Prague Linguistic Circle Papers: v. 4

TRAVAUX DU CERCLE LINGUISTIQUE DE PRAGUE n.s. PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE PAPERS

TRAVAUX DU CERCLE LINGUISTIQUE DE PRAGUE n.s. PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE PAPERS VOLUME 4 Edited by

EVA HAJICOVÁ PETR SGALL
Í HANA JIR TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Eva Hajicová, Petr Sgall, Jir
í Hana and Tomáš Hoskovec (eds) Prague Linguistic Circle Papers, Vol. 4 ISSN 1383-7583 ISBN 90 272 5444 3 (Eur.) / 1 58811 175 X (US) (alk. paper) © 2002 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

Table of contents Preface

vii

Section I: The Prague tradition in retrospect Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School of Linguistics †Josef Vachek Anton Marty’s philosophy of language †Oldrˇich Leška Die Typologie des Ungarischen †Vladimír Skalicˇka

3 83 101

Section II: Grammar Theoretical description of language as a basis of corpus annotation: The case of Prague Dependency Treebank Eva Hajicˇová

111

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different? Yishai Tobin

129

Sur la paradigmatisation du verbe indo-européen (deuxième partie) Tomáš Hoskovec

143

Section III: Topic–focus articulation The Russian genitive of negation in existential sentences: The role of Theme–Rheme structure reconsidered Vladimir Borschev and Barbara H. Partee

185

Synonymy vs. differentiation of variant syntactic realizations of FSP functions Libuše Dušková

251

Topic–Focus articulation as generalized quantification Jaroslav Peregrin

263

Information structure and the partition of sentence meaning Klaus von Heusinger

275

vi

Contents

Section IV: General views Freedom of language: Its nature, its sources, and its consequences Petr Sgall

309

The natural order of cognitive events Philip A. Luelsdorff

331

Section V: Poetics The principle of free verse Miroslav Cˇervenka

365

Preface

The present volume consists of two parts, the first of which (Section 1) brings three contributions connected with the classical period of the Prague School. J. Vachek looks back at the times of the beginnings of the Circle, which he witnessed as a student and a young researcher. O. Leška characterizes the work of the philosopher A. Marty, who as a professor of the German University in Prague, was one of the teachers of V. Mathesius, so that his ideas had an important impact on the activities of the Circle. The last paper of this section, written by V. Skalicˇka, the typologist of the School, brings some very important insights into the study of linguistic typology. The main body of the volume contains papers delivered at the conference “Function, Form, and Meaning: Bridges and Interfaces’’, organized in Prague in 1998 on the occasion of the celebrations of the 650th anniversary of Charles University. The contributions in Section 2 are devoted to issues of grammar of different languages including a syntactic annotation of a large Czech text corpus, a comparison of Hebrew conditionals with English, a characterization of the typology of the Indo-European verb. Section 3 is focused on topic–focus articulation (information sentence structure, functional sentence perspective), with a concept of ‘perspective’ introduced as close to but distinct from ‘topic’ and with three different viewpoints on the semantics of information structure. Two broader essays on the nature of language are presented in Section 4, while the last Section analyzes the structure of free verse. We offer this volume as a contribution to the continuing fruitful interaction between the work of the Prague School and the more and less closely related approaches of our colleagues elsewhere. This was also the aim of the mentioned conference, which took place in connection with the twelfth cycle of Vilém Mathesius lecture series. We are grateful to all those who made these two events possible, especially to Charles University, to the Joint Institutes of Advanced Studies and to the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute, as well as to Alena Böhmová and other members of the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, who actively and enthusiastically participated in organizing the conference. Eva Hajicˇová Jirˇí Hana

Tomáš Hoskovec Petr Sgall

Section I

The Prague tradition in retrospect

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School of Linguistics

Josef Vachek Translated by Z. Kirschner

Introduction

3

.

External history of the Prague Linguistic School

5

.

The origin and maturation of the Prague Linguistic Theory

12

.

The personalities of the founding generation of the Prague School

21

.

Hard post-war decades of the Prague School (1950–1990)

37

.

The heritage of the Prague School in our domestic and in world linguistics

43

We have finished reading Vachek’s Prolegomena (afterword by Oldrˇich Leška)

52

Appendix I. Articles of the association ‘‘Prage Linguistic Circle’’ Appendix II. Lectures delivered at the Prague Linguistic Circle

55 60

References Editors’ note

71 80

Introduction A research worker who decides one day to write out a detailed history of the Prague School of Linguistics (henceforth PS) will be facing no easy task. It is not only phenomenalistic data that he must be concerned with in his work (though mere detecting them today, after more than six decades, encounters considerable difficulties of heuristic as well as purely technical nature), but, above all, he will be expected to incorporate the linguistic endeavours of PS into national as well as international contexts. Another objective will consist in determining the manifold factors both internal and external that exerted their influence on PS at the time of its coming into existence and in the course of further development of its concepts; and, naturally, in tracing the differentiation emerging within the PS; also the range of its impact at home as well as abroad must be considered, as it was felt from the

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beginnings up to the present. There is no doubt that each of the above points taken by itself is important enough to require monographic treatment. Circumscribed time and space resources allotted to us to deal with this task have forced us to confine ourselves to outlining just prolegomena to a more extensive work. We wanted to limit ourselves to recording the events in the history of PS and the features that have appeared to us as really essential and characteristic. With respect to the restrictions mentioned above we haven’t been able to go into the history of partial problems discussed in PS, whether phonological, grammatical or other (in part we have touched upon them, at least in passing, in the monograph Vachek 1966a).1 We decided to concentrate on keeping track of the origins and maturation of what appears to us as essential contributions and specificity of PS: its conception of language as a functionally and structurally regarded systemic whole. Another intention of ours lay in initiating (at least in part and approximately) present-day readers into that unique working climate, the captivating companionability, which was so characteristic of PS in the times of gradual ripening of its conception. In doing so we are conscious that owing to this intention our report acquires a more memoir-like character than might be regarded as tolerable. In our opinion, however, our direct participation in at least a certain period of the history of PS (in its ‘‘classical’’ stage) obliges us to share this personal experience with those who came after us and those who are still to come. We firmly believe that the danger of subjectivism inevitably connected with a personal view of the given topic has considerably diminished today, when a certain lapse of time separates us from the history described, though the intensity of this experience has not decreased even after so many years. By all that has been said here the sources of our work have been specified. They were our own reminiscences and written records as well as the recollections of other, at that time still living witnesses and participants in the activities and events to be mentioned; further, of course, also reports in publications (mainly scientific, as is only natural) that were appearing both in our country and abroad. On this occasion it is not possible to forget the always readily offered and repeatedly given support represented for us in this work by consultations with the then still living members of the founding generation of the Prague Linguistic Circle. They were especially Professor Bohuslav Havránek, Professor Bohumil Trnka, and, from among our contemporaries and of the same generation background, our unforgettable friend Professor Vladimír Skalicˇka. It was they who would often lend me materials and documents otherwise hardly accessible at that time. For all that they deserve acknowledgment and sincere thanks. In concluding this introduction let us emphasize that it is solely the linguistic aspects of the Praguian theory that stand in the centre of our attention, its particular applications in the works of PS, and its significance for linguistics here

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

as well as abroad. That is also why we do not take a closer look at the very important part of the activity of PS which lies in the realm of aesthetics and literary science; nevertheless, we cannot leave it unmentioned here, be it only in a remark made in passing. Its more detailed evaluation would require a separate monograph conceived, of course, by a research worker well versed in both the disciplines involved. Prague, October 29, 1994.

.

