The Prague linguistic school was the first in terms of its formation among schools of structural linguistics, the emergence of which was prepared, as already noted, by the activities of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, N.V. Krushevsky, F.F. Fortunatova, F. de Saussure, L.V. Shcherba and which required shifting the center of gravity in linguistic research to study primarily or exclusively in a synchronic way, with the use of strict formal methods of the rigid (invariant) internal structure inherent in the language, formed by many relationships (oppositions) between its clearly distinguishable elements and ensuring the integrity of the language system and the possibility of its functioning as a sign system.
This school was created in 1926 on the initiative of V. Mathesius and R.O. Jacobson and existed organizationally until the early 50s. The Prague Linguistic Circle was the center of activity of the Prague School, truly international in its composition. The organizer and head of the circle was Vilém Mathesius (1882-1945). The circle included Czechoslovak scientists František Travniček (1888–1961), Jan Mukařovský (1891–1975), Bogumil Trnka (1895–1984), Bohuslav Havranek (1893–1978), Josef Vahek (1909), Frantisek Oberpfalzer, and later Vladimir Skalicka (1908), Josef Miroslav Korzinek (1899-1945), Pavel Trost (1907), Ludovit Goralek. Among the members of the circle were Russian linguists-emigrants Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy (1890-1938), Roman Osipovich Yakobson (1896-1982), and Sergei Osipovich Kartsevsky (1884-1955), close to the Geneva school. Soviet scientists Pyotr Georgievich Bogatyrev (1893-1971), Grigory Osipovich Vinokur (1896-1947), Evgeniy Dmitrievich Polivanov (1891-1938), Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky (1890-1957), Yuri Nikolaevich Tynyanov (1894-1943) collaborated with the Prague residents; Austrian psychologist Karl Ludwig Bühler (1879-1963); Englishman Daniel Jones (1881-1967), Dane Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965), Dutchman Albert Willem de Groot (1892-1963), Polish linguists Henryk Ulaszyn (1874-1956) and Witold Jan Doroszewski (1899-1976). Close in their positions to the Pragueers were the creator of the French school of structuralism, Andre Martinet (1908), the French structuralist Lucien Tenier (1893-1954), and the American Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949). The circle published (1929-1939) “Travaux du Cercle lingustique de Prague” and the magazine “Slovo a slovesnost”. His ideas were formed based on the own traditions of Czechoslovak science, as well as on the ideas of F. de Saussure, representatives of the Baudouin-Scherbovsky and Fortunatist trends.
The first presentation of a new research program on general and Slavic linguistics was given in the “Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle” (1929), containing in a fairly clear form the main provisions that were developed in the further activities of the Prague School of Functional Linguistics. They put forward principles for the structural description of language. These theses defined the language of a system of means of expression that serves a specific purpose, as a functional system with a goal orientation; it was pointed out that it is impossible to understand any phenomenon in a language without taking into account the system to which it belongs. Synchronic analysis of modern languages was proclaimed as the best way to understand the essence and character of language and to extend systemic understanding to the study of past linguistic states. The inadmissibility of the strict distinction between the synchronic and diachronic methods carried out at the Geneva School was emphasized; it was pointed out that it was impossible to exclude the concept of evolution from the synchronic description. The need for the comparative study of related languages was recognized not to be limited only to genetic problems, but also to use structural comparison and a typological approach in order to systematically comprehend the laws of convergence and divergence of languages. The theses proclaimed a call for the study of language contacts within the framework of regional associations of various scales, and expressed disagreement with statements about the arbitrary and random nature of the emergence of linguistic phenomena.
The PLC Theses laid the foundations for structural-phonological analysis. Based on the target conditioning of phonological phenomena, priority was given not to the motor image, but to the acoustic image. The importance of instrumental research into the sound side of language was emphasized. A distinction was made between three aspects of sounds - as an objective physical fact, as an acoustic-motor representation, and as an element of a functional system. The lesser importance of the material content of phonological elements was emphasized in comparison with their interrelation within the system (in accordance with the structural principle of the phonological system). The tasks of synchronic phonology included: establishing the composition of phonemes and identifying connections between them, defining phonological correlations as a special type of significant differences, registering real and theoretically possible combinations of phonemes in a given language, studying the morphological use of phonological differences (morphonology) and analyzing type k morphonemes /h in the complex of hands/h: hand, manual.
The Prague people formulated the tasks of the theory of nomination and functional syntax. They distinguished between nominative activity, the result of which is a word and which, on the basis of a nominative system specific to each language, divides reality into linguistically definable elements, and syntagmatic activity leading to a combination of words. The theory of nomination combines studies of various nominative methods and grammatical meanings of words. The theory of syntagmatic methods (functional syntax) included: the study of predication, which is the main syntagmatic action that creates a sentence; distinguishing between the formal division of a sentence into subject and predicate and the actual division into topic and statement; understanding by morphology (in a broad sense) the theory of a system of forms of words and their groups, intersecting with word formation, traditional morphology and syntax; emphasizing the role of the morphological system of language in providing connections between various forms and functions.
