IVAN ALEXANDROVICH BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY
(1845-1929)
Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay is a major Russian and Polish linguist. Baudouin de Courtenay made a revolution in the science of language: before him, the historical direction dominated in linguistics, and languages were studied exclusively from written monuments. Baudouin proves that the essence of language is in speech activity, and calls for the study of living languages and dialects. Only in this way can one understand the language mechanism and verify the correctness of linguistic descriptions. The importance of this new approach to language learning can be compared to the role played by the principle of experiment in the natural sciences: without experimental verification, a theory is dead.
Baudouin de Courtenay himself has been studying various Indo-European languages for many years, which he masters so much that he writes his works not only in Russian and Polish, but also in German, French, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian and other languages. He spends several months on expeditions, studying Slavic languages and dialects, and at the same time carefully recording all their phonetic features. At that time, such a method of studying language seemed strange to many: after all, linguistics was an armchair, book science.
From Baudouin's phonetic works grew his theory of phonemes and phonetic alternations, which still retains its scientific value. The logical development of the theory of phonemes was the theory of writing created by Baudouin. It contained many of the basic ideas and concepts that appear in modern works.
Attentive to the facts of living languages, Baudouin at the same time believed that the most important thing in linguistic descriptions is a reflection of the systematic nature of the language, “grouping by oppositions and differences.” This combination of rich linguistic material and a systematic approach to its description allowed Baudouin not only to give deeply accurate “portraits” of various languages and dialects, but also to make generalizations, without the desire for which, in his own words, “no real science is conceivable.” "
Baudouin de Courtenay was distinguished by innovation of thought and courage in expressing new ideas. Having due respect for the achievements of his predecessors, he, however, did not hesitate to reject everything routine, hindered the development of science, and put forward provisions that struck his contemporaries as unusual.
Thus, he was the first to apply mathematical methods in linguistics; argued that a language can not only be dispassionately studied, but also direct its development, consciously influence it (i.e., he stood at the origins of a whole linguistic trend, which later became known as the theory and practice of language construction or language policy); With his phonetic research, the methodology of which was radically different from everything that had been in this area before him, Baudouin laid the foundation stone for future experimental phonetics, which gave especially significant results in the middleXXV.
When studying language, Baudouin did not confine himself to the framework of linguistics. On the contrary, he believed that linguistics should be based on the achievements of psychology and sociology, that a complete study of linguistic facts is impossible without referring to the data of ethnography, archeology, and cultural history. Baudouin not only declared all this, but practically implemented it in his works, when you get acquainted with them, the breadth and depth of the author’s knowledge in a variety of fields is amazing.
Baudouin de Courtenay's early maturity as a scientist is striking. The famous Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, in a volume published in 1891, calls the 46-year-old Baudouin de Courtenay “one of the outstanding modern linguists.” Baudouin himself was an unusually modest person. About himself, for example, he wrote that “he was distinguished by unsatisfactory scientific training and a small stock of knowledge.” This stock of knowledge, however, was enough for him not only to create a number of deeply original works, but also to found the famous Kazan school of linguists. After Kazan, where Baudouin worked in 1874-1883, he taught at Yuryevsky (now Tartu; 1883-1893), Krakow (1893-1900), St. Petersburg (1900-1918), Warsaw (since 1918) universities.
Having lived a long life full of scientific research and creativity, de Courtenay made an invaluable contribution to the science of language. He was ahead of his time, and many of the ideas he expressed began to be developed in depth in linguistics only decades later.
FILIPP FEDOROVICH FORTUNATOV
(1848-1914)
“The business that young associate professor Fortunatov began on January 22, 1876 at 10 o’clock in the morning has grown incredibly,” he wrote about his teacher. On this day he began his lectures at Moscow University.
He was an unusually powerful creator of new linguistic ideas. In his works on comparative historical linguistics, he revised and updated the interpretation of many complex issues about ancient processes in Indo-European languages.
Fortunatov’s research in the field of Slavic-Baltic accentology is of great importance. First of all, he discovered the law of stress movement from the beginning to the end of a word, which is reflected in both Slavic and Baltic languages, once determined by phonetic position. Let's compare, for example, Russian: im. P. hand, wine P. hand; the accusative case retains the old place of stress, and in the nominative case there was once a shift in stress from the initial to the final syllable. This law is known in linguistics under the name “Fortunatov-de Saussure law”.
Often a few words in Fortunatov’s works gave rise to new scientific research in the future. Thus, Fortunatov’s laconically formulated doctrine of grammatical form caused a whirlwind of deeply fruitful ideas in linguistics.
Scientists from different countries came to study with them: O. Brock (Norway), Thorbjornson (Sweden), Pedersen (Denmark), van der Kop (Holland), Paul Boyer (France), Solmsen, Bernecker (Germany), Murko, Polivka ( Czech Republic), Belic, Tomic (Serbia), Mikkola (Finland), Bogdan (Romania) and others.
The leading scientists of the 10-30s understood the ideas and the general direction of his search especially correctly and deeply. of our century. This was the second generation of the Moscow linguistic school (the first, naturally, was Fortunatov himself).
The third generation of the Moscow linguistic school - , skiy, skaya, . They are active builders of Soviet linguistics in the 30-60s.
ALEXANDER ALEKSANDROVICH REFORMATSKY
(1900-1978)
Alexander Alexandrovich Reformatsky is an outstanding Soviet linguist. He is known to philologists primarily as the author of the university textbook “Introduction to Linguistics,” from which they studied. Both teachers and students know: if you prepare “according to Reformat”, you will pass the exam well.
A bright, colorful personality was evident in everything: whether he was writing scientific papers, speaking from the pulpit, or sitting at the table with guests.