External History of the Prague Linguistic School

Naturally, the name Prague School has not been given to the Prague linguists by themselves: it does not occur in the history of our own and world linguistics before the Praguian researchers attracted the attention of foreign experts by their works and principles. As far as could be ascertained, the term Prague School (henceforth PS) was first used in a prospectus in which Dutch phoneticians were inviting broader circles of research workers to their First International Congress of Phonetics that was to take place in Amsterdam in 1932, i.e., probably some time in the second half of 1931, after the Prague linguists had already scored their successes at conventions in The Hague, Geneve and, of course, at the Prague Congress of Slavonic Studies. The term école de Prague became quite common surprisingly promptly, so that in the mid-thirties it appeared in general and univocal use, even in international context. The real origins of PS, however, reach much deeper into the past. The beginnings and the prehistory of the Prague Linguistic Circle, the first organisational form of PS, were described in a very interesting and truthful way by its founder Vilém Mathesius in a lecture delivered at the festive session of the Circle in 1936, on the occasion of an anniversary — the first decade of its existence (see V. Mathesius 1936a). From this paper we learn that the first meeting of the Circle, then only a free association, took place at the Prague University Department of English (Mathesius was its director at that time, the Department having its seat at Nr 4, Veleslavínova Str.) on October 6, 1926. Five Prague members took part in the session (Bohuslav Havránek, Roman Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius, Jan Rypka and Bohumil Trnka); the only foreign participant, Dr. Henrik Becker from Leipzig, read a paper on ‘‘Der europäische Sprachgeist’’ (The European language spirit). The lecture was followed by a lively discussion and the participants agreed to meet at such sessions regularly. As shown by Mathesius, during the first academic year of its existence, in all, nine lecture sessions of the Circle took place, while in the following year the number went up to eleven. Papers were given not only by Prague lecturers

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(besides the participants in the first session, who all contributed their lectures, it was also Vladimír Buben, Bohuslav Ilek, Jan Mukarˇovský and František Oberpfalcer), but also by distinguished foreign guests: the Russians Sergej Karcevskij, Nikolaj Sergeevicˇ Trubeckoj (Trubetzkoy), Petr Bogatyrev and Boris Tomaševskij, and the French scholars Léon Brun and Lucien Tesnière. However, the number of participants in the meetings, according to the then preserved attendance records, for a long time failed to exceed ten. This made it possible that for several years a remarkable practice was established to organise, in addition to the usual meetings held on the premises of the Department, also informal lecture talks invited to the households of individual members. This custom, which substantially strengthened friendship ties among the members of the Circle, at the same time aided in introducing into its activities a good mutual understanding indispensable for collective work — a feature very soon to become characteristic of the Circle. This custom was abandoned only in the first half of the thirties, after the number of members grew to such an extent that similar meetings were no longer technically possible. Becker’s lecture marks the beginning of the Circle’s history; however, it is necessary to pay heed to its prehistory as well, which can be traced yet much deeper back into the past. Mathesius mentions another earlier informal meeting of a handful of young linguists in which Havránek, Jakobson, Karcevskij and Trnka took part. At this meeting Mathesius presented his reflections on new currents and trends in linguistics (later published as Mathesius 1926). Nevertheless, for the oldest public presentation in which many of the later principles of the Circle had been proclaimed we have to go still further back to the past, as early as the year 1911. On February 6 of that year, at a meeting of the philosophical-historicalphilological class of the Royal Czech Society of Sciences, Mathesius delivered a lecture ‘‘O potenciálnosti jevu˚ jazykových’’ (On the potentiality of the phenomena of language), which was then printed soon afterwards, in the subsequent year (Mathesius 1911–1912). Even after many years Mathesius used to recollect with a bitter smile how his exposition at that meeting fell practically flat and failed to evoke any response, there being no discussion — the authority in chair, Professor Josef Zubatý, very politely bestowed his praise on the lecture, which he nevertheless judged ‘‘too subtle’’ for the audience then present. Obviously, Mathesius at that time, with his views in which he emphasized, among others, the necessity of a synchronic, ahistorical approach to language facts, remained in complete isolation. Only after some young researchers with understanding for his conception appeared within the Czech linguistic community could Mathesius envisage more clearly a formation of an organisational and working centre, which the Prague Circle proved to become later; Mathesius himself explicitly points out that it was his young colleagues R. Jakobson and B. Trnka with whom he first found understanding and support for his positions.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

By coincidence it happened that the Circle made its debut abroad and not at home. An occasion for it was offered by the First International Congress of Linguists convened to The Hague for April 1928 and to whose organizers four members of the Circle (Jakobson, Karcevskij, Trubetzkoy and Mathesius) sent their individual answers to the principal question posed by the preparatory committee of the Congress: which is the most suitable method for a full description of language. The three Russian members of the Circle and Mathesius found that their own theses and the theses of the followers of the Genevese school, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (their materials had also been submitted to the Congress in advance) agreed in a number of essential points. Therefore, still before the relevant plenary session took place, they arrived at a joint resolution proclaiming a programme of a new, synchronically oriented linguistic analysis. This programme was then unanimously approved by the Congress at its session on April 12, 1928; this was the first great international success of the new Prague linguistic conception. Encouraged by this success, the Prague linguists decided to work out (for the first international congress of Slavonic scholars which was to convene in Prague in October of the following year 1929 on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Josef Dobrovský) a detailed conception of linguistic analysis based on the principles of the Prague approach to language facts, an approach which they called structurally functional. The theses summarizing this conception were being elaborated for several months by a special committee of the Circle consisting of Havránek, Jakobson, Mathesius and Mukarˇovský in cooperation with some other members, above all Miloš Weingart. As Mathesius reminisces, the meetings of the committee used to take place at a small coffee-house Derby in the then Beˇlského Rd (nowadays Dukelských hrdinu˚) in Prague 7. The theses represented a collective work indeed, although their separate sections were prepared by individual members of the committee. The theses were submitted to the Congress in two versions, Czech and French; the Congress approved them and elected an international commission of ten linguists assigned to do the preparatory work in the analysis of Slavonic languages according to the principles presented by the Circle.2 The Congress of Slavonic Scholars was very important for the Prague linguists also in that the Circle’s very rich editorial activity was started in connection with it. On the occasion of the Congress the first two volumes appeared of a series that was later to become one of the most renowned in the world linguistics, Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague (henceforth TCLP). The first volume entitled Mélanges linguistiques contained in addition to the French version of the theses of the Circle (1929) altogether twelve treatises on general linguistic themes. The language of both the first volumes was predominantly French, which remained to serve as the permanent basic vehicle of TCLP, and to a lesser extent German; English was to be met in TCLP only much later. The second volume of the series contained

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Jakobson’s French monograph on the phonological evolution of Russian (Jakobson 1929) as compared with similar developments in other Slavonic languages. Both the volumes met with extraordinary interest of the wide linguistic public, not only that concerned with Slavonic studies. Contacts with foreign research workers holding similar views were established, especially with the Polish and Russian followers of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and with modern American linguistics represented, above all, by Edward Sapir (1922) and Leonard Bloomfield (1933).3 Such and similar contacts before long crystallized into a design to appear before the Second International Congress of Linguists (which was to take place in Geneva at the end of August 1931) with a detailed programme of research in phonology, i.e. in a functionally conceived study of speech sounds, and, of course, with an account of factual results achieved up to then in that particular sphere of work. To make it possible to discuss a number of relevant problems of methodology, the Circle dared to assume a responsibility which appears hardly credible today: an international phonological conference was invited to Prague for December 1930, in which event no less than fifteen foreign linguists from eight European countries took part. Among them were such very famous names as that of the Austrian psychologist Karl Bühler, Dutch linguists Jacob van Ginneken and Albert Willem de Groot, and also a Norwegian Celtic scholar Alf Sommerfelt; from Germany the Ukrainian psychologist, later on a renowned Comeniologue, Dmytro Cˇyževs´kyj, from Poland the Slavonic scholar Witold Doroszewski, the Polonists Kazimierz Nitsch and Stanisław Szober; and, of course, neither Karcevskij nor Trubetzkoy failed to appear. For four days the Czech as well as foreign participants were giving fundamental papers, followed by lively discussions. The papers and a summary of the discussions were then published in the fourth volume of the series Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague, still in time before the opening of the Genevese Congress (even this seems incredible to us nowadays). The same volume contained a proposal drawn up in French of a standardised phonological terminology and a brief outline of the principles which phonological transcription should comply with, both accompanied by illustrative examples (Cercle 1931a, b). Also the organisational success of the conference was important: it was agreed to found the International Phonological Association whose task would be phonological description of the greatest possible number of the languages of the world. Trubetzkoy was elected as chairman of the association, Jakobson became acting secretary and Mathesius treasurer. The Genevese Congress in August 1931 unanimously approved the principles of the Circle regarding the research in phonology and the International Phonological Association was equally unanimously recognized as an organisation affiliated to CIPL (Comité international permanent de linguistes, in charge of the organisa-

