныя працы [Selected works] was published, which included Праславянский язык, Старославянский язык, Церковно-славянский язык [The Proto-Slavic language, The Old Church Slavonic language, The Church Slavonic language]