The Prague people were responsible for the formulation of many principles of the functional description of language. They distinguished between internal and realized speech activity, intellectualized and affective speech activity; distinguished two social functions of speech activity - as a function of a means of communication (using either a practical language or a theoretical language) and a poetic function (using poetic language). Forms of linguistic manifestations are divided into oral and written. A call is made for a systematic study of gestures; The importance of studying the relationships between speakers, the problems of interlingual connections, special languages, and the distribution of linguistic layers in cities is pointed out. The Prague team outlines a program of synchronic and diachronic research into the conditions for the formation of a literary language, its relationship to dialects and the folk language, its role in society, its stylistic features, the possibilities of intervention in its development, and the nature of the colloquial literary form of the language. A program of linguistic research of poetic language with its special phenomena in the field of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary is outlined.
I.P. Susov. History of linguistics - Tver, 1999.
LECTURE NOTES “PRAGUE SCHOOL OF LINGUISTICS”
PLAN.
Prague Linguistic School.
Basic principles.
Functional interpretation of language.
Phonological theory N.S. Trubetskoy: phonological opposition, phonological unit, functions of sound.
Syntactic views.
One of the directions of structuralism is the Prague Linguistic School, founded in 1926 and existing until 1952. Among the representatives of this school, it should be noted Mathesius, Mukarzhovsky, Skalichka and other Czech scientists. A distinctive feature of the Prague linguistic school was its collaboration with Western European and Russian scientists - Jacobson, Trubetskoy, Bloomfield (USA), Martinet (France). The theoretical views of representatives of the Prague Linguistic School were reflected in the “Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle” (1929), as well as in numerous publications.
The formation of the linguistic theory of Prague linguists was greatly influenced by some of the views of Saussure, as well as Russian linguistics, represented by the works of Fortunatov and Shakhmatov.
Three main principles of the Prague Linguistic School:
The concept of function (B. de Courtenay: the function of a sound is not identical with its physiological character; the concept of a phoneme is a single phonetic representation that arose in the soul through the mental fusion of impressions received from the utterance of the same sound).
The difference between synchrony and diachrony.
Establishing relationships between elements; language system (F. De Saussure).
So, let's try to reveal these three basic principles.
One of the most important provisions in the concept of the Prague School of Linguistics is the concept of function, which is based on Bühler’s doctrine of linguistic functions. Human mental abilities - to think, feel and express will - have given rise to three functions of language: communicative (message function), expression function and circulation function. These functions correspond to three types of statements - narrative. Exclamatory and motivating. The communicative function is associated with intellectual thinking and the way of communication. It is opposed to the function of expression.
Prague linguists developed the idea of language as a functional system, defining language as a system of means of expression serving a specific purpose.
Prague linguists introduced into linguistics such a concept as structurality: the problem of structure is introduced - the problem of the structural nature of language and the interconnectedness of its parts. Structurality and functionality are characteristic features of the Prague linguistic school.
The functional approach was fruitfully applied to the study of problems of literary language and speech culture.
Since there are different functions of speech activity, Prague linguists believe that functional languages should correspond to them.
The functionalism of the participants of the Prague School was reflected in the theoretical justification of the problem of language culture.
The Prague structuralists rejected the teachings of Saussure. In contrast, they rejected the assertion that the barriers between synchronic and diachronic analysis are insurmountable; they considered it impossible to exclude the concepts of evolution from the synchronic description; believed that not only synchrony, but also diachrony has a systemic character.
The indisputable merit of the Prague Linguistic School to world linguistics is the creation of phonology as a scientific discipline.
The most complete views on the essence and methodology of phonological problems are presented in the book Trubetskoy “Fundamentals of Phonology” (1939). These views can be summarized as follows.
A phonological system is defined as a set of phonological oppositions that can serve to differentiate lexical and grammatical meanings. The phoneme as a member of the opposition does not coincide with a specific sound, by which Trubetskoy understands “a set of features that are found at the point in the sound flow where the phoneme is realized.” Concrete sounds are only material symbols of phonemes. Trubetskoy calls such physically different sounds, in which the same phoneme is realized, variants of the phoneme. ( con – tono ).
Mandatory phoneme options, in turn, are divided into positional, combinatorial and stylistic; there are also optional phoneme options and individual phoneme options.
Definition of “phoneme” according to Trubetskoy: The minimum phonological unit that has a semantic-distinguishing function, the shortest part of the phonological opposition; has a set of different characteristics.
In the doctrine of difference in meaning, Trubetskoy introduces the following two basic concepts: "phonological opposition" And "phonological unit". Trubetskoy classifies the opposition on three grounds:
According to the first basis, oppositions are divided into one-dimensional (the basis for comparison, i.e., the set of characteristics that both members of the opposition possess equally, is inherent only to them and is not inherent to any other member of the same system); multidimensional (the basis of comparison is not limited only to members of a given opposition, but also extends to other members of the same system); proportional (the relationship between members of the opposition is identical to the relationship between members of some other opposition within the same system - voiceless/voiced); isolated (the relation in opposition is not repeated in any other pair of phonemes - /p/ : /sh/).
Oppositions in relation to their members can be private (when one member of the opposition differs from another by the presence or absence of another member - “voiced” / “non-voiced”); gradual or stepwise (members are characterized by different degrees of the same feature, for example, different degrees of solution in vowels - bAnd l/be l) And equivalent (both members of the opposition are logically equal - headlight/pair).