An expert in Russian culture, history, Russian life, a passionate hunter, an avid chess player, a keen connoisseur of music, a master of poetic, playful impromptu, he was primarily a linguist. And in all his hobbies he remained a linguist: listening to opera arias, he noticed pronunciation features that required linguistic explanations; from the theory of the chess game he borrowed the principle of “excessive defense” and used it when studying the structure of the text (an example of this kind of redundancy: a period at the end of a sentence and a capital letter at the beginning of the next one); reflections on hunting terms helped him in understanding the linguistic essence of the term in general.
By Alexander Alexandrovich’s own admission, all his life he was in love with linguistics, with the word, even with the phoneme.
In the works, a high level of scientific abstraction, constructive accuracy of analysis are organically combined with close attention to the facts of a living language: to the word, to the sound, to the shade of sound. Language interested him in all its manifestations: in spoken and written speech, in everyday conversation and professional use, in literary text and in singing.
Skii's scientific interests were extremely diverse: he wrote (largely innovative) works on phonology and phonetics, theoretical issues of grammar, word formation, vocabulary, writing theory, terminology, machine translation, history of linguistics and other branches of linguistic science. And here’s what’s remarkable: in each of these branches, Alexander Alexandrovich took on the solution of the most difficult and complex problems of modern linguistics, for example: the relationship between synchrony and diachrony, the system in language, how language is embodied in speech. He studied these problems deeply, professionally - and at the same time knew how to turn them from complex ones into simple ones, accessible to the understanding of many.
- an excellent teacher, lecturer, and promoter of linguistics. He knew how to captivate listeners with the subject of his lectures, his temperament, and the lively and rich Russian word. His lectures, to an even greater extent than his printed works, “combined the incompatible”: strict scientific reasoning, a pun, a paradoxical collision of facts, an excursion into areas far from linguistics, lines from the poems of his favorite poet, a joke, an aphorism... And all this illuminated by spiritual fire, permeated with passion that left no room for indifference in the listeners.
And there was one more characteristic: he loved youth and “young” ideas in science. He expressed many of his thoughts about language and linguistics orally, in conversations with friends, among whom young people always predominated.
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
(1857-1913)
There are scientists who, with their works, lay the foundations of entire branches of knowledge.
The outstanding Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was at the origins of not one, but several scientific directions. He is the founder of the so-called sociological school in linguistics. At the same time, many provisions of Saussure’s linguistic concept served as the basis for the formation of structural linguistics, another direction in modern linguistics.
His early work (he wrote it at age 21) on the original vowel system of Indo-European languages was a real discovery. It was here that Saussure expressed a famous hypothesis that amazed not only his contemporaries, but also his descendants: while studying languages that originated from a single Indo-European proto-language that had disappeared many centuries ago, Saussure suggested that this proto-language should have had certain sounds. Moreover, from those “traces” that were preserved in Indo-European languages, he predicted the nature of these sounds ( Laryngeal hypothesis). Half a century later, when the Hittite language was deciphered, this prediction of Saussure was completely confirmed.
Saussure published very few works during his lifetime. And even after his death, when A. Séchet and C. Bally published the main work of their teacher - the series of lectures “A Course in Modern Linguistics” - all of Saussure’s works fit into one volume of 600 pages. But their originality and depth are such that they still feed ideas into world linguistics.
The linguistic credo of F. de Saussure is not free from shortcomings and extremes - this has been noted more than once by many of his critics. But the positive things that Saussure did in linguistics more than compensate for these shortcomings. Saussure's merits were especially great in the development of fundamental theoretical problems of linguistics. Here is Saussure's solution to some of these problems.
1. Saussure views language as an integral system of signs in which each element is determined by all the others. He compares language with other sign systems and expresses the opinion that it is necessary to create a science that “studies the life of signs within the life of society.” Thus, he expressed the idea of creating semiotics, i.e. he stood at the cradle of another branch of knowledge.
2. Saussure distinguishes between language and speech. Speech is individual and specific; it is full of random, unimportant features. Language is an abstraction, it is “a system of purely linguistic relations.” Saussure believed (now this opinion is not shared by scientists) that linguistics should study only language, and speech is an object of non-linguistic sciences.
3. In pre-Saussurean linguistics, the historical approach to the facts of language prevailed. Saussure was the first to separate and contrast two possible aspects of language learning - diachronic (historical) and synchronic. Since language is a system of relations, it is possible to study and understand these relations only with a synchronic, “supratemporal” view of language: time destroys systemic connections. In defending this view, Saussure compared language to a chess game. When we sit down to play chess, it does not matter to us what material the chess pieces are made of - we must know the rules of the game and the significance of each piece. To understand how a language is structured, how it functions, we must also know the system of its meanings, the rules of organization of this system. But how this system arose, what historical path its elements have traveled, is unimportant.
F. de Saussure was an excellent teacher. For two decades he taught at the University of Geneva and trained a galaxy of talented students who later became remarkable linguists.
ALEXANDER MATVEEVICH PESHKOVSKY
(1878-1933)
If everything that Peshkovsky wrote was collected into one large book, it could be called “Russian grammar as illuminated by Peshkovsky.” And this coverage consists of a special view of Russian grammar.
Peshkovsky's grammar is realistic. It begins with form, that is, with what everyone can hear, see, and compare. And by comparing, we hold on to the meaning. Therefore, we immediately see that in combination broken glass not the same meaning of the root at all glass-, which appears in verb forms drain. Peshkovsky's grammar begins with a meaningful form, supported by meaning and guaranteed by it.
The main book (it was published 7 times: the first - in 1914, the seventh - in 1956) - “Russian syntax in scientific coverage.”
She was born as a result of eight years of teaching in Moscow gymnasiums, out of a desire to introduce her 14- and 15-year-old students to the real, scientific grammar of their native language. This is also evident from Peshkovsky’s texts: in them there is always us, but not the author’s, individual, but we are a duet with the reader: “Let’s take the floor black and form a series of words from it... let's begin to think about the meaning of the word black... Having gained a foothold in this position, we will be able to grasp one more feature in the meaning of the verb...”