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

tion of international congresses of linguists). As is obvious, also the Genevese Congress meant another international success of the Prague functional structural linguistic conception, in the same way as later both the first two international congresses of phonetics (in Amsterdam in 1932 and in London in 1935), not to speak of a number of international meetings of minor scope or of more distant subjects of study; such was, e.g., the session of the linguistic section at the international congress of ethnologists and anthropologists in London in 1934. Moreover, an increasing need was felt for a more profound impact on the domestic linguistic events, although as early as 1929 Mathesius, Havránek and Trnka reported on the principles of PS at a convention of secondary school teachers of philosophy, philology and history in Prague. (This convention, however, failed to get the publicity given to the subsequent actions of the Circle.) An opportunity for a more notable action presented itself in 1930, when the Circle published, on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, two papers, delivered already in the preceding year by J. Mukarˇovský (about Masaryk as a stylist) and by R. Jakobson (on linguistic problems in Masaryk’s work); both the lectures appeared in one booklet (Cercle 1931c). The motivation of the lectures was, of course, not purely scientific: it was, at the same time, an expression of gratitude to a sponsor who by subscribing a considerable sum made possible the publication of the first two volumes of TCLP. A much more important entry into the still rather stagnant waters of the domestic linguistic life was implemented by the famous cycle of lectures on Standard Czech and on language culture, organized by the Circle at the beginning of 1932. This cycle laid a firm basis for a functional structural conception of language correctness and language culture in general. An external stimulus to organise the cycle, in which lectures were given by Mathesius, Havránek, Jakobson, Mukarˇovský and Weingart, was offered by the then extremely puristic practice of the journal Naše rˇecˇ (Our Language) represented above all by its editor-in-chief Jirˇí Haller. The lectures appeared in the same year in book form (Havránek and Weingart 1932), together with the ‘‘General principles of language culture’’ as a supplement, and were received by the cultural public with great sympathy (see, e.g., the commentary by F. X. Šalda in his Zápisník (Notebook) 1932, 1933). Even at the leftist cultural front they met with considerable sympathy, with the only exception of S. K. Neumann, who owing to lack of comprehension criticised them sharply in Peroutka’s Prˇítomnost (The Present) Nr. 46 (1932). It is well known that in the subsequent decades the principles of the Circle were to become a permanent starting point for the theoretical and practical care of the Czech language culture: in their spirit Pravidla cˇeského pravopisu (The Rules of the Czech Orthography) were reformed partially as early as 1941 and especially in 1957. In the same spirit also collective lexicographic works were conceived and

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elaborated, in the first place Prˇírucˇní slovník jazyka cˇeského (A Shorter Dictionary of the Czech Language) in 9 volumes and later the Slovník spisovného jazyka cˇeského (A Dictionary of the Standard Czech Language) in 4 volumes published first in the years 1960–1971 (afterwards it appeared in 8 half-volumes), and, surpassing all, the outstanding collective Slovník spisovné cˇeštiny pro školu a verˇejnost (A Dictionary of Standard Czech for Schools and the General Public), elaborated under the guidance of František Daneš and Josef Filipec (Praha: Academia 1978). This dictionary was produced by the Lexicological and Lexicographical Department of the Institute for Czech Language under theoretical guidance and with methods developed by the Head of the Department, Josef Filipec, who was also the chief editor of the Dictionary. Moreover, still in the same decade, the new principles of the care of Czech language made their way into school grammars of Czech for the lower forms of secondary schools (the authors’ collective was again directed by B. Havránek). Their most valuable contribution can be seen, among others, in the consistently synchronic approach to Czech morphology, especially the classification of Czech verbs and in the regard to the functional stylistic differentiation of language means. It can be said, therefore, that in the course of just one decade of its existence the Circle attained a significant position in Czech cultural life. In this connection even a seemingly formal detail deserves to be mentioned: in the autumn of 1930 the Circle became a regularly organized and politically authorised association; until then it had been merely a free group. Now it had its official Statutes and a formally stated aim of its activities (see Appendix I). According to the Statutes, the aim consisted in the pursuit of linguistics on a functionally structural basis; well worth mentioning is the fact that here for the first time in the history of Czechoslovak linguistics an organisation was established which pragmatically delimited its domain of research, but also the method to be applied in this work. From this, however, no conclusion can be drawn that the Circle would censure members using other methods. For that matter, among the seventeen signatories of its Statutes we can find the names of, e.g., Oldrˇich Hujer, Václav Machek, Vladimír Buben and František Oberpfalcer, who never adhered to the principles of structurally functional conception in their work: Hujer was an enlightened Junggrammatiker (NeoGrammarian), Oberpfalcer-Jílek a refined connoisseur of the material which he, however, approached from eclectic rather than structuralist positions, and even V. Buben, a prominent Czech scholar in the field of Romance languages and literatures, as well as V. Machek, a comparative linguist, as further signatories of the Statutes could not be entirely classed with the followers of the functionally structural approach to language, although they undoubtedly sympathised with this point of view. Nevertheless, such an open profession of the Circle’s adherence to a definite research conception even so meant a new feature in our conditions; for a number of more conservative linguists this, at times, gave cause for reprimanding the alleged

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

sectarianism and intolerance. Such criticism did justice to the reality only in part — it was certainly necessary to make way for the new approach using conclusive arguments, which, however, as a rule did not exceed the limits of fair play. A proof of the successes attained by the Circle during the first decade of its work can also be seen in a great number of congratulations and acknowledgements which the Circle obtained on the occasion of the celebration of its first decade in 1936.4 The clear, convincing and fruitful conception kept attracting to the Circle young linguists entering upon scientific careers. As early as 1931 they read their linguistic papers at the Circle’s sessions; among them Josef Vachek (from the beginning of 1930 engaged as a student in secretarial work for the Circle), further, in the same year, L’udovít Novák, later Vladimír Skalicˇka, Pavel Trost, Karel Horálek, Jozef Ružicˇka and many others. For completeness’ sake it is necessary to add that information on the work done in PS was presented abroad in two issues of the Bulletin of the Association internationale pour les études phonologiques (International Phonological Association), above all information on the already finished works in the domain of phonology, and on those in preparation. The first issue appeared in 1932 in French, the second three years later, in English; no further issues were published afterwards. It was for the International Phonological Association that the Circle ensured the publication of a brochure by Trubetzkoy (1935) with an instruction concerning the phonological description of the world’s languages (it appeared in German in Brno; later it was translated into English by the Australian linguist Bluhme). It is, of course, well known that the members of the Circle frequently published in other than their own journals and periodicals; above all, it was the Cˇasopis pro moderní filologii (Journal for Modern Philology), Filologické listy (Philological Papers), Naše rˇecˇ (Our Language) as well as various University publications in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, etc. Ample response to the work of the Circle from abroad has already been mentioned: it was strong especially in places connected with a deep-rooted tradition drawing on Baudouin and Šcˇerba. We have also mentioned the favourable reception of the phonological work of PS in American linguistics, particularly by Sapir and Bloomfield, who in their works were approaching the main concept of phonology — the phoneme — in their own way. The same can be said, with minor differences only, about the prominent English phonetician Daniel Jones, who was coming close to that concept as a practical transcriptionist (J. Vachek wrote about him in the miscellany Charisteria (Cercle 1932) dedicated to Mathesius on his fiftieth anniversary). Also Dutch linguists were showing great interest in the Praguian activities (a festschrift published to honour the fiftieth anniversary of Trubetzkoy contains contributions by e.g., Hendrik Josephus Pos and Nikolaas van Wijk).5 Of the younger generation especially the Dutch Javanese scholar and general linguist Eugen M. Uhlenbeck must be mentioned, who during

