A Soviet and Russian linguist. His major works pertain to linguistic theory, sociolinguistics, Germanic languages and to national development of standard languages. A Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences as of 15 December 1990 with the Department for Literature and Language (linguistics).

Biography

On graduation from the secondary school, D. Served in the Red Army (1944—1946), then graduated from the Alma-Ata Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (1950). During his last year at the institute, D. also taught part-time at a secondary school and at the Institute of Physical Culture. In 1950, D. became a postgraduate student   of the German Language Chair at the Moscow State Potyomkin Pedagogical Institute. In 1952—1953, he worked as a translator/interpreter for the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In (1954—1955), D. taught at the Moscow State Torez Institute of Foreign Languages at the Chair of German Lexicology and Stylistics. In 1954, he defended his Cand. of Science thesis Sintaksicheskiye nablyudeniya nad gorodskoy (delovoy) prozoy Germanii XIII—XV vv.: mestopolozheniye glavnykh chlenov samostoyatelnogo povestvovatelnogo predlozheniya [Syntactic observations of the urban (business) prose of Germany in the XIII—XV centuries: position of the principal parts of independent declarative sentences]. As of 1955, D. worked as a senior teacher of the German Language Chair and then as the Dean of the Foreign Languages Faculty of the Moscow State Potyomkin Pedagogical Institute. In 1958, D. moved to the Gorky State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages where he headed the German Philology Chair (1958—1960), served as Provost (1960—1964), and as the Rector (1964—1968).

As of 1968, D. worked as a professor of the German Philology Chair at the Leningrad Herzen State Pedagogical Institute, and later as the Chair Head and the Dean of the Foreign Languages Faculty. D. defended his Dr. of Linguistics dissertation Natsionalno-regionalnaya variativnost nemetskogo literaturnogo yazyka i avstriyskiy natsionalnyy variant sovremennogo nemetskogo literaturnogo yazyka [National and regional variation of Standard German and the Austrian national variant of Modern Standard German] in 1970. D. headed the Leningrad Department of the AS USSR Institute of Linguistics in 1976—1990 and was the organizer and the first director of the ILS RAS (1991—2001).

D. worked as Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg Department of the Moscow State Linguistic University and was a member of the International Association of Germanists. D. Supervised over 30 Cand. of Science dissertations.