Together with his reader, Peshkovsky reflects, observes and experiments. It was he who came up with many ingenious linguistic experiments (later he wrote about the importance of experiments in linguistics).
Peshkovsky's observations expanded the range of facts related to grammar: he was the first to show that intonation can be a grammatical means; it is included in the work where more tangible means - prepositions, endings, word order - are “underdeveloped.”
Peshkovsky's grammatical realism is the filter through which the linguistic ideas that were in circulation at the beginning of our century were passed. When explaining various aspects of the grammatical structure of the Russian language, Peshkovsky relied on the ideas of his teacher Fortunatov, as well as Potebnya and Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. These sometimes unexpected combinations, together with his real discoveries, constitute the essence of his - Peshkovsky's - coverage of Russian grammar. It was adopted by outstanding linguists: Shakhmatov. Kartsevsky, Shcherba - those who valued fidelity to the linguistic fact. Peshkovsky was not characterized by constant adherence to what was once taken as a basis. A student of Fortunatov’s formal school, he was not afraid to deviate from the system of his ideas when his own observations or convincing arguments of other linguists led to this. He was not afraid to abandon what he himself understood and wrote, reprinting his main book for the third time (1927 ), Peshkovsky, as he reports in the preface, writes almost the entire text anew.
The time of Peshkovsky’s life, the time of his linguistic work, was a difficult time of the formation of a new Soviet culture and science. schools. During this difficult time, Peshkovsky wrote Russian language textbooks filled with the belief that science should be understandable and needed by every little citizen of our state, by everyone who would like to teach children to treat their language competently and lovingly.
Peshkovsky believed that a linguist should “actively preach” intervene in the linguistic life of society, in the practice of school linguistic education. He himself did this all his life - tirelessly and passionately. He explained that only conscious mastery of grammar makes a person truly literate, helps him speak culturally and clearly. He drew attention to the enormous social significance of linguistic culture: “The ability to speak is the lubricating oil that is necessary for any cultural-state machine and which it would simply stop.”
We have not yet learned all of Peshkovsky’s lessons. His books, written for children, are read carefully by new generations of adult linguists.
ALEXEY ALEXANDROVICH SHAHMATOV
(1864-1920)
- outstanding linguist and historian of the endXIX- startedXXV. Shakhmatov’s scientific inclinations manifested themselves very early: in 1881, as a seventeen-year-old youth, he published his first scientific article “On the criticism of ancient Russian texts” in the largest European Slavic journal. The following year, as a high school student in his final year, he acted as an unofficial opponent at the defense of his dissertation by the future academician Levsky, impressing the Moscow professors with the depth of his critical analysis. Having become a student at the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, Shakhmatov was engaged in scientific activities under the guidance of the most prominent linguists of that time, Comrade I. As a student, he writes “Research on the language of Novgorod lettersXIIIAndXIV centuries." (published in 1886), which still remains a model of scientific description and publication of ancient texts, critical analysis of their language in order to identify the features of the local dialect. In the spring of 1894, the Council of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, when defending a dissertation, immediately awarded the 29-year-old the academic degree of Doctor of Science. In 1899 he became the youngest academician in the history of Russian philology.
Tov's scientific interests were concentrated in the field of history and dialectology of Russian and other Slavic languages. He owns a series of authoritative studies on the reconstruction of the ancient Slavic and Old Russian system of sounds and forms, which were summarized in the fundamental “Essay on the Ancient Period of the History of the Russian Language” (published in 1915 in the series “Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology”) and in the “Course of the History of the Russian Language” ", read in 1908-1911. at St. Petersburg University.
In his reconstructions of the ancient linguistic state, he substantiated the need for the widespread use of dialectological data, which, after his work, became the main source of historical study of language. It is in the light of dialectological data that the testimony of ancient written monuments acquires new meaning to restore the features of living ancient Russian speech.
Special merit goes to in developing the problems of the origin of the East Slavic peoples and their languages, to which he devoted about two dozen works. The first (“On the question of the formation of Russian dialects”) was published in 1894, and the last (the brochure “The Most Ancient Fates of the Tribe”) was published in 1919. He was the first to create a harmonious and logical one. a strict concept based on the idea of an inextricable connection between the history of a language and the history of the people speaking it.
Although particular characteristics and conclusions currently do not retain their significance (the material on which he relied at the turn XIX- XX centuries, was still very meager), however, the foundations in the principles of constructing his concept remain relevant and allow us to develop the problems posed * using new material.
As a historian, he was especially involved in the origin and composition of Russian chronicles. He owns the concept of Russian chronicles, which has become firmly established in science, revealing the complex relationships between different editions of the lists that have come down to us and even unknown (but predicted by scientists and later discovered) chronicles. He established the time of creation and sources of the oldest chronicle collections, and in particular the “Tale of Bygone Years” - the main chronicle work created by the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery Nestor at the beginningXII V. A number of his works are devoted to the problems of chronicle writing.
In the last period of his activity, he taught a course in modern Russian literary language at St. Petersburg University, and then separately a course in the syntax of the Russian language. “Syntax of the Russian Language” had a huge influence on the subsequent development of domestic syntactic teachings.
FEDOR IVANOVICH BUSLAEV
(1818-1897)
- one of the brightest Russian philologists of the middleXIX V. He dealt with a wide range of issues in linguistics, literary criticism, folklore and art history, and was a brilliant teacher and lecturer, academician, and professor at Moscow University.
His childhood years were spent in Penza, where he was his first gymnasium teacher of the Russian language. After graduating from Moscow University in 1838, he himself worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature for a number of years. His methodological experience is summarized in the book “On Teaching the Russian Language” (1844), where he proclaimed the need for a comparative historical study of the native language after mastering its basic rules. Highly appreciated by contemporaries, this first domestic scientific and methodological manual on teaching the Russian language was republished almost a century later - in 1941, which testifies to the vitality of the scientific and pedagogical ideas of its author.