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the hard times of what was called ‘‘political normalisation’’ (détente of the early 1970s — editor’s note) provided invaluable help to our young linguists by granting short-term stays to them in the Dutch Institute of Research Workers, which he had founded himself especially for young scholars from behind the Iron Curtain. In a similar way substantial help to our young researchers was provided by Robert Auty, a British Slavonic scholar and Bohemicist, professor in Cambridge, London and later in Oxford, who, among other things, had a perfect command of Czech. From the same country came the help of William Haas, a general linguist from Manchester (a German from Northern Moravia by origin), who cooperated with the Circle’s scholars in those bad times; he shared a deep interest in the problems of written language with our scientists, an interest also shared by Philip A. Luelsdorff, an Anglicist from Regensburg, who was of great help especially as regards publication activities. In 1948 members of the Circle took an active part in the first post-war linguistic Congress in Paris; they had submitted their own theses in advance, which were then duly read and commented upon at a plenary session of the Congress, though not by their own authors and main speakers: Jakobson’s paper on the mutual relation of phonology and morphology was read in his absence by his colleague John Lotz, the English translation of the paper by B. Trnka, who could not be present at the Congress, was read by J. Vachek. Thus, though small in number, the PS delegation (consisting of three participants only, Havránek, Horálek and Vachek) did not appear as wholly insignificant. Otherwise, in that post-war period, the entire atmosphere, both ideological and political, was getting darker and more sinister. This development, naturally, could not remain without consequences for the PS and its Circle. There were, however, too many factors in play, whose interaction was so complicated as to require a special chapter (Chapter 4).

.

The origin and maturation of the Prague Linguistic Theory

Mathesius in his University lectures (and in their posthumous edition which we have prepared for press, cf. V. Mathesius 1961) very fittingly sketched the climate of the period in which the Prague linguistic theory came to be formed and, at the organizational level, the Prague Circle was founded. He pointed out therein that up to the beginning of the twenties of our century two main competing currents had existed side by side in the world linguistics. The first of them, genetically comparative, found its origins in the efforts of Franz Bopp and Rasmus Rask, and culminated in the Neo-Grammarian School, whose prominent representatives were Hermann Paul, Karl Friedrich Brugmann, etc. The second trend, according to Mathesius, can be denoted as analytically comparative and its beginnings reach

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

back to Wilhelm von Humboldt: among its most outstanding representatives, e.g., Heyman Steinthal, Franz Nikolaus Finck and Georg von der Gabelentz can be classed. The former current elaborated an exact scientific method, yet it often erred in atomistically isolating the facts examined, in lacking a sense for the structural patterning of languages and for their synchronic, ahistoric study in general, regarded by them as downright unscientific. The latter trend had a much deeper sense and feeling for synchronic specific features of the languages examined, yet it failed to produce methods that could compete with those of the former current in respect of exactness and scientific accuracy: the differences between individual languages were frequently accounted for by differences in national psychologies of the given language communities. In this way, of course, the problems in question were transferred from the domain of linguistics to the domain of psychology, a science at that time still unable to work its way to a scientific method of the desirable degree of exactness. Mathesius was well aware of both the strong and the weak points of the two linguistic approaches 6 and strove for a synthesis that would succeed in combining the merits of both the conceptions. He was conscious of the necessity of getting to know completely and reliably the language facts from which generalizing theoretical conclusions were to be drawn. This necessity led him already in the year 1911 to the requirement of a static (i.e., synchronic) analysis of language in addition to the dynamic (i.e., diachronic). Mathesius often stressed that only a synchronic analysis of a language can offer an exhausting and easily verifiable picture of a given language fact. Note that Mathesius’ emphasizing the necessity of synchronic study was not connected with rejecting the diachronic approach; this holds true, for that matter, of the activities of PS as a whole (today it may seem unnecessary to stress it, but as late as the second half of the thirties, and even after World War II there were linguists — even prominent ones — who blamed PS, and especially its phonological studies, for ahistoric approach.) An important circumstance here is the fact that Mathesius’ deep interest in phenomena of stylistic nature, attested already in his earliest works, proved clearly his essentially functional approach to language facts. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that in his beginnings Mathesius wrongly laid undue stress on the role of individuals in the language development and that he had a certain mistrust of what he then called ‘‘one-sided emphasizing of the social nature of speech’’. (This mistrust accounts for certain sympathies of his for Croce’s and Vossler’s theories at that time.) It is interesting that it was then the same ‘‘one-sided emphasizing of the social nature of speech’’ he held against Humboldt and his followers. It is also very well known that in this point Mathesius later substantially revised his initial opinions. As can be seen from the posthumous edition of his lectures (delivered at the turn of the twenties and thirties, cf. Concluding remarks of the editor to Mathesius 1961, pp. 249–52) he objected later (in the same way as the present PS) to another feature of

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Humboldt’s conception — his emphasis on constant creation in language (conceived as energeia), which concealed from Humboldt the fact that language is essentially a system; it can hardly be doubted that it is its systemic character and, consequently, the existence of a certain norm resulting from it that constitute the necessary precondition for the social functioning of language. Similar objections could be later raised to Chomsky’s conception referring to Humboldt, which obscured the systemic nature of language from the American researcher in the same way as it had done previously from Humboldt.7 There can hardly be any doubts about the motives underlying the change in Mathesius’ views of the problem: it was obviously his close contact with the friends with whom he was organizing his linguistic Circle. It was especially Jakobson and Trubetzkoy who influenced Mathesius substantially; they had learned about the social impact of language phenomena from the Russian tradition of Baudouin and Šcˇerba, although, otherwise, as will be shown presently, Mathesius’ scientific type differed in a number of respects from that represented by these two friends of his. Nevertheless, it was obviously from them that Mathesius drew his knowledge in this respect, and, undoubtedly, it was their influence from which Mathesius’ later interest in the problems of phonology sprang; as regards their quantitative studies, he became a true pioneer not only at home but also in the world context. As far as the internal differentiation of PS is concerned, it can be safely stated that two markedly distinct tendencies were competing (which is a better term than rivalling) in it. On the one hand it was the Trubetzkoy-Jakobsonian trend distinguished by a grand vision of general systemic outlines, with a deep sense of what used to be newly called language modelling. On the other hand, there was the Mathesius-Havránek’s trend whose characteristic feature lay in refined tracing of inner systemic relationships, with special attention to the functional specialization of the means of expression of the given language system. Perhaps it could be said that in the characteristic epithet often used about PS and its approach to language facts, i.e., in the epithet ‘‘functionally structural’’, the Trubetzkoy-Jakobsonian trend emphasized rather the second member of this composite term, whereas Mathesius-Havránek’s view stressed more the first component. At the same time, as has been pointed out before, this difference in approaching the same facts can by no means be regarded as a contradiction: both the approaches complemented each other extremely well, and it was in the synthesis of both that PS displayed its strongest point, since this dual approach helped it to avoid impending one-sidedness. Nor can we say that the differentiation was due to national differences, i.e., differences between the ‘‘Russian’’ and the ‘‘Czech’’ approach. There were also Czech researchers to whom the Trubetzkoy–Jakobsonian approach appealed more strongly than that of Mathesius-Havránek, e.g., B. Trnka, J. M. Korˇínek, and, on the contrary, it is possible to find scholars on the