Based on their effectiveness, oppositions are divided into permanent (oppositions are possible in all conceivable positions) and neutralizable (in some cases, members of the opposition are independent phonemes, in others - combinatorial variants).
The classification of phonological oppositions proposed by Trubetskoy has important practical significance, because it helps to establish the phonemic significance of a particular phoneme.
Having created phonology as a science, representatives of the Prague linguistic school say that “the fruitfulness and flexibility of the new point of view is tested primarily on the sound side of the language.”
Trubetskoy highlights three main functions of sound :
Explicative (communication about the subject of speech);
Expressive (characteristics of the speaker);
Appellative (appeal to the listener).
Summarizing the above, we come to Trubetskoy’s phonological concept (“Fundamentals of Phonology” 1939):
Phonological characteristics of about 200 different languages.
The material characteristics of phonological elements are less significant than their relationships within the system.
The independence of a phoneme depends entirely on the system of oppositions in the language.
One can arrive at phonemes from the system, but not back.
Syntactic views of the Prague linguistic school.
Linguists of the Prague School put forward theory of linguistic nomination . In the study of the word as a result of nominative activity, an analysis of linguistic phenomena was carried out, which are dealt with by traditional morphology, syntax in the narrow sense of the word - parts of speech and grammatical categories - and lexicology. It was also suggested "theory of syntagmatic modes" , in which the problem of combining words was raised.
Mathesius introduced the term in his Doctrine on the Actual Division of a Sentence "communicative division". If formal division decomposes the composition of a sentence into its grammatical elements, then actual division clarifies the way the sentence is included in the subject context on the basis of which it arises. The main elements of the formal division of a sentence are the grammatical subject and the grammatical predicate. The main elements of actual division are the starting point of the utterance (topic, psychological subject) and the core of the utterance (rheme, psychological predicate).
V. Skalichka introduced the concept of "seme". Sema is the smallest indivisible unit in grammar ( stoveAnd – morpheme – And- an indicator not only of the plural, but also of the accusative case). Seme is both formal and functional, i.e. grammatical element.
R. Jacobson suggests The doctrine of case. The case system is presented as a combination of three different features:
Directionality - non-directionality of action: direction to the subject (accusative, dative and locative); absence of a sign of direction (nominative, genitive and instrumental cases).
Volume – non-volume action: an object whose name is in a given case can take part in an action to a different extent (genitive and locative cases).
Peripherality – non-peripheral action: a given object in a certain case in a given statement is assigned a secondary, secondary role, in contrast to the main (non-peripheral) objects in the statement. Peripheral cases: dative, locative and instrumental. Non-peripheral cases: nominative, accusative and instrumental.
To summarize, we can say that the research of Prague linguists has made a significant contribution to modern linguistics. The basic phonology and phonological description they developed, the development of functional grammar, and the study of functional languages and styles enriched linguistics with new approaches to the study of language.
The classical period of development of the Prague Linguistic School ended at the beginning of the Second World War. However, the linguistic theory of the Prague School still has a significant influence on modern Czech and Slovak linguists, who develop methods of structural linguistics on material from the Czech and Slovak languages.
“Prague School” is the conventional name (belongs to the literary critic V. Derzhavin) of Ukrainian poets and writers of the interwar twenty years in exile, mainly in Podebrady and Prague.
The “Prague School” includes the works of Yuri Klen, Oksana Lyaturinskaya, Galina Mazurenko, Leonid Mosendza, Yuri Daragan, Oleksa Stefanovich, Natalie Livitskaya-Kholodnaya, Oles Babii, Andrei Garasevich, Maxim Griva, Ivan Irlyavsky, Irina Narizhnaya, Maxim Chirsky and others . Some of them lived in Warsaw until the end of the Second World War (Y. Lipa, N. Livitska-Cholodna), in Münster (Y. Klen). O. Olzhich and E. Teliga died at the hands of the fascists, Y. Lipa - the Enkavedists.
Representatives of the “Prague School” are, first of all, poets, called into literature by the desire to talk about themselves and their time. Lyrics were for them a form of self-expression, quick response, and prose was a deeper understanding, multifaceted reproduction of life. That is why writers were planning a transition to prose, in which they are similar and different at the same time: for some it is the discovery of their “I”, for others it is a search for new roles, for others it is a consequence of disappointment in the possibilities of self-expression. L. Mosendz, let's say, first identified himself as a prose writer, only then as a poet; Y. Lipa, on the contrary, having become disillusioned with lyrics and the possibilities of self-expression, became a prose writer. Y. Klen left “traces” of self-movement: samples of prosopoetry, and N. Livitskaya-Kholodnaya found herself in the lyrics and did not change Erato until the end of her life.
The basis of the “Prague School” was made up of yesterday’s participants in the liberation struggle of 1917-1921, interned in camps, in particular on the lands of Poland. Here, near the city of Kalisz, an attempt was made to unite the creative energy of the pogromed Ukrainians on the basis of fiction. In May 1922, a circle of camp writers (Yu. Daragan, M. Selegy, etc.). held an organizational meeting and, together with the literary and artistic society "Venok", adopted the program of the magazine "Veselka" (1922-1923). On this basis, a literary group of the same name arose, where the figures of Y. Daragan and E. Malanyuk clearly emerged.