The next book had an equally brilliant fate - “An Experience in Historical Grammar of the Russian Language” (1858), originally created as a textbook on the Russian language and developing the idea outlined in the first book about the need for historical study of language, which he considered the only scientific one. During the author’s lifetime, this book went through five editions under the title “Historical Grammar of the Russian Language,” and was last republished in 1959 - a century after the first edition; The title of the book over time became the generally accepted name for the course on the history of the Russian language taught at universities and pedagogical institutes. F. I. Buslaev also owns the first “Historical Reader of the Church Slavonic and Old Russian Languages” (1861), which includes the most important written monuments of medieval Russia. in an article dedicated to memory, he noted that it was his works that laid the foundation for the historical teaching of the Russian language in educational institutions in Russia.
In his linguistic works he reflected a very characteristic of mid-European linguistics.XIXV. a romantic view of an ancient state
language as an unusually rich composition of sounds and forms; and the subsequent history of the language was assessed as a gradual loss of the wealth that “the language had from time immemorial.” He explained this by the fact that, being a tool for expressing progressively developing human thought, language is continuously enriched with words and new syntactic constructions, but loses its former richness of morphological forms, because, according to the scientist, from a “living organism” it is increasingly becoming “a conventional sign for expressing thoughts". What is valuable to us in this idea is the conviction that “the history of a language is inseparable from the history of its speakers,” and above all their spiritual life and continuously developing thinking
In the 60s , who by this time had become an academician, became increasingly interested in the history of literature and oral folk art. In 1861, a collection of studies “Historical Sketches of Russian Folk Literature and Art” was published, containing articles on the Russian epic and poetry XVII century, about ancient Russian folk literature and art, which contains interesting observations based on a comparison of Russian medieval art with Byzantine and Western European art. Many works by F. I. Buslaev are devoted to the issues of ancient Slavic mythology and its reflection in folk art.
In the 70s The scientist's interests are increasingly shifting to the study of iconography, wall painting, book ornament and other types of ancient art, where he carries out major research that is considered fundamental in this field of knowledge. In 1888, for these works, Moscow University awarded him the title of Doctor of Theory and History of Art. These scientific interests were not an accident: he always highly valued the aesthetic figurative power of language.
ALEXANDER AFANASIEVICH POTEBNYA
(1835-1891)
Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya is an outstanding Ukrainian and Russian philologist. He differed from his contemporary scientists in his extraordinary breadth of scientific interests and encyclopedic knowledge. This was clearly manifested in his works: they are devoted to Russian grammar (the main work is “From Notes on Russian Grammar” in 4 volumes), the sound structure of the Russian language, the differences between southern and northern Russian dialects, the history of the Ukrainian and Russian languages, their comparative analysis , history of basic grammatical categories. The results obtained from his comparative study of the syntax of East Slavic languages are especially significant.
These works used extensive material, which was analyzed with such thoroughness, even meticulousness, with the involvement of so many sources that for many decades the works remained an unsurpassed example of linguistic research.
And this is only part of the scientific creativity of a talented scientist. He viewed language as a component of culture and the spiritual life of the people. Hence the interest in the rituals, myths, and songs of the Slavs: after all, here the language is embodied in various, sometimes bizarre, forms. And Potebnya carefully studies the beliefs and customs of Russians and Ukrainians, compares them with the culture of other Slavic peoples and publishes several major works that made a contribution not only to linguistics, but also to folklore, art history, ethnography, and cultural history.
I was keenly interested in the connection between language and thinking. One of his first books, “Thought and Language” (1862), is devoted to this problem. Here - and he was only 26 years old - he not only showed himself to be a thinking and mature philosopher of language, not only showed amazing erudition in specialized research (domestic and foreign authors), but also formulated a number of original and deep theoretical positions. Thus, he writes about the organic unity of matter and the form of the word, at the same time insisting on the fundamental distinction between the external (sound) form of the word and the internal (only many years later this position was formalized in linguistics in the form of a contrast between the plane of expression and the plane of content). Exploring the features of thinking, which, according to Potebnya, can only be realized in words, he distinguishes between poetic (figurative, symbolic) and prosaic types of thinking. He connected the evolution of language with the development of thinking.
In the creative method, attention to the smallest facts of linguistic history was organically combined with interest in fundamental, fundamental issues of linguistics. He was deeply interested in the history of the formation of the categories of noun and adjective, the opposition of noun and verb in Russian and other Slavic languages. He reflects on general issues of the origin of language, on the processes of language renewal in the course of its historical development and the reasons for the replacement of some methods of expression by others, more advanced ones. “New languages,” he wrote in one of his works, “are generally more perfect organs of thought than the ancient ones, for the former contain greater capital of thought than the latter.”
At the time, the “atomic” approach to language learning prevailed; in other words, each fact, each linguistic phenomenon was often considered on its own, in isolation from others and from the general course of linguistic development. Therefore, Potebnya’s idea that “languages have a system,” that this or that event in the history of a language should be studied in its connections and relationships with others, was truly innovative and ahead of its time.
The glory of Potebnya the scientist far outlived Potebnya the man. Some of his works were published posthumously (for example, “From Notes on the Theory of Literature” - in 1905, the 3rd volume of “Notes on Russian Grammar” - in 1899, and the 4th in 1941). And to this day, scientists are discovering fresh thoughts, original ideas in the creative heritage of the great philologist, and learning methodological thoroughness in the analysis of linguistic facts.
BAUDOIN DE COURTENAY
Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) was an outstanding linguist of his time. He lived a long and generally happy life, although it included forced separation from his native land and even imprisonment.