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Russian side as well who were close to the Mathesius-Havránek’s position; this holds true, e.g., particularly about Leontij V. Kopeckij. At the same time this internal differentiation shows how unjust it was to blame PS for the assumed dogmatic sectarianism allegedly forcing all adherents to swear by the official canon of principles of the Prague Circle: it is obvious that acceptance of the functional structural approach as the point of departure provided sufficient space for the members of PS to assert their own specificity of opinions. We can even find, in addition to the two main trends within PS that were characterized above, also other members of the Circle who deviated from the official canon of principles still more profoundly — from the classical period of the Circle J.M. Korˇínek could be mentioned with his peculiar conception of langue, or some other aspects of language structure as well (see especially Korˇínek 1942). Nevertheless, the basic standpoint of all members of PS was concordant to such an extent that it made possible mutual fruitful cooperation and a unified collective procedure of all. The structural approach was being formed in clear-cut formulations opposed to the former Neo-Grammarian atomistic tendencies, the functional aspect made the needs of expression of a given language community into an important criterion in language analysis and evaluation. Simultaneously, the language means performing the purely communicative function (Bühler’s Darstellungsfunktion, at times also referred to as projective function in Czech writings) were carefully distinguished from the means used for signalling emotive function (appeal, or individually expressive function, i.e., serving the functions for which Bühler used the term Appellfunktion or Kundgabefunktion). These aspects were applied in the analysis of all language levels from the phonological through the morphological and lexical to the syntactical. By this respect to the functional differentiation of language means PS has always characteristically differed from other structuralistically oriented linguistic schools, especially from the Copenhagen glossematics and American descriptivism. In the same way PS can be favourably distinguished from these approaches in its recognition of the stylistic difference between the lexical layer synchronically domestic and that synchronically foreign (see especially Mathesius 1932b), a difference that, e.g., the American descriptivists came to notice only after World War II, and of whose existence the generative-transformational grammar began to be conscious still later (cf. C. C. Fries and K. L. Pike 1949, C. Rohrer 1967, on this topic also J. Vachek 1968c). It has already been mentioned here that in spite of laying great stress upon synchronic analysis, PS by no means objected to the application of diachronic methods in linguistics. On the contrary, it is emphasized from the very beginning that language changes can be understood more fully only from the functionally structural point of view, viz, that it is necessary to examine any language change — not only a phonetic one — from the angle of the whole system that has been

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affected by it.8 Such an approach often shows that the examined language change largely has a therapeutical function, i.e., that it has been motivated by the need for preserving the endangered equilibrium of the language system, or, as the case may be, for recovering that equilibrium where it has been disturbed: what is meant by equilibrium here is the adequacy of language means for the purpose they are to serve. Already at its early stages PS often used to refer to this explanatory principle as teleological (for the first time this was formulated by Jakobson in his lecture in the Circle in January 1927; cf. Jakobson 1928, 1933). In this PS conception the study of language development thus gets transformed into a study of the development of the language system as a whole, a study of its structural problems and their solution. It can be said that also this nonatomistic and non-static, i.e., dynamic conception of the relationship between language synchrony and diachrony represents another very important specific feature of the Praguian linguistic theory, unparalleled in the contemporary linguistic world, at least as regards the consistency of this conception. It is undoubtedly true, as Jakobson points out (1963), that ‘‘what was regarded as a specific contribution of Prague to the development of modern linguistics appears to represent to a considerable extent a common denominator of a number of convergent trends in the scientific life of various European countries’’. (p. 482). As the common denominator of the work of such scholars as, e.g., the Dutch researchers Albert Willem de Groot and Hendrik Josephus Pos, the French linguist Émile Benveniste, the Norwegian Alf Sommerfelt, the Pole Jerzy Kuryłowicz, the Rumanian Alexandru Rosetti, the Hungarian Gyula Laziczius and the Russian Jevgenij Dmitrievicˇ Polivanov, Jakobson presents in his paper the very fact that all of them were striving to create a linguistic means-end model. Nevertheless, of course, at the same time it must be stated — as has been already said above — that in none of the mentioned countries was such a model applied so consistently and in such a notable way as in PS — which was particularly Jakobson’s merit. In his lecture delivered in 1931 at the Second International Congress of Linguists in Geneva, Mathesius regards as two main pioneers of new linguistics Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, with whom ‘‘an eminent role is played by the idea of function’’, and Ferdinand de Saussure, who impressed Mathesius above all by ‘‘the requirement of synchronic analysis of language and the idea of language system’’ (Mathesius 1932a). As regards Baudouin, Mathesius disagreed with ‘‘his having been deluded by the mystifying light of psychology, and attaching undue importance to the fact that speech keeps constantly changing’’. — Although marking out the two prominent scholars was essentially just, this by no means represents full enumeration of the factors that contributed to the change in linguistic views in our country, not only as regards the linguistic factors but also as far as other entire scientific branches are concerned.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

In the same lecture Mathesius himself mentions the analytic-comparative methods of Henry Sweet, who — like Otto Jespersen — helped him to get over the one-sidedness of the official Neo-Grammarian linguistics that predominated at the time when Mathesius’ research profile was being formed. (It can hardly be a coincidence that the first item in Mathesius’ chronologically ordered bibliography was represented by nothing else than a review of Jespersen’s popular monograph Growth and Structure of the English Language.) Besides, Mathesius mentions two further opponents of the official Neo-Grammarian trend, the Romance scholar Hugo Schuchardt and the Czech Josef Zubatý. Although, as Mathesius rightly points out, neither of them went so far as to lay a ‘‘reliable foundation for a new period of linguistic research’’, even their role as precursors marking out a new era was certainly important. From among other branches of science the situation in linguistics at that period was certainly affected by the rise and influence of the Gestalt psychology and similar conceptions in musicology and theory of art, and equally, the abandonment of positivist philosophizing at that time: Mathesius often preached against ‘‘positivist narrow-mindedness’’, by which he understood adhering to phenomenalistic data and lack of courage to draw more general conclusions that could follow from them. This much had to be said concerning the question of external influences which helped to form the teachings of PS. We would particularly emphasize the fact that the work of eminent external authorities (and also of the Russian protagonists of PS, Trubetzkoy, Jakobson and Karcevskij) was able to assert itself in such a pronounced way in the Praguian context for no other reason than that it had found the ground well prepared by the preceding efforts of the local, Czech members of this school (here especially the names of Mathesius, Havránek and Trnka should be mentioned). Anyway, the very fact that a new linguistic school of functional structuralist orientation was able to originate in Prague and not, e.g., in Vienna, where otherwise particularly advantageous conditions would have existed for its rise, is noteworthy: both Trubetzkoy and Bühler (whose influence upon Trubetzkoy’s conception was beyond question) worked as university teachers there, and so were also the eminent comparatist Paul Kretschmer and the English scholar Karl Luick; in some points of their works both of them were inspired by Trubetzkoy’s conception, or, in some respects, even anticipated it (cf. Vachek 1933). If, in spite of all these circumstances, a new linguistic school failed to originate in Vienna, then it was probably due to the fact that the ground was not prepared here to such an extent as it was in Prague; this was due in part to the emphasis (mentioned above) laid by Mathesius on the necessity of synchronic study of languages, in part to the influence of Zubatý, whose non-conformist attitude towards the mechanizing Neo-Grammarianism was taken over by his disciples as well, among whom a prominent place belonged to no one else than B. Havránek. (It certainly exposes a very poor knowledge of