After Poland became too hostile towards Ukrainians, most of them went to Czechoslovakia. After all, here, in Prague, there operated the Ukrainian Free University at Charles University, the Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute named after M. Drahomanov, in Podebrady - the Ukrainian Academy of Economics, etc. E. Malanyuk, N. Livitskaya-Kholodnaya, Y. Daragan, and others studied at these institutions. E. Teliga, O. Olzhich, O. Lyaturinskaya and others. These were Ukrainian emigrant writers or children of former emigrants who perceived the defeat of the national revolution of 1917 as a national shame, but did not fall into despair in contrast to the older generation (A. Oles, N. Voronoi, V. Samoilenko, etc.). No wonder Nikolai Ilnitsky called them poets of “tragic optimism.” They were formed on the edge of the Ukrainian and European worlds, i.e. under the influence of Western culture and the historical memory of the native people stimulated by them. On the basis of this, their historiosophical (i.e., indicated by the wisdom of history) lyrics arose.
The "Prague School" had neither a charter nor a program. Therefore, the attitude towards this name is ambiguous. E. Malanyuk, N. Livitskaya-Kholodnaya denied the existence of this group. However, despite their subjective statements, it was still there, manifested in the creative features common to its representatives: bright, unique historiosophism, strong-willed imperatives, nation-creative pathos, mainly a stylistic synthesis of their lyrics.
Some “Prazians” were published on the pages of the magazine “Vestnik”, edited by , so they were also called “Visnikova quadriga” (Latin quadriga - four horses drawn by a row of water): E. Malaniuk, O. Olzhich, E. Teliga, L. Mosendz. Later Yu. Klen joined them. They, sharing the nationalist views of D. Dontsov, polemicized with him, in particular on the liberation of art from ideological bias (E. Malanyuk, N. Livitskaya-Kholodnaya, etc.), on the issue of national tradition (Yu. Lipa).
Representatives of the Prague School based their phonological research, on the one hand, on the ideas of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, N.V. Krushevsky and partly L.V. Shcherba, on the other hand, on the ideas of F. de Saussure. The synchronic approach to linguistic phenomena provided representatives of the Prague School with a definite solution to the question of what is a phoneme, what is included in the tasks of phonology, and what is the connection between phonology and phonetics. The most important in this regard are the works of N.S. Trubetskoy, R.O. Jacobson, V. Mathesius, B. Trnka, B. Gavranka, I. Vahek.
According to the Pragues, the task of the phonologist is, firstly, to establish the phonological elements of the phonological system under study (their possible combinations) and their relationships and, secondly, to determine in what way and to what extent each described language uses these phonological elements and all sorts of combinations of them. The measure of the specific use of phonological elements, which are understood as phonemes and their features, is established by the ratio of the number of implementations to the number of possibilities available in the vocabulary or in the flow of speech. For example, V. Mathesius, as a result of analyzing the vocabulary of different languages (in particular, Czech, German, English and French), came to the conclusion that different languages “use phonological elements with unequal efficiency.” Thus, the Czech language contains a larger number of consonant phonemes and can use them to a greater extent to form various combinations than German. English and French use consonant phonemes even more economically than German.
The most comprehensive and systematic views of representatives of the Prague School in the field of phonology are presented in the work of N.S. Trubetskoy “Fundamentals of Phonology,” which represents only the first part of a comprehensive work conceived by the author.
N.S. Trubetskoy based his phonological concept on the Saussurean division of speech activity into language and speech. Accordingly, Trubetskoy identified two independent specialties from the field of traditional phonetics: phonetics in the proper sense as the field of study of sounds from a physiological-acoustic point of view, and phonology, the subject of which is not sounds, but units of sound structure - phonemes. Phonetics refers to speech; phonology refers to language as a system. Thus, phonetics and phonology, from Trubetskoy’s point of view, are two independent disciplines.
The only task of phonetics, according to Trubetskoy, is to answer the question: How is this or that sound pronounced? Phonetics is the science of the material side (sounds) of human speech. And since, according to the author, these two sciences of sounds have different objects of study: specific speech acts in phonetics and the language system in phonology, then different research methods should be applied to them. To study phonetics it was proposed to use purely physical methods of the natural sciences, and to study phonology - linguistic methods themselves.
One of the largest schools of this type is Prague Linguistic School. It arose on the initiative of a Czech linguist, Willem Mathesius in the mid-20s. At his suggestion, the Prague Linguistic Circle was created. It included those Czech and German linguists who shared the positions of de Saussure and wanted to unite in order to continue the study of languages in the spirit of Ferdinand de Saussure. In addition to Mathesius, it included such Czech scientists as Trnka, Havranek, Vahek, Skalichka and a number of others. Russian linguists who found themselves abroad also actively participated in the work of the Prague Circle, as they migrated from Bolshevik Russia - Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy, lived in Prague, Sergey Kartsevsky, who worked mainly in Geneva, but regularly visited Prague, and Roman Yakobson, who also lived in Prague before the outbreak of World War II.