The scientist’s unusual surname goes back to the ancient French family of de Courtenay, and his ancestors ruled in the Latin Empire, a state founded by the crusaders in Constantinople. Later, one branch of the family moved to Poland, and Ivan Alexandrovich himself belonged to the Polish nobles. He was born in Radzymin near Warsaw, in the part of Poland that was part of Russia; graduated from the University of Warsaw. Having completed his studies abroad and defended his doctoral dissertation at the age of 29, Baudouin de Courtenay went to teach at Kazan University. It was in Kazan that he found himself as a scientist: there his scientific concept was formed, and there he created a school of linguists. Later, de Courtenay worked in St. Petersburg, where he also had many students. Baudouin de Courtenay wrote and published his works in three languages: Polish, Russian and German. He actively participated in political life, advocating for the rights of the languages of the small peoples of Russia. In two countries - Russia and Poland - he is rightfully considered a national linguist.
Scientific activity of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay was diverse. He studied Russian, Polish, Slovenian and other Slavic languages, Indo-European studies and Turkology.
Baudouin de Courtenay radically revised Dahl's dictionary, making it more orderly. With the active participation of de Courtenay, a reform of Russian spelling was prepared, carried out in 1917-1918. He was the first professional linguist to pay serious attention to the artificial international languages being created at that time (Esperanto, etc.). De Courtenay for the first time made the thieves' jargon of the Russian language an object of scientific research, devoting an article to it.
Beginning with his early works, Baudouin de Courtenay emphasized that scientific linguistics is not limited to the study of linguistic history and the kinship of languages. He pointed out that a “comprehensive analysis of positive data, already established languages” is necessary, among which the main place is occupied by “the living languages of peoples in all their diversity.” For that time, this approach was innovative.
The principles of studying phonetics and grammar for Baudouin de Courtenay were determined by a psychological approach to language. A new stage in the development of phonetics began with the birth of experimental phonetics. For the first time, it became possible to use instruments to study the acoustic properties of the human vocal apparatus. In this regard, Baudouin de Courtenay distinguished between two different disciplines that study speech sounds. One of them is acoustic-physiological phonetics, which studies the objective properties of sounds using instruments. Another de Courtenay gave the name “psychophonetics”, but later the term phonology was established for it. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay was the first to identify the main unit of phonology – the phoneme. This term existed before, but Baudouin de Courtenay gave it a new meaning: the phoneme, unlike sounds, exists quite objectively, in the same way for everyone. As the smallest unit of language, it belongs to the human consciousness, and not to the stream of sound speech. A phoneme combines sounds that are indistinguishable to a native speaker. Baudouin de Courtenay, when isolating phonemes, directly relied on the “linguistic instinct” of native speakers. Of course, the psychological perception of the phoneme is reflected in alphabetic writing. Students of Baudouin de Courtenay took an active part in the development of new alphabets for the languages of the peoples of the former USSR.
Another unit of language, first identified by I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay's was morpheme (from the Greek word for "form"). De Courtenay also associated the concept of morpheme with the human psyche. The concept of morpheme, like phonemes, has firmly entered the world science of language. One of the first in world science, Baudouin de Courtenay posed the question of what a word is; It turns out that a word can be defined in different ways, and its different properties require the identification of different units, which may not coincide with each other and with what is usually called a word.
I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay considered all of the listed problems on the material of modern languages, without referring to linguistic history. Baudouin de Courtenay was interested not only in how exactly a particular sound changed in a language, but also in the search for patterns of linguistic changes. He tried to identify the reasons for such changes.
The fact that in his historical research I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay always sought to identify the general direction of development of languages, which allowed him to understand one of the most important patterns in the history of the Russian language. Having studied the written records, Baudouin de Courtenay discovered that many apparently different phonological changes reflected the same tendency. The role of vowels in distinguishing words was steadily weakening, and the role of consonants, on the contrary, was strengthening. De Courtenay believed that linguistics should be able not only to explain the facts of the past, but also to predict the development of languages in the future. Baudouin de Courtenay was right: and in the 20th century, Russian phonology develops precisely in the indicated direction. Baudouin d'Courtenay was also right that modern linguistics pays the greatest attention to “living languages accessible to observation”; the importance of the experiment has increased; Linguistics is becoming increasingly closer to psychology and sociology; psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics have emerged as special disciplines. Finally, as Baudouin de Courtenay predicted, linguistics has become a “more exact science” that increasingly uses “quantitative, mathematical thinking.”
Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay - the largest Russian and Polish linguist Baudouin de Courtenay made a revolution in the science of language; before him, the historical direction dominated in linguistics, and languages were studied exclusively from written monuments. Baudouin argues that the essence of language is in speech activity, and calls for the study of living languages and dialects. Only in this way can one understand the mechanism of language and verify the correctness of linguistic descriptions. The importance of this new approach to the study of language can be compared with the role played in the natural sciences by the principle of experiment Without experimental verification, the theory is dead.
Baudouin de Courtenay himself has been studying various Indo-European languages for many years, which he masters so much that he writes his works not only in Russian and Polish, but also in German, French, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian and other languages. He spends several months on expeditions, studying Slavic languages and dialects, and at the same time carefully writes down all their phonetic features. At that time, such a method of studying language seemed strange to many - after all, linguistics was an armchair science, a book
From Baudouin’s phonetic works grew his theory of phonemes and phonetic alternations, which still retains its scientific value. The logical development of the theory of phonemes was the theory of writing created by Baudouin. It contained many of the basic ideas and concepts that appear in modern works.
Attentive to the facts of living languages, Baudouin at the same time believed that the most important thing in linguistic descriptions is the reflection of the systematic nature of the language, “grouping according to oppositions and differences.” This combination of rich linguistic material and a systematic approach to its description allowed Baudouin not only to give deeply true “portraits” of various languages and dialects, but also to make generalizations, without the desire for which, in his own words, “no real science is conceivable.”