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an otherwise prominent linguist to class Zubatý as a ‘‘narrow and orthodox NeoGrammarian’’, see Stankiewicz 1965.) Havránek shared with Mathesius not only his mistrust of the dominating Neo-Grammarian trend, but also the essentially identical functional standpoint: one of Havránek’s first articles deals with the question how Czech in the course of its development expressed the meaning conveyed by Latin adjectives ending in -bilis (Havránek 1929b); incidentally, an outline of the linguistic situation of the late twenties as seen by Mathesius in 1926 has much in common with Havránek’s view as given in his introductory chapter of the first volume of his extensive monograph on voice in the Slavonic verb, see Havránek (1928–1929). It was this functional approach to language that enabled Havránek to create an important functional theory of standard language, of language correctness and language culture in general, a theory the principles of which he outlined in his lecture on the tasks of standard language and its culture (Havránek 1932). According to this theory, accepted later by some prominent linguists abroad (e.g., Einar Haugen, Alf Sommerfelt, Paul L. Garvin), the correctness of a word or of a construction does not follow from historical criteria, but from functional adequacy of the given expression. Here Havránek together with Mathesius and Jakobson pointed out that any concern about foreign expressions (especially Germanisms) is totally unsubstantiated, as they have their legitimate place in the language norm, provided they fill a need in the language. Havránek then proved the importance of the functional approach by demonstrating in a number of examples how a sound form and a grammatical form in a given language can be profoundly influenced by functional needs of the given language community (cf. Havránek 1929a). For that matter, in this functional view any stylistic problems of a language appear as a formal differentiation of language performance given by functional needs of different kinds of language utterances; it was from this point of view that stylistic problems have always been analysed in PS (cf. Karel Hausenblas 1955, Lubomír Doležel 1964). From the preceding paragraph a further no less important characteristic property of PS can be seen, i.e., its keen interest in everyday life situations, the problems of which the Praguian functional structuralists want to assist in solving. They do not belong — unlike, e.g., the linguists of the glossematic school — to research workers who seclude themselves in purely theoretical scientific work, but they want to serve the language community and contribute to satisfying its needs of expression. In perfect agreement with this essential tendency of PS is its lively interest in questions of the language of poetry (which, of course, is not dealt with in detail in our outline), an interest that caused the lecture sessions of the Circle to be often frequented by prominent critics, writers and artists in general, who contributed to the Circle’s press platforms. Among them there were the novelist and play-writer Karel Cˇapek, who in his column greeted the publication of the

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

periodical Slovo a slovesnost (Word and Verbal Arts), the literary critic František Xaver Šalda, the author of an essay on poetical autostylization, and others, in particular Jaroslav Durych, Vladislav Vancˇura, Jindrˇich Honzl and Víteˇzslav Nezval. It was, of course, also the negative reaction of artists against the then purist practice of the journal Naše rˇecˇ (Our Language) aimed at the leading Czech writers, that gave the last, but not the only, impulse to the Prague Linguistic Circle to organize its series of lectures on Standard Czech and language culture. The sense for serving the language community, however, manifested itself also in the domain of language pedagogy and didactics. A mention has already been made of the textbook of Czech for junior secondary schools prepared by a collective headed by Bohuslav Havránek (Havránek-Kopeckij-Starý-Získal 1933–36). Besides, there appeared a series of textbooks and dictionaries of foreign languages, especially of English and Russian, in which the authors verified in practice the soundness of the new linguistic theory within one of the most sensitive testing fields, in language teaching. Such names as Bohumil Trnka (Potter-Trnka 1926–28), Josef Vachek (1946b), Ivan Poldauf (Osicˇka-Poldauf 1948), Kurt Roubícˇek (Kru˚ta-Roubícˇek 1941), Karel Hais (1938), most of them Mathesius’ disciples, can be adduced here; in the domain of Russian a particular mention must be made of an important representative of this section of the work of the Circle, Leontij V. Kopeckij, author of excellent dictionaries and textbooks of Russian (Kopeckij 1935) and the head of a collective that after World War II elaborated a large Russian- Czech dictionary. A more detailed list of publications of this kind would lead us too far, beyond the limits allotted to this outline. In this connection it should be noted that by these schoolbook publications the Circle laid foundations to a systematic research using a method which Mathesius himself had called analytically comparative (as distinct from the historically comparative approach) and for which in the contemporary world the term confrontational or contrastive method is used. In addition to the textbooks of English and Russian also two remarkable, though popularising, monographs appeared on the ground of PS, comparing more systematically in this contrastive way a foreign target language with Czech, the pupil’s mother tongue. This concerns, above all, the series of Mathesius’ broadcast lectures accompanying a radio course of English, which appeared in book form in the mid-thirties with a telling subtitle ‘‘What cannot be found in textbooks’’ (Mathesius 1936b). Following the example of Mathesius, a similar, also successful book on German was written five years later by the Prague secondary school teacher Jaroslav Nosil (1941), who was in constant touch with Mathesius when writing it. Also in the domain of Russian important works appeared in the field of language contrasting, above all owing to the care of Vladimír Barnet and a group of his collaborators. The importance of all this comes to the fore if we remind ourselves of the fact that western linguistics, especially that in the US, became aware of the possibility of

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such a synchronic comparison of languages first in the sixth or seventh decade of our century and developed then an intense activity in this field (see, e.g. W. G. Moulton 1962, H. L. Kufner 1962, G. Nickel 1971), often without knowing that these problem areas had been treated methodologically and practically by PS three or more decades before. In his small booklet on English Mathesius sketched, be it only in a passing outline and with a predominantly popularising intent, a concrete example of what he theoretically postulated in Czech linguistics from the mid-twenties (and with which he acquainted the world linguistic public at The Hague Congress in 1928), i.e., a demonstration of linguistic characterology of a specific language. Mathesius himself explained the postulated concept as follows: ‘‘If the task of a descriptive grammar consists in presenting a complete inventory of all formal and functional elements that exist in a given language at a given stage of its development, linguistic characterology deals only with important and basic features of the given language at the given point in time, analyzes them on the basis of general linguistics and endeavours to find the relationships that exist between them.’’ At the same time, of course, attention should be paid not only to qualitative, but also to quantitative characteristic features of the language examined; it is known that, as far as quantitative study of language facts is concerned, Mathesius belonged to the first pioneers in our country, at least as regards facts of the sound level (Mathesius 1929, 1931a). From what has been said here it follows quite univocally that PS never intended to pursue science just for science sake (though its interest in general problems of linguistics was always lively and profound), but that PS as a rule endeavoured to draw as many practical consequences from theoretical knowledge as possible for the benefit of language users; in other words, through its scientific pursuits it wanted to serve the general language community. We can certainly venture the opinion that of all the structurally oriented linguistic trends, PS acquitted itself as by far the most sensitive to the needs and requirements of daily life, although it cannot be denied that some other similarly oriented groups manifested some understanding for such needs as well. What remains, however, beyond any doubt is the fact that nowhere else did this understanding attain so high a degree as in PS. For that matter already Bulygina (1964: 123) approvingly cites the statement by the German scholar H. Lüdtke (1959) that PS represents the only structuralist trend that ‘‘doesn’t take refuge in an ivory tower and doesn’t result in sterile formalism’’. It is certainly true that, e.g., the Yale descriptivist school gained recognition for the application of its conception of language to practical language instruction. Nevertheless, it is also true that a number of other topical problems of daily life remained constantly beyond its attention. This holds, e.g., for such important domains as standardization of language: it is symptomatic that even in the subsequent decades after the prestige of descriptivism was weakened, when interest in

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

these problems began to emerge, the main American linguist in this field proved to be an American scholar of Indian descent (Punya Sloka Ray 1963). Finally, it was only after World War II that in American linguistics a more systematic research in the domain of the language of poetry began — pushed through, especially by Roman Jakobson and by a former Prague member of the Circle, René Wellek. Moreover, as a prominent American dialectologist Raven I. McDavid pointed out, the Yale descriptivists came to deal with the domain of language instruction by a coincidence of external circumstances (by carrying out a government assignment in connection with the entrance of the US into World War II) rather than from their own initiative, as it was in the history of PS — there the interest in these problems represented an organic outcome of the whole linguistic conception from the very beginning, mainly in the approach of Jakobson and Mukarˇovský. McDavid pointed out, too, that the American tradition — at least in his time — failed to bring linguists and literary critics together to a mutual fruitful dialogue, which in the Prague cultural tradition was conducted for decades.9 So much had to be said about the origins and maturation of the Praguian linguistic theory and its specific features, by which it distinguished itself both from the preceding linguistic schools (especially from the Neo-Grammarians) and from other linguistic schools of structuralist orientation. After this general and factual view it will be useful to concentrate our attention on some concrete personalities of the founding generation of the Prague Circle — we shall see how each of them contributed to the creation of the generation’s profile by this or that particular feature. Although for technical reasons we have to confine ourselves to the founding generation of the Circle, it certainly will not do any harm to illustrate by further minor portraits the entire background in which PS originated and was gradually formed. In these portraits we base ourselves on our own personal reminiscences supplemented by recollections of other contemporaries with whom we have shared them and, last but not least, on the personalities’ own work.