The Prague circle published a series of its works, and from 1935 they began to publish their own periodical magazine, which was called “ Word and literature" The magazine ceased to exist with the outbreak of World War II and the beginning of the occupation of the Czech Republic and, accordingly, resumed only in the post-war years. Theoretical views were presented in " Theses Prague Circle", which were prepared and presented at the first international congress of Slavists, which took place in Prague in 1929. Actually, from this time onwards the official recognition of the Prague people can be considered.
From the very beginning, the Prague school contrasted its concept with neogrammaticians, declaring that the neogrammatical direction is characterized by historicism, atavism, that is, it is not the structure that is studied, but individual phenomena, and the inductive method of studying linguistic facts. But at the same time, the Prague people pointed out that the legacy of the neogrammarians should not be neglected. Mathesius wrote that the neogrammarians had achieved a lot, their legacy should be studied and preserved, but the main task was the study of modern languages. Young grammarians, he wrote, focused mainly on ancient languages and related languages, but it is necessary to study not only ancient, but also modern languages first of all and study unrelated languages, compare them in order to establish a common source for the phenomena found in them or significant differences.
Prague residents proposed a new approach to studying diachrony– here they parted ways with de Saussure. In particular, Mathesius, and then his successors declared that diachronic study not only does not exclude concepts of system and function, on the contrary, without taking into account these concepts it is incomplete. Therefore, structural systems analysis should be extended to diachrony.
The teachings of de Saussure also underwent some processing. on the distinction between language and speech. De Saussure believed that the collective consciousness existing among speakers of a given language represents linguistic elements, and speech is always specific, always confined to a specific place and time, and individual. He didn't go any further. Trubetskoy moved further and stated that these two aspects of linguistic processes are so different that the sound side, in any case, should be studied by completely different sciences. There must be a doctrine of the sounds of speech, which will deal with specific physical phenomena and use the methods of natural sciences, and an opposite doctrine of the sounds of language, purely linguistic, which will deal with how some sounds are used in terms of meaning. The first he called phonetics, second – phonology. The second, i.e. phonology, Trubetskoy worked until his death in 1839, not having time to finish his work " Basics of Phonology».
The Prague residents report similar things in relation to grammar, where Saussure's distinction between language and speech was transferred. In particular, the work of the Czech scientist Skalicka, who believed that language has its own object of structural grammar, different from descriptive grammar, is very clear. Structural grammar deals with language, Saussure's langue (i.e. language), and descriptive grammar deals with Saussure's parole (i.e. speech).
Some Russian philologists had a very significant influence on the supporters of the Prague School, in particular, the ideas of Baudouin de Courtenay, who believed that everything in language is functional, and the works of the authors who in Russia formed the OPOYAZ society, who sought to draw attention to language as a special means of expression (primarily poetic language). This greatly interested the Prague people and became part of their concept of language.
Another merit of the Prague residents - teleological approach to language, i.e. target - such a point of view that any linguistic phenomenon must be considered from the point of view of the function that this phenomenon performs and the goal towards which the user of this phenomenon or construction strives. In a variety of articles it was later established that the central content of the Prague functionalism- structure, on the one hand, and functionality, on the other. Therefore, the Prague School is often called functional. Indeed, representatives of Prague have always believed that language exists in a linguistic community and that the main task of those who use the language is to establish communication with each other. Therefore, language must serve the communicative and expressive function. The selection of linguistic means depends entirely on the purpose of the utterance, therefore the different purposes of the utterance determine the functions of the language.
IN " Theses» Prague Circle is offered double division of speech activity of the functional field. The function can be social, suggesting a connection with other speaking individuals, and expressive, suggesting the expression of emotions: either the speaker seeks to evoke appropriate emotions in the listeners, or he expresses his own emotions without connection with the meaning. Social function, in turn, varies depending on the connection with non-linguistic reality. Here we can distinguish two more functions - the function communication (communications), when all the speaker’s attention is directed to conveying a certain content, and the function poetic when attention is paid not to what is said, but to how it is said.
When using language in a communicative function, non-verbal means of expression often come to the aid of the language itself - gesture, body movement, setting, people's past, place and time of communication, etc. The language used in such specific situations was called practical language by the Prague people. But in a number of cases of the same communication function, language tries to become a system independent of the situation, strives to be as complete and accurate as possible. Such a language can be called theoretical, or the language of scientific literature.
If there are different functions of speech activity, the Prague residents believe, they should correspond to different functional languages. IN " Theses“It is said this way: “Each functional speech activity has its own conditional system - language in the proper sense of the word.” Hence the parallels between the functions of literary language and functional languages. In particular, the communicative function corresponds to such a functional language as spoken. The practical-special function corresponds to the language of business communication. Scientific language corresponds to a theoretically specific function. Poetic language corresponds to the aesthetic function. And so on.
Considering functions and the various functional languages associated with them, Havranek emphasized that it is necessary from the very beginning to somewhat distinguish between literary and everyday or popular language. Literary language is divided into several functional styles. To distinguish them, special vocabulary and special grammar are used. The folk language is a special separate language; it also needs to be studied and its social role in the life of the speaking community shown.
