Natalia Donadze

Researcher, Department of Caucasian Languages

Ph.D

Academic Secretary of the Russian Committee of the Atlas Linguarum Europea.

Natalia Donadze works at the Institute of Linguistics since 1988. She has published over 40 works in Russian, French, and English on the topics of European dialectology and linguistic geography and negations in Indo-European languages. She has contributed to the creation of a number of linguistic maps for the ALE as well. 

Research Interests

  • linguistic geography
  • linguistic maps
  • motivational maps
  • linguistic universals
  • grammaticalization
  • typology of Romance languages
  • comprataive translation

Current Research Focuses

  • Digitalization of 3 motivatoinal and lexical maps, together with 2 monographic commentaries, for the publication of the tenth fascicle of Premier Questionnaire of the ALE.
  • Editing of the foreign authors' preliminary map commentaries for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth fascicles of the ALE.
  • Preparation of the Russian dialect data for its further digitalization and classification with the purpose of transfering it to foreign authors of the tenth and eleventh fascicles of the ALE.

(The ALE project is expected to include 12 fascicles with approximately 120 research questions covered. By 2015, 9 fascicles have been published. The tenth and eleventh fascicles are currently in development).

Having graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Lomonosov State University of Moscow in 1974, Natalia Donadze started working at the Institute of Linguistics. Under Ruben Avanesov’s guidance, she worked at the Sector of History and Dialectology, where she contributed to the Atlas Linguarum Europae project, as well as to the Slavic Linguistic Atlas project. In 1986, she defended her PhD thesis on lexical means of negation in Romance languages and their grammaticalization, the topic of which is closely related to the Second Questionnaire of the ALE.

During those years, Natalia Donadze organized the Committee of the Atlas Linguarum Europea, where scholars from academic and research institutions of the European part of the USSR collected, interpreted, and prepared dialectic data for digitalization. Thus, the Committee has provided the Central Secretariat of the ALE with a quarter of the entire data presented in the Atlas. The Questionnaire of the Slavic Linguistic Atlas, along with questionnaires of the French and German linguistic atlases, was employed to create the First Questionnaire of the ALE. The scope of the ALE project covers 22 language groups of different language families.

As the member of the ALE Secretariat, Natalia Donadze contributed to the creation of all 9 existing fascicles of the Atlas. She prepared linguistic data on Slavic, Altaic, and Caucasian languages for its digitalization, interpretation, and conversion into explanatory notes; participated in editing of fascicles. Before the collected data reaches map compilers, it undergoes analysis at the National Committees of the ALE, as well as at the Sectors of Linguistic Families and at the Department of Indo-European Languages. Once the data is processed, it is used to design maps and explanatory notes. The data offers an extensive in-depth analysis of language classification, together with any other information which can potentially be useful for map compilers and the authors of commentaries. Apart from lexical maps, semantical maps are created on the materials of the Premier Questionnaire of the ALE. Such maps are important for ethnographic research as they are more illustrative in terms of tracing historic ties between European languages.

In addition to academic research, Natalia Donadze coordinates the activities of specialists in the languages of the peoples of Russia and Eastern Europe, namely the collection and analysis of linguistic data, correspondence, translation.