Baudouin de Courtenay was distinguished by innovation of thought and courage in expressing new ideas. Having due respect for the achievements of his predecessors, he, however, without hesitation rejected everything routine that interfered with the development of science, and put forward provisions that struck his contemporaries as unusual.
Thus, he was the first to apply mathematical methods in linguistics, to prove that language can not only be dispassionately studied, but also to direct its development, to consciously influence it (that is, he stood at the origins of a whole linguistic trend, which later became known as the theory and practice of language construction or language policy); With his phonetic research, the methodology of which was radically different from everything that had happened in this area before him, Baudouin laid the foundation stone for future experimental phonetics, which gave especially significant results in the middle of the 20th century
When studying language, Baudouin did not confine himself to the framework of linguistics. On the contrary, he believed that linguistics should be based on the achievements of psychology and sociology, that a complete study of linguistic facts is impossible without referring to the data of ethnography, archeology, and cultural history. All this Baudouin not only declared, but practically carried out in his works, which, when you get acquainted with them, amazes the breadth and depth of the author's knowledge in a variety of areas
Bodan de Courtenay's early maturity as a scientist is striking. The famous Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, in a volume published in 1891, calls the 46-year-old Baudouin de Courtenay “one of the outstanding modern linguists.” Baudouin himself was an unusually modest person. About himself, for example, he wrote that “he was distinguished by unsatisfactory scientific training and a small stock of knowledge.” This stock of knowledge, however, was quite enough for him not only to create a number of deeply original works, but also to found the famous Kazan school of linguists After Kazan , where Baudouin worked in 1874-1883, he taught at Yuryevsky (now Tartu; 1883-1893), Krakow (1893-1900), St. Petersburg (1900-1918), Warsaw (since 1918) universities.
Having lived a long life full of scientific research and creativity, I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay made an invaluable contribution to the science of language. He was ahead of his time, and many of the ideas he expressed began to be developed in depth in linguistics only decades later.
Abstract in Russian on the topic:
Russian linguist Ivan Alexandrovich
Baudouin De Courtenay.
S. Korsakovo
Introduction
2.1 Biography
2.2 Scientific activities
References
Introduction
LINGUISTICS (linguistics) is the science of natural human language and, in general, of all languages of the world as its individual representatives, the general laws of the structure and functioning of human language. There are the most general and specific branches of linguistics. General, one of the large sections of linguistics, deals with the properties inherent in any language, and differs from private linguistic disciplines, which are distinguished in linguistics by their subject - either by a separate language (Russian studies), or by a group of related languages (romance studies).
Scientific linguistics originated at the beginning of the 19th century in the form of general and comparative historical linguistics. The main directions in the history of linguistics: logical, psychological, neogrammatical, sociological and structural linguistics.
In modern linguistics, the traditionally established division of disciplines is preserved.
Disciplines about the internal structure of language, or "internal
linguistics", these include: phonetics and phonology, grammar (with a division into morphology and syntax), lexicology (with a focus on phraseology), semantics, stylistics and typology.
Disciplines on the historical development of language: history of language:
historical grammar, comparative historical grammar, history of literary languages, etymology.
Disciplines about the functioning of language in society, or “external linguistics”, namely: dialectology, linguistic geography, areal linguistics, sociolinguistics.
Disciplines that deal with complex problems and arise at the intersection of sciences: psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics, engineering linguistics (sometimes understood as an applied discipline), applied linguistic disciplines proper: experimental phonetics, lexicography, linguistic statistics, paleography, history of writing, linguistic decipherment of unknown writings and others .
1. Moscow linguistic school
Since the end of the 19th century, schools of linguistics, both Western and domestic, began to take shape, within which certain traditions of language learning developed: methodological views on science, solutions to fundamental issues of the emergence of languages, their evolution, etc. In Russia at the end of the 19th century, two large linguistic schools emerged - Moscow and Kazan. Their founders were two great Russian linguists - Philip Fedorovich Fortunatov and Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay. Naturally, the basic views on language and the ways of studying it by the “founding fathers” subsequently influenced the research of their students. Fortunatov's scientific interests, for example, included questions of the sound evolution of languages, the relationship between language and thinking, grammatical theory, theory of syntax, etc. Fortunatov and his students have always been distinguished by the rigor of their scientific research. Among his students were Shakhmatov, Pokrovsky, Porzhezinsky, Lyapunov, Thomson, Budde, Ushakov, Peterson and others. The ideas of the founders of the school and their basic scientific principles were preserved by the next generation of linguists Avanesov, Reformatsky, Sidorov, Kuznetsov. This generation was distinguished by its open-mindedness and interest in new methods of language research. A new direction appeared in science at that time - phonology. It was this problem that became one of the central ones for the third generation of representatives of the Moscow linguistic school. In the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, a phonological theory was formed on the basis of the then new structural methods of studying language and Baudouin De Courtenay’s teaching on the phoneme. The new direction was called the Moscow Phonological School, which subsequently became widely known throughout the world.
2. Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin De Courtenay (Jan Ignacy) (1845-1929)
2.1 Biography
The scientist’s unusual surname goes back to the ancient French family of De Courtenay, and his ancestors ruled in the Latin Empire, a state founded by the crusaders in Constantinople. Later, one branch of the family moved to Poland, and Ivan Alexandrovich himself belonged to the Polish nobles. He was born in Radzymin near Warsaw, in the part of Poland that was part of Russia; graduated from the University of Warsaw. Having completed his studies abroad and defended his doctoral dissertation at the age of 29, Baudouin de Courtenay went to teach at Kazan University. It was in Kazan that he found himself as a scientist: his scientific concept was formed there. Later, de Courtenay worked in St. Petersburg, where he also had many students. He actively participated in political life, advocating for the rights of the languages of the small peoples of Russia, for which he was arrested in 1914. In 1918 he returned to Poland, where he was engaged in political activities. Baudouin-De Courtenay died in Warsaw on November 3, 1929.