Representatives of OPOYAZ had a great influence on the Prague people in connection with their doctrine of functions and, in particular, in the study of the poetic or aesthetic function of languages. Gavranek put forward the concept contrast between automation and actualization in language. Under automation refers to the use of language that is normal for certain purposes of expression, that is, such use in which the expression itself does not attract any attention. A updating, the opposite phenomenon is the use of linguistic means that attracts attention in itself and is perceived as unusual, devoid of automatism, de-automated - for example, as happens with poetic metaphors.
Another aspect that the Prague people dealt with, in fact they started it, was the substantiation of the problem language culture. IN " Theses“It is indicated that language culture is a concern for the development of the literary language in both its spoken and book versions, and the development of those qualities that are necessary in view of the special function of the literary language. First quality is sustainability, the literary language must get rid of unnecessary hesitations. Second – clarity: Literary language must accurately and subtly express various shades of meaning. Third – originality literary language, strengthening those of its features that determine its specificity.
A special merit of the Prague people is the creation of phonology itself as a linguistic discipline. Two Russian scientists appear here - Roman Yakobson and Nikolai Trubetskoy.
Trubetskoy listened to lectures at Moscow University from the students of Professor Fortunatov (list of names), with the Revolution he emigrated almost immediately, lived for some time in Paris, and then moved to Prague when the Czech government announced the admission of Russian emigrants to Czech universities. Trubetskoy became very interested in various vocal systems of languages. He knew several dozen vocal systems by heart, constantly turning them over in his mind, trying to compare and come to some fundamental conclusions.
He then expanded his interest in the sound systems of different languages, and eventually the basis for his research was languages that totaled more than a hundred. Based on the Saussurean dichotomy of language and speech, Trubetskoy wrote in his work “ Basics of Phonology» about the presence of two different disciplines – phonetics(the study of speech sounds, dealing with specific physical phenomena and using the methods of natural sciences) and phonology(a discipline that deals with the meaningful functions of sounds). The only task of phonetics, writes Trubetskoy, is to answer the question “how to pronounce this or that sound.” And you can answer only by studying how the acoustic effect is achieved, and the corresponding study methods are natural sciences. The facts of phonetics and phonetics as a discipline have nothing to do with linguistic significance. In other words, phonetics is the science of the material side of the sounds of human speech.
Phonology, in contrast to phonetics, studies what sound differences in a given language are associated with semantic differences, what are the relationships of distinctive elements, and according to what rules they are combined with each other in words and sentences. Phonology should rather apply the same methods that are used in the study of the grammar of languages. Accordingly, the phonologist takes into account only what, in the composition of sound, has a specific function in the language system.
This strict distinction between phonetics and phonology is realized in his major work “ Basics of Phonology" The work was unfinished, but it essentially became the first phonological encyclopedia of the 20th century. All subsequent phonological work cannot do without the work of Trubetskoy.
Phonology, therefore, studies what within a word has a specific function. Trubetskoy divides this function into 3 parts:
1. Culminative, or vertex-forming: indicates the number of syllables in words and phrases, how the syllables are arranged, etc. This also includes the problem of stress, tones, and the like.
2. Delimitation(discriminatory): indicates the boundaries between linguistic elements (words, morphemes, phrases, etc.).
3. Distinctive(meaning-distinguishing).
In his work, Trubetskoy examines the last two functions in particular detail; in particular, he devotes most of the book to the distinctive, or meaning-distinguishing function.
Trubetskoy puts forward the concept of opposition, phonological and non-phonological, in the first place in the study of the problem of meaning differentiation. “By phonological opposition we mean such an opposition of sounds that in a given language can differentiate the semantic meanings of two words.” For example, the contrast between the words “tom” and “house” implies a difference in deafness and voicedness. Thus, the opposition of deafness and non-voicedness/voicedness and non-voicedness is semantically distinctive. And the difference between burr and non-burr pronunciation of “r” in English and French is not a semantically distinctive opposition. Phonological oppositions are classified into a number of groups /Khokhlova/.
The most important thing is that there are obligatory and optional manifestations of oppositions. In particular, the most important types of opposition are privative oppositions, that is, those when one member of the opposition differs from another by the presence or absence of a distinctive feature. A member of the opposition, which is characterized by the presence of a sign, is called marked. And the one that does not have this characteristic is called unmarked. And one of the most important tasks of linguists is to determine which member of the opposition is marked (* meadow-onion). Trubetskoy clearly showed that the opposition is usually removed in favor of the unmarked member, therefore voiced/non-voiced is a distinctive feature for the Russian language.
Besides private, There is gradual oppositions implying internal gradation. A good example is the distinction between vowels based on the degree of mouth opening. Finally, the opposition equivalent, or equivalent, when both members of the opposition are logically equal, that is, marked to the same extent (* pir - shooting gallery). Equipolant oppositions are the most frequent in all languages.