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The personalities of the founding generation of Prague School

It is only natural that the first personality we want to deal with in this outline will be the founder of PS himself, Vilém Mathesius (1882–1945). Although already in the preceding chapters many a thing was mentioned in passing or suggested, no less than a minor monograph would be necessary to let his scientific and human personage come out in its full plasticity. This task has been at least in part fulfilled by the memorial volume (edited by J. Vachek) Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost (Language, Culture and Verbal Arts), published in 1982 on the occasion of the centenary of Mathesius’ birthday (there a more detailed biography and a complete bibliography can be found; cf. Mathesius 1982).

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First we should like to touch upon Mathesius’ moral pathos that emanated from his entire personality, which played such an important role in forming PS, and by which all his disciples without exception were affected. We want to give thought to the sources from which this pathos sprang: it resulted in part from his personal qualities — his pedagogical mastery, the depth and breadth of his scientific vision, his extraordinary industriousness and a deep sense of fair play towards everyone, in part from his hard personal fate, first caused by a serious eye disease, later, furthermore, by tuberculosis of the spine. This handicap, however, transposed his moral greatness to a still higher, heroic, level. The origins of his poor health Mathesius himself connected with his laborious efforts to provide the bare necessities of life during World War I: on Sundays he was obliged to get provisions for his family (since they had no relatives in the country) by trying to find better-off farmers willing to let a humble petitioner have some butter, flour or potatoes, not for money, of course, but for various valuables. The catastrophe occurred after the war, in 1924. By chance a report of an eyewitness was preserved showing how Mathesius himself heroically endured such blows. A miscellany prepared for the occasion of his 60th anniversary (completed and even set up for print, yet never published as the German occupation authorities severely curtailed scientific publications) contained among others also a personal remembrance by an intimate friend of Mathesius’ family, Professor Jaroslav Peklo, a phytopathologist. (Owing to some circumstances it was just this very contribution that failed to be published later, although all the other papers appeared elsewhere, partly in the Cˇasopis pro moderní filologii (Journal for Modern Philology), in part in the provisional revue Cˇeský cˇasopis filologický (Czech Journal of Philology) that at least temporarily was to fill the gap caused by the liquidation of the two periodicals, Cˇasopis pro moderní filologii and Listy filologické (Letters of Philology). In his recollections Professor Peklo describes how after having been alerted by an ominous phone message, in which the Mathesius family notified him that their father had lost his sight, he hurried to their flat near the then Letná water works. There he found that of the whole family only Mathesius himself remained calm, tried to comfort the others and to allay their fears. He was then, as his friend relates, in full control of the situation. In the same way he impressed us, his disciples, as well as his other contemporaries in the after years. Otokar Fischer, who belonged to the same generation as Mathesius and who had also spent his young years in the lowlands around Kolín, in his commemorative article on the occasion of Mathesius’ fiftieth birthday (1932) characterizes the honoured scientist as a rather classicist personality (while Fischer himself preferred to be taken as a romanticist). It can be said that to our generation, which came in touch with him in the second half of the twenties, Mathesius appeared to be a classicist par excellence. He always had full control of his emotions, never a stronger word passed through his lips and, at any time, he

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

was able to curb even the most righteous indignation he felt. He was absolute master of his time, and that is probably why he was able to give it out liberally to others who often turned to him asking for help, whether during their studies or after they finished them. All these classicist traits were obvious to anyone who got to know Mathesius even from afar. Few people, however, would have guessed what Mathesius himself confided to the author of these lines in a private letter from 1942, three years before he died: that he had to fight hard with himself to achieve his equanimity since he was of a temperament ‘‘more explosive than quiet’’. Also this admission eventually completes the portrait of Mathesius as a man of strong character, who by his will power was able to overcome even such obstacles that would wear down anyone else. Mathesius knew how to radiate the strength of his intellect and spirit from himself around — he was always full of optimism, which was not cheap but gained by striving with his enlightened faith and capability to view all, even his personal fate and everyday troubles, sub specie aeternitatis. In the obituary one of his disciples confessed ashamedly that in the hard times of the Nazi occupation we, the healthy ones, kept visiting the bedside of an incurably ill man to draw necessary doses of optimism, indispensable for us to be able to live, survive and go on fighting. Using the same strength of his spirit Mathesius succeeded in grouping around himself his friends and pupils. When owing to his serious disease he could no longer attend the lecture meetings of the Circle he used to invite regularly to his flat a group of young people he called ‘‘Little Circle’’ so as to have once a week a discussion with them on both linguistic and general cultural problems. It was also this very strength of spirit that had enabled him formerly to organize his Prague Linguistic Circle and to succeed as editor of a number of journals and miscellanies in associating round himself groups of people (of similar opinions, it is true, but rather dissimilar in personal temperament and style of work) and in inducing them to participate in fruitful work. Perhaps, he was the only personality at that time that was able to play such a unifying role: his merits did not consist only in having founded the Circle, but above all in that he succeeded in endowing it with a spirit of companionable friendship resulting in collective cooperation. If one of the beneficial activities of the Circle consisted in putting methods of collective work through, it is particularly Mathesius’ merit to have brought about that very atmosphere in which sociable cooperation thrived. It is only to be regretted that Mathesius’ work did not become better known in the world linguistics at an earlier date. It would have deserved it if for nothing else than for the really extraordinary importance of his treatise on the potentiality of the phenomena of language (Mathesius 1911–1912) — this remained without wider response, abroad mainly because it had appeared only in Czech and at

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home because it could not meet with enough understanding at the beginning of the second decade of the century. When shortly after World War I Jakobson got to know this treatise, he told its author that in Moscow in 1911 he would have caused a veritable revolution in linguistics by its conclusions. And when finally in 1964–after more than half a century — the English translation of this lecture appeared (in the anthology J. Vachek 1964d), C. F. Hockett, a well-known American linguist, expressed his sincere admiration that such ideas could have been formulated at so early a period. (The Russian translation of Mathesius’ article appeared after the English version in Kondrašov’s anthology 1967.) Nevertheless, even so Mathesius gained international recognition still in his lifetime, especially by having been elected as the Czechoslovak representative in CIPL, the permanent international committee of linguists, which organizes international linguistic congresses. Thus he was recognized not only for his works in English studies, which were being published already from the first decade of our century and whose culmination was to become the posthumously published volume devoted to synchronic analysis of English (Mathesius 1961), but also for his works in Czech studies. These were concerned systematically with — also in this respect Mathesius was a pioneer — the living colloquial speech. There he mainly dealt with important problems of functional sentence perspective, which, only after his decease, became a major topic of our linguistics as well as in the international linguistic context, and with modern problems of language culture — especially in his call for stability of the Standard language (1932c). An invaluable bequest to Czech studies was made by his posthumous volume Cˇeština a obecný jazykozpyt (Czech Language and General Linguistics; 1947), not to mention his collection of essays Možnosti, které cˇekají (Chances that Lie Ahead; 1944). *

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There is no doubt that in respect of international popularity Mathesius was at that time surpassed by another prominent representative of the Circle to whom we are going to devote our attention here, Nikolaj Sergeevicˇ Trubeckoj (Trubetzkoy, 1890–1938). He came from an old Russian aristocratic family from which a number of eminent politicians and scientists had descended. According to Jakobson, Trubetzkoy attended Moscow University from the age of 14, and he was seventeen when he started his publication activities, by that time not yet as a linguist but as an ethnologist. However, soon his interests centred on the field of linguistics, which prevailed to such an extent that by the time immediately preceding the Bolshevist Revolution he was preparing himself for associate professorship in comparative linguistics. The stormy period of the revolution and the subsequent civil war deprived Trubetzkoy not only of his reference library, but also of his home in his native country. After a transition period which he spent as

