Barsov, Anton

Born 1730 in Moscow, died there Jan. 21, 1791. Russian scholar, linguist, and public figure. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1783); professor at Moscow University (1755).

As a linguist, Barsov was a follower of M. V. Lomonosov. His major work, Brief Rules of Russian Grammar (1st ed., 1771), served as a basic textbook of the Russian language for several decades. He also wrote A Detailed Russian Grammar (1783–88, unpublished). He was the first to introduce the study of sentences into the field of syntax. Barsov also worked out theories of secondary clauses of a sentence, a theory of compound sentences, and a study of types of sentences.