2.2 Scientific activities
Baudouin De Courtenay is a major Russian and Polish linguist.
He revolutionized the science of language: before him, the historical direction dominated in linguistics, and languages were studied exclusively from written monuments. Baudouin proves that the essence of language is in speech activity, and calls for the study of living languages and dialects. Only in this way can one understand the language mechanism and verify the correctness of linguistic descriptions. The importance of this new approach to language learning can be compared to the role played by the principle of experiment in the natural sciences: without experimental verification, a theory is dead.
Working in Kazan in 1874-1883, the scientist founded the Kazan linguistic school, within which the talent of the outstanding scientist Bogoroditsky flourished, and under his direct influence the formation of the remarkable Russian linguists of the 20th century Shcherba and Polivanov took place. Later he founded the St. Petersburg School of Linguists.
Courtenay's students took an active part in the development of new alphabets for the languages of the peoples of the former USSR.
Baudouin De Courtenay himself studied various Indo-European languages for many years, which he mastered so much that he wrote his works not only in Russian and Polish, but also in German, French, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian and other languages. He spent several months on expeditions, studying Slavic languages and dialects, and at the same time carefully recording all their phonetic features. At that time, such a method of studying language seemed strange to many: after all, linguistics was an armchair, book science. His discoveries in the field of comparative (typological) analysis of Slavic languages anticipated the emergence of ideas that were later reflected in the works of the outstanding Slavic typologist Jacobson. From Baudouin's phonetic works grew his theory of phonemes and phonetic alternations, which still retains its scientific value. The theory is outlined in his “Experience in Phonetic Alternations” (1895). The logical development of the theory of phonemes was the theory of writing created by Baudouin. It contained many of the basic ideas and concepts that appear in modern works. Thus, Baudouin acted as the founder of phonology and the predecessor of Trubetskoy’s theory.
The principles of studying phonetics and grammar for Baudouin de Courtenay were determined by a psychological approach to language. A new stage in the development of phonetics began with the birth of experimental phonetics. For the first time, it became possible to use instruments to study the acoustic properties of the human vocal apparatus. In this regard, Baudouin De Courtenay distinguished between two different disciplines that study speech sounds. One of them is acoustic-physiological phonetics, which studies the objective properties of sounds using instruments. Another De Courtenay gave the name "psychophonetics", but later the term phonology was established for it.
Baudouin De Courtenay was the first to use mathematical models in linguistics. He proved that it is possible to influence the development of languages, and not just passively record all the changes occurring in them. Based on his work, a new direction arose - experimental phonetics. In the 20th century, scientists achieved outstanding results in this area.
Baudouin considered linguistics as a psychological and social science, taking the position of psychologism, he considered the language of the individual to be the only reality, but at the same time he strived for an objective approach to language, he was one of the first to raise the question of precise methods in linguistics, and proposed to isolate words on the basis of strict procedures. For the first time in world science, he divided phonetics into two disciplines: anthropophonics, which studies the acoustics and physiology of sounds, and psychophonetics, which studies ideas about sounds in the human psyche, i.e. phonemes; Subsequently, these disciplines began to be called phonetics and phonology, respectively, although some of Baudouin's direct students tried to preserve his terminology. He introduced the terms “phoneme” and “morpheme” in their modern understanding into the science of language, combining the concepts of root and affix in the general concept of morpheme as the minimum significant unit of language. He was one of the first to refuse to consider linguistics only a historical science and studied modern languages. He researched the question of the causes of language changes and studied sociolinguistics. He polemicized with the logical approach to language, the neogrammatical concept of sound laws, and the use of the “organism” metaphor in the science of language.
Courtenay was the first to identify the main unit of phonology - the phoneme. This term existed before, but Baudouin De Courtenay gave it a new meaning: the phoneme, unlike sounds, exists quite objectively, in the same way for everyone. As the smallest unit of language, it belongs to the human consciousness, and not to the stream of sound speech. A phoneme combines sounds that are indistinguishable to a native speaker. Baudouin De Courtenay, when isolating phonemes, directly relied on the “linguistic instinct” of native speakers. Of course, the psychological perception of the phoneme is reflected in alphabetic writing.
Introduction...………………………………………………………………2
Chapter 1. Life and creative activity of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay
1.1. Kazan school and other linguistic circles………….3-4
1.2. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and contemporary linguistics…….4-5
1.3. Principles of judgment I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay………………..6-7
Chapter 2. Linguistic views of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay
2.1. The concept of language and linguistic laws…………………………….8-9
2.2. The concept of phoneme…………………………………………………………….…..9-13
2.3. The doctrine of grapheme and morpheme…………………………………13-15
2.4.Syntagma. Hierarchy of linguistic units……………………….16-19
Conclusion…………………………………………………….…..20-21
List of used literature……..…………………….....22
Introduction
In the middle of the 20th century, the linguistic works of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay began to be of considerable interest to scientists involved in linguistics. As is known, in the 20th century the problems that Baudouin de Courtenay studied at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the most interesting and productive period of his creative activity, became relevant. His ideas began to actively develop in modern linguistics. Of course, his highest merit is considered to be the creation of the theory of phonemes and the founding of phonology as a new section. In addition, he was close to the problems of sciences related to linguistics, especially psychology. It is not surprising that in search of answers to questions that interested him, the scientist often went beyond the scope of linguistics. As it gradually became clear, the teachings of Baudouin de Courtenay had a strong influence not only on linguistic teaching in Poland and Russia, but also in Western Europe.