Trubetskoy also created a separate discipline - morphological phonology, or morphonology. It was understood as the study of the morphological use of phonological means of the corresponding language. For example, while studying oppositions like *carrying-burden, he paid attention to the alternation of vowels “e” and “o” and consonants “s” and “sh” - both are connected by the opposition of meaning and morphological and grammatical characteristics. Thus, morphonology, according to Trubetskoy, is the connecting link between the morphology and phonology of a language. The object of morphonology is the study of the phonological structure of morphemes, the study of combinatorial sound changes (i.e., changes at the junctions of morphemes and junctions of words), and, finally, the study of sound alternations that perform a morphological function. Trubetskoy tried to put forward the concept morphonemes. He defined it as a complex consisting of two or more phonemes capable of replacing each other within one morpheme.
*hand - pen *run - run
A morphoneme cannot be defined in terms of the distinctive features that characterize it. In modern linguistics this term has been rethought. Morphoneme is a purely historical (?) concept that denotes a set of phonemes that alternate within one morpheme.
While studying grammar, the Prague residents proposed a new concept of division of linguistics. Instead of the usual phonetics, lexicology, and grammar, the Prague residents proposed a dual system: on the one hand, nomination theory, which included traditional morphology and a rather narrowly understood syntax (in particular, the meaning of parts of speech and forms of words), and, on the other hand, theory of syntagmatic modes, which involved studying the combination of words arising as a result of syntagmatic activity (in particular, combining them with the rest of the sentence). Morphology, according to the Pragues, is not an independent discipline, but intersects, on the one hand, with the theory of nomination, and on the other hand, with the theory of syntagmatic methods.
The Prague residents achieved very significant success theory of functional syntax. Its founder was Mathesius, who, back at the turn of the 50s, wrote that the main problem of syntax is the problem of the relationship of a sentence to a specific situation of utterance. Accordingly, Mathesius distinguished statement as some kind of speech structure or construction associated with speech activity, and offer as a unit of syntax proper, a unit of language structure. Following the teaching created by the infant grammarians about the psychological subject and psychological predicate, Mathesius proposed dividing syntax into two independent parts: actual syntax and actual syntax, which deals with the functional perspective of the sentence. Formal division divides a sentence into grammatical branches, and actual division offers a way to include a sentence in a subject context. The main elements of formal division are grammatical subjects and predicate, or subject and predicate. The main elements of actual division are the starting point of the utterance, or subject(i.e., what is known to both the speaker and the listener in a given situation), and the core of the utterance (i.e., what the speaker reports about the starting point), or rhema.
Within the framework of theme and rheme, Mathesius described specific types of utterances. He showed that the psychological coloring of terms among neogrammarians led to the fact that the topic of actual division was actually removed from the sentence, because they dealt exclusively with small quotations. For example, *bird flies and *bird flies. Mathesius showed that the corresponding concepts can be transferred to complete texts. He demonstrated this at the beginning of many Russian fairy tales: “once upon a time” is the theme; further information is given about who exactly lived; further continues the correlation of the second sentence of the type “and they had a chicken Ryaba” with the core of the statement presented in the first sentence. That is, in the second sentence something new about the grandfather and grandmother is communicated to the listener. This alternation of theme-rhematic structure of the sentence characterizes the entire text. In everyday speech, Mathesius wrote, the picture of actual division is much richer than in literary language, because in an everyday situation it is possible to select more topics of utterance regarding which something new is communicated to the listener.
The theory of actual division- an undoubted merit of the Prague people, although it was not very noticed by Western linguistics. First of all, because Mathesius wrote his works exclusively in Czech. Apart from the Czechs themselves and the Slavic scientists, primarily Russians, the rest did not pay attention to this. Only at the end of the 60s, when the Americans also took up the relevant topic, did they begin to intensively use the concept of functional perspective of a sentence or actual division (syntax). In many eastern countries there is an opinion that this is the original development of the American school, but this is not so.
There have been attempts to approach it completely differently. study of language grammar. In particular, they belonged Skalicke. He wrote that in grammar there are the smallest indivisible units that can be called semami. Semes are usually expressed as continuous series of phonemes, i.e. morphemes. Semes, therefore, are both formal and functional elements, therefore this is a grammatical element. Subsequently, the concept of seme was slightly changed, but for its time it was quite a revolutionary proposal.
The use of distinctive features that Trubetskoy established for phonology largely characterized grammatical works Jacobson. Here we need to mention his work of the mid-30s, which was called “ Outline of the general doctrine of case" It examined the system of Russian cases. The system of Russian cases was presented as a set 3 distinctive features (focus, volume And peripherality), they characterized 6 main Russian cases.
· Directionality/non-directionality sign indicates the direction towards an object, usually represented by the accusative, dative and locative cases, or the direction away from the object – case. A number of cases are characterized by the absence of a directional sign. This is nominative, genitive, instrumental. All this was reinforced with examples from literary texts.
· Sign of bulk/non-bulk indicates that the object whose name is in a given case must take part in the action to a different extent. In particular, the genitive and locative cases are characterized by volume.
