Dialect Atlases of the Slavic Languages: Past and Present

The existence of linguistic/dialect atlases is connected with the existence of the method of linguistic geography at the end of the 19th century. This method, which follows the geographical distribution of dialect phenomena and enables to search for the conditions of linguistic development, fully developed in the 20th century. The paper deals with the most significant dialect atlases of all Slavic languages, attention is paid to multinational atlases as well