Chapter 1. Life and creative work of Baudouin de Courtenay
1.1. Kazan school and other linguistic circles.
Ivan Aleksandrovich (Jan Ignacy Necislaw) Baudouin de Courtenay was born in 1845 in Poland, where in 1866 he graduated from the department of Slavic philology of the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Warsaw, after which he was sent abroad. He spent the years from 1868 to 1870 in St. Petersburg, where I.I. became his scientific supervisor. Sreznevsky. During the same period of his life, he received a master's degree for his work “On the Old Polish Language before the XIV Century” and was allowed to lecture on the comparative grammar of Indo-European languages. In subsequent years, Baudouin de Courtenay was a professor at several universities in Russia, but for the last few years he worked at the University of Warsaw in Poland, where he died in 1929. After numerous internships abroad, Baudouin de Courtenay called himself an “autodidact,” a scientist who came to his views and ideas independently, and not under the influence of any scientific school.
I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay was not just engaged in research and teaching activities. In different cities and countries, he organized scientific circles, where he brought together young specialists who were passionate about linguistics. The first of these schools was Kazan, which, without exaggeration, played a big role in the development of linguistics in Russia and beyond.
The most outstanding representatives of the Kazan school were V.A. Bogoroditsky, N.V. Krushevsky, S.K. Bulich, A.I. Alexandrov, V.V. Radlov. Among the Polish students are G. Ulashin, K.Yu. Appel, St. Schober, T. Benii, V. Doroshevsky.
The direction of Baudouin de Courtenay is usually called the Kazan school, regardless of where his linguistic research was conducted. The only exception is the St. Petersburg period, which entered linguistics under the name of the St. Petersburg school.
Despite the significant contribution made by the Kazan school, at that time the name of this linguistic circle as a school caused a skeptical smile among many scientists. Baudouin de Courtenay himself commented on this: “That something like this exists, there cannot be the slightest doubt. After all, there are people who declare without hesitation that they belong to the Kazan linguistic school; there are well-known methods of presentation and views on scientific issues common to all these people; Finally, there is a well-known, if not hostile, then at least unkind attitude towards the “representatives” of this school.” [Sharadzenidze 1980: 7]
1.2. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and contemporary linguistics.
One way or another, the works of Baudouin and the views of the Kazan school still raise many controversial issues. One of the main questions is whether Baudouin belongs to the neogrammatical movement. As is known, he was a contemporary of the Neogrammatians. A number of provisions put forward by the scientist agree with the views of malodogrammatians. But at the same time, this did not stop him from challenging many of their theories and assumptions. It is for this reason that his name is often mentioned along with those who were in opposition to the neogrammatical teaching (G. Schuchardt, O. Jespersen). However, the theory was put forward and is still supported by some scientists that Baudouin and his students belonged to the neo-grammatical movement. But then it turns out that Baudouin de Courtenay was both a supporter and an opponent of the neogrammarians.
Another such issue is the relationship between Baudouin and Krushevsky and F. Saussure. Many scholars have noticed the similarities between Saussure's "Course" and the ideas of Baudouin de Courtenay, which has caused a great deal of discussion. The question arose as to what caused these coincidences. Either this is a simple parallel development of views, or there was an influence of one scientist on another. Most researchers have spoken out in favor of Baudouin's influence on Saussure's concepts, some doing so in a rather harsh manner. The most delicate statement seems to be V.V. Vinogradova: “At present, the conviction is beginning to develop and strengthen that F. de Saussure was familiar with the works of Baudouin de Courtenay and, in presenting his “Course of General Linguistics,” was not free from the influence of Baudouin’s theories.” [Sharadzenidze 1980: 17]
The range of Baudouin de Courtenay's research was very wide. Issues of general linguistics constitute only part of his work, albeit a very extensive one. He also paid enough attention to the study of Slavic languages. Of particular interest to him was live speech. Baudouin's theory of alternation gained recognition.
Baudouin de Courtenay is recognized as one of the first phoneticians in linguistics. Thanks to his students, the first phonetic laboratories were created in St. Petersburg and Kazan.
Vocabulary also seemed to Baudouin de Courtenay to be a very interesting branch of linguistics. He revised and expanded Dahl's dictionary. Also studied social vocabulary and jargon, children's vocabulary and language pathology.
Considering the views of Baudouin de Courtenay, one may wonder whether he had a single system of views. Many of his students lament the fact that Baudouin did not create works that would fully reflect all of his linguistic views. They noted more than once that he did not create a complete theory of language, however, undoubtedly, he had his own, original point of view on the main issues of theoretical linguistics.
1.3. Principles of judgment I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay.
The judgments of Baudouin de Courtenay are based on several principles that determine the specifics of his judgments. Among these principles:
1. The desire for generalizations. Baudouin, as a thinker, was characterized by the desire for generalizations, which is a necessary condition for general linguistic research.
2. Objective language learning. The second principle that Baudouin followed is the requirement for an objective study of language. It follows from the general methodological position that science must consider its subject in itself, as it is, without imposing foreign categories on it.
3. Linguistic flair. Baudouin himself wrote about this: “I believe that every subject must first of all be examined in itself, isolating from it only those parts that actually exist in it, and not imposing on it from the outside categories alien to it. In the field of language, the objective guide for such scientific operations should be the sense of language and, in general, its mental side. I refer to the sense of language because for me it is not some kind of fiction, not some kind of subjective self-deception, but a real and completely objective fact.”
4. Criticism of traditional grammars. Baudouin's works provide a critical analysis of traditional philological grammars. He opposes the fact that they contain a mixture of oral and written speech, as well as letters and sounds.
5. On the importance of studying living languages. Baudouin de Courtenay wrote: “For linguistics...much more important is the study of the living, i.e. now existing languages, rather than languages that have disappeared and are reproduced only from written monuments...Only a linguist who has thoroughly studied a living language can allow himself to make an assumption about the characteristics of the languages of the dead. The study of the languages of the living must precede the study of the languages of the extinct." [Sharadzenidze 1980: 23]. By studying living languages, Baudouin means studying not only territorial dialects, but also social ones, that is, the speech of all layers of society, including the language of street boys, traders, hunters, etc.