· Sign peripheral/non-peripheral indicates that a given subject in a certain case is assigned a secondary or secondary role in contrast to the main roles in the subjects of the statement. *I read book in the evening
This scheme of Jacobson lasted in linguistics for more than 30 years, and was subjected to some criticism from Anna Verbitskaya. Verbitskaya is a linguist of Polish origin who studied in the USA and listened, in particular, to the lectures of the young Chomsky. From the very beginning, I experienced a certain psychological hostility towards him (the story with the boots), and later I was mainly engaged in criticizing him. She devoted her works to the linguistic picture of the world. Verbitskaya showed that one or another distinctive feature is not always a common grammatical set for different specific uses of the case. In particular, he looked at the Russian syntagms *throw stones and *throw stones. In her opinion, the meaning of the instrumental case here completely coincides with the meaning of the accusative case. And in the accusative there is no sign of peripherality. Subsequently, a number of linguists took up this problem, in particular, Apresyan, who showed that semantic differences still exist here and using the accusative or instrumental case is not the same thing. In one case, we are talking about a prepared pile of stones that a person throws, and in the other case, stones that were at hand, for example, while walking along the sea. On this basis, other continuations arose in Apresyan’s works: * planting cucumbers in a garden bed and * planting a garden bed with cucumbers; *load grain into containers and *load containers with grain.
The activities of the Prague School contributed to the revival of the already half-hearted thesis about typological study of languages. The neogrammarists, unlike Humboldt and Schleicher, did not deal with this problem almost at all (historicism and psychologism; they were not very interested in typology). If it was necessary to use any classifications, they relied on the works of Humboldt and Schleicher. The Prague people believed that a systematic analysis of any language should be carried out at a strictly synchronous level with the help, if required, of typological comparison, and, accordingly, they dealt with issues of typology. The ideas of typological study of languages found quite wide application among them. In particular, they compared Czech with a variety of languages - related (in particular, Russian) and unrelated (some languages of Southeast Asian countries).
In addition to typology, Prague residents were interested and areal or geographic linguistics. Here they really did an enormous amount, because it was they who developed such a concept as “ language union». Language Union- this is a certain formation, a group of geographically adjacent unrelated or not closely related languages that have significant structural similarities in the field of syntax, morphology, and phonology. A classic example is the Balkan language union, which, according to them, included 4 language systems: Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian (now the concept has been expanded). All these languages belong to different families. Their relationship is distant, but they all share common morphological units. All of them contain articles that occupy post-positions, i.e. is placed after a name or noun phrase. Often in these languages the forms of the dative and genitive cases are the same. And forms of the future tense are formed using an auxiliary verb in all languages, which clearly goes back to the verb meaning “to want.” In addition, all four languages lack a morphological infinitive. Instead of “I want to go to the cinema,” they say “I want me to go to the cinema.” The absence of a morphological infinitive manifested itself, as later studies showed, in the Gypsy dialects of Great Britain, where Gypsies lived from the 15th century. 16th century, but the structures are the same. This is a clear sign that in their movement to Great Britain as their final destination, the Roma lived for some time in the Balkans and acquired the main features of the languages of the Balkan linguistic union.
It was a very interesting attempt Prince Trubetskoy in his 1937 article, which was called “Thoughts on the Indo-European Problem,” where he tried to define the concept of “Indo-Europeanness” for languages on the basis of typological criteria and nothing more. Trubetskoy’s idea was that there were no Indo-Europeans, and their single language was the common language of completely different ethnic groups, which were conventionally united into one large component. Trubetskoy highlighted 6 typological features, which were common to all Indo-European languages:
· lack of vowel harmony, which is observed in the Ural, Altai, Turkic languages, etc.
· the group of consonants that are allowed at the beginning of a word are almost the same in complexity as those that are allowed inside the word. Indo-European languages in this sense are different from the Finno-Ugric or Altaic languages, where clusters of consonants are not allowed at the beginning of a word.
· in Indo-European languages, a word does not necessarily begin with a root; There are no Indo-European languages that do not have prefixes. Prefixes are not used in the Uralic and Altaic languages.
· the formation of forms is carried out not only with the help of affixes, but also with the help of alternating vowels within stems (*write-wrote; *sing-sang). Internal inflection is used even more widely in Semitic-Hamitic languages, but it is not typical for the Uralic and Altai languages.
· along with the alternation of vowels, the alternation of consonants also plays an important role in the transformation of grammatical forms (* ride-food; * run-run). There is no Indo-European language in which grammatical alternation of consonants does not exist to one degree or another. It is absent in the Semitic-Hamitic and North Caucasian languages.
· (not always works) the subject of an intransitive verb in Indo-European languages is interpreted in exactly the same way as the subject of a transitive verb. On this basis, he contrasted the Indo-European languages with the Caucasian ones. But this kind of thing is quite common in Indo-Iranian languages, most of which are ergative. in languages of the nominative system, and the opposition between agent (producer of action) and patient (carrier of action) / or have a split context, which manifests itself in a certain segment of the grammar. In this situation he was not entirely right.
Final conclusion Trubetskoy: any language that is endowed with these 6 features is Indo-European. Two decades passed, and the French linguist E. Benveniste showed that there is a language that is very distant, clearly not having any family ties with Indo-European, but it is a language that has all 6 characteristics of Trubetskoy - the language of Takelma, one of the tribes of North American Indians. Although 6 signs do not always work, Benveniste rightly wrote in his constructions that he is not against most of Trubetskoy’s ideas, that it is necessary to develop more thorough schemes for the typological study of languages and try to combine typological criteria with comparative historical ones.