Science Index

Selected publications

  • 9 fascicles of the Atlas Linguarum Europea
  • Editing of the data for the Second Questionnaire of the ALE (on the materials of the 1986 expedition to Belarus) for Občšeslavjanskij lingvističeskij atlas. Materialy i issledovanija. 1991-1993. Sbornik naučnyx trudov [Slavic Linguistic Atlas. Materials and research. 1991-1993. Collection of academic papers]. Moscow, Nauka, 1996. S. 191-204
  • Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE) : Commentaires / Carte de motivations Gendre, pp. 225-244 (with Vladimir Gak). Volume I, huitième fascicule/ ed. Nicolae Saramandu ... [et al.], 1xxxvi, 273 p. Bucureşti : Editura Universitǎţii din Bucureşti, 2014, ISBN 978-606-16-0421-0, Vol. 1: Huitième fascicule: Commentaires. - 2014 – ISBN 978-606-16-0449-4.
  • Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE) : Commentaires / Carte onomasiologique Bru, pp. 245-266 (with Vladimir Gak).Volume I, huitième fascicule/ ed. Nicolae Saramandu ... [et al.], 1xxxvi, 273 p. Bucureşti : Editura Universitǎţii din Bucureşti, 2014, ISBN 978-606-16-0421-0, Vol. 1: Huitième fascicule: Commentaires. - 2014 – ISBN 978-606-16-0449-4.
  • Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). Volume I, huitième fascicule. Carte de motivations Gendre, pp. 79-94 (with Vladimir Gak). Cartes linguistiques européennes/ ed. Nicolae Saramandu ... [et al.], 1VII, 120 p.+ 10 cartes linguistiques, Bucureşti : Editura Universitǎţii din Bucureşti, 2014 – ISBN 978-606-16-0456-2
  • Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). Volume I, huitième fascicule. Carte onomasiologique Bru, pp. 79-94 (with Vladimir Gak). Cartes linguistiques européennes/ ed. Nicolae Saramandu ... [et al.], 1VII, 120 p.+ 10 cartes linguistiques, Bucureşti : Editura Universitǎţii din Bucureşti, 2014 – ISBN 978-606-16-0456-2
  • Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). /sous la red. de Mario Alinei…[et al.]Volume I: Premier fascicule, Commentaires. Carte I.15 Lac, pp. 127-134.Van Gorcum, Assen,. 1983, pp.I-XCVII, 178. ISBN 90-232-2034-X
  • Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). /sous la red. de Mario Alinei…[et al.]Volume I: Premier fascicule, Commentaires. Cartes I.18 et I.19 Sauterelle (with Ruben Avanesiv and Vladimir Ivanov), pp. 127-134.Van Gorcum, Assen,. 1983, pp.I-XCVII, 178. ISBN 90-232-2034-X
  • Pervyj voprosnik. Onomasiologija. Osnovnoj slovarnyj sostav [Premier Questionnaire. Onomasiology. Basic vocabulary]. Akademija nauk SSSR, Institut russkogo jazyka, Moscow, Nauka. Weijnen et al.. Translation from French. 1976. 68 s.
  • Lingvističeskij atlas Evropy. Vtoroj voprosnik [Atlas Linguarum Europea. Second Questionnaire]. Moscow, Nauka. Weijnen et al.. Translation from French. 1981. 196 s.
  • Scopus: Donadze N. Types of semantic divergences in translation of cognate languages // Studi italiani di linguistica teorica e applicata. Accademia della Crusca. Anno XXXI, 2003, №2, 0,7 a.l..
  • Donadze N. La négation double dans les langues romanes. Ed. Université Stendhal-Grenoble III, red. Michel Contini, Gaston Tuaillon/Géolinguistique n.5 -1993, p.236. p.159-186. ISSN 0761 9081
  • Donadze N. Quelques remarques concernant les constructions négatives dans les langues romanes, Quaderni di semantica, Rivista internazionale di semantica teorica e applicata, Soc.ed. il Mulino, Bologna 2/1981: pp.297-302
  • Peer review of I,II,III,IV, and V fascicles of the "Dialect Atlas of the Udmurt language. Maps and commentaries". Nasibullin R.Š et al.. Izhevsk, R&C Dynamica, 2009-2015.
  • Peer review of all issues of the "Topics of the study of language" magazine from 1995 till 2007. 

Conference Participation

Natalia Donadze takes part in annual international conferences of the ALE Editing Board where she presents reports on the principles of compiling motivational ALE maps. She has participated in conferences in Marburg, Germany (Forschungszentrum “Deutscher Sprachatlas”, June 2014); Bayonne, France (Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour, May 2013); Leeuwarden, Netherlands (Fryske Akademy, June 2011). She has also presented reports at conferences organized by the Linguistic Society of Europe and the International Society for Dialectology and Geolinguistic, of which she is a member.

типология
теория грамматикализации
романские языки
переводоведение
лингвистическая география