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

a professor in Rostov on the Don (in difficult conditions both personal and professional), he took refuge in Bulgaria, where he worked as a professor of Sophia University. At last in the year 1922 he was invited on Antoine Meillet’s recommendation to Vienna University as professor of Slavonic linguistics, to the chair once occupied by Miklošicˇ, Jagic´ and Vondrák. Here he undisputedly had much better working conditions than before, in Sophia. His working engagement became considerably more intensive owing to frequent contacts with Jakobson, who from the first half of the twenties lived in Czechoslovakia, and with the Prague linguistic background in general. What these contacts with this environment meant for Trubetzkoy can be illustrated by a passage from his letter sent to Mathesius on the occasion of the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Circle in 1936. In an excerpt from it, as it was published in the periodical Slovo a slovesnost (1937: 63f.), we read: ‘‘Various stages of the development of the Circle which I have lived through with it come to my mind today — first the modest minor meetings at the chairman’s, then the heroic time of preparations for the first Slavonic Congress, the days of the Prague phonological conference never to be forgotten and many other beautiful days that I spent in the company of my Prague friends. All these recollections are connected in my mind with a special stimulating sensation, since at any contact with the Prague Circle I experienced a new upsurge of creative joy that in my lonely work far from Prague keeps sinking unwittingly again and again. This revival of and stimulus to intellectual creation represents the spirit inherent in our association and results, I insist, from the collective work of allied research workers sharing a common methodological approach and inspired by identical theoretical ideas.’’ Those years were probably the happiest period in Trubetzkoy’s scientific and pedagogical life, but they were already darkened by warning signals of his deteriorating health: Trubetzkoy suffered from angina pectoris, which was undoubtedly a toll for the hard years of privation and homelessness that his weakened organism had to pay. Those who remember the lectures in the Prague Circle, the meetings of which were taking place in a coffeehouse milieu, would long recall how at the beginnings of the sessions, still before Trubetzkoy arrived, they were asked by the organizers to abstain for this once from smoking because of Trubetzkoy’s heart decease. Understandably, the deteriorating political climate in the world (and especially in Austria) was by no means beneficial to his health. Under these circumstances his continuing scientific activities can be rated as the culmination of a supreme heroic effort. After the occupation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany Trubetzkoy clearly saw that his further existence at the nazified Vienna University was no more sustainable. The last possibility which, at least theoretically, remained, his emigration to the USA (where Trubetzkoy had friends and where he could go on with his research) was considered. However, it was too late: his flat was invaded and thoroughly searched by Gestapo and he himself was subjected to a merciless

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interrogation procedure. This shocking experience resulted in a serious heart attack to which Trubetzkoy finally succumbed in hospital care, dictating almost to the last moments the remaining chapters of his famous Grundzüge der Phonologie. He died on June 25, 1938, when according to Jakobson’s information only some twenty pages were missing to make Trubetzkoy’s great life-work complete. Many valuable facts about Trubetzkoy’s life as well as about the development of his linguistic (especially phonological) views were revealed by at least partial publication of the many-years’ regular personal correspondence between Trubetzkoy and Jakobson. The letters written by Trubetzkoy to Jakobson were fortunately preserved thanks to the intrepidity of Professor B. Trnka, to whose care they had been entrusted by Jakobson, then on the run from the Nazis; Professor Trnka was able to give them back again to Jakobson in order after the war. The latter then published them in 1975 with Mouton as a valuable piece of evidence also for the early history of PS; unfortunately, Jakobson’s letters to Trubetzkoy were not preserved, but Jakobson gave brief accounts of their contents. Trubetzkoy’s heritage survives undiminished even after his decease. His thoroughly thought-out theory of phonological oppositions served Jakobson as the point of departure for his well-known theory of binary oppositions of distinctive features. The stimulating nature of the Grundzüge had as its consequence a number of re-editions, in the original German version as well as in translations (into French by Jean Cantineau 1949, Russian by A. A. Xolodovicˇ 1960 and, lastly, into English by C. A. M. Baltaxe 1969). In Vienna (and later on also in some other smaller Austrian cities) several international phonological conferences took place (after 1964); twenty-five years after his death, Vienna University honoured Trubetzkoy by fixing a commemorative plaque in the university columns, as has been the custom pertaining to the most illustrious professors of that institution. Trubetzkoy’s communication with Jakobson was not only continuous but also highly concordant in opinions as regards fundamental problems. Jakobson appears to have often inspired Trubetzkoy, who, now and then, brought Jakobson’s formulations to more perfect shape. They formed an excellent team together that used to participate in discussions jointly (as in The Hague case mentioned above). There is no doubt that in respect of practical organization it was Jakobson who played the leading role in the cooperation of the two scholars; on the other hand, Trubetzkoy synthesized Jakobson’s stimulating ideas in a most remarkable way: see, e.g., Trubetzkoy’s system of phonological oppositions. As is known, Jakobson formulated his theory of binary oppositions of distinctive features — at least in its rudimentary shape — still at the very close of Trubetzkoy’s life. The fact that this binaristic conception fails to be consistently accepted in Trubetzkoy’s Grundzüge does not necessarily involve, as has been inferred, e.g., by André Martinet, an essential contradiction between Trubetzkoy and Jakobson in ques-

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

tions of classification of phonological oppositions. It should be considered under what difficult conditions of life Trubetzkoy was bringing his manuscript to conclusion: he had absolutely no chance to subject it to a final revision and edition, which undoubtedly would have introduced desirable last corrections in more than one place. Anyway, it can be said that in essential matters the two researchers’ views concurred in a surprising way. The warm relationship of Jakobson to Trubetzkoy is shown by the fact that it was to him that Jakobson dedicated his Remarques (Jakobson 1929 = TCLP 2). In turn, as the Introduction supplied by the editors to the Grundzüge has revealed, in a planned yet never written preface Trubetzkoy intended to dedicate this work to Jakobson. In some points there is certainly no doubt that Jakobson induced Trubetzkoy to make some minor corrections in his formulations. This concerns, e.g., some of Trubetzkoy’s psychologizing definitions or, as the case may be, his psychologizing phraseology from the beginnings of phonological research, when Trubetzkoy was ridding himself of Baudouin traditions at a somewhat slower pace than Jakobson: the points in question were mainly the definitions of phoneme and morphoneme. Never, however, were the differences as serious as to indicate the existence of any fundamental contradiction between the two scientists. *

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As is natural in the given context, the following lines will be devoted to the scientist whose name was repeatedly mentioned here in connection with Trubetzkoy’s work, Roman Osipovicˇ Jakobson (1896–1982). During his studies at Moscow University he got to know very well not only the traditions of the school of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Lev Vladimirovicˇ Šcˇerba, but also the subtle Neo-Grammarian methods of Filipp Fedorovicˇ Fortunatov and his school. From the very beginning he manifested a lively interest in problems of poetics and poetical language, an interest he did not relinquish even later, when he concentrated his main efforts on questions of structural grammar and phonology. By coincidence he came into his first closer contacts with Czech ambience through his well-known monograph on Czech verse as compared with Russian (Jakobson 1923), which appeared three years later also in its Czech version. He then became so familiar with the Czech environments and problems of Czech language, literature and culture in general that Arne Novák in his Prˇehledné deˇjiny literatury cˇeské (Outline of Czech Literature; 1936–38 = 1995:1617) did not hesitate to characterize him as a ‘‘Czechized Russian’’. From 1933 till the Nazi occupation he worked as professor of Russian and Slavonic studies at the University of Brno. After the country was occupied, in 1939, he fled to escape political and racial persecution and took refuge in Denmark, then in Norway and finally in the

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United States, where he lived until his death. During the war he held for some time the post of professor of Czech language and literature at Columbia University in New York, from where at the beginning of the fifties he moved to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. as professor of Slavonic studies; at the same time, he was professor of general linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our main interest will be centred on that period of Jakobson’s activities in which his relationship with the Czech ambience was very close and in which he was regarded as one of the most prominent members of PS. He was one of its founding members: his name appears among the names of the participants of the first meeting of the Circle, and it was he who at one of the first meetings (on January 13, 1927) presented his views on teleogically conceived phonology. From the very beginning he was vice-chairman of the Circle and there is no exaggeration in maintaining that he was its spiritus agens. This was especially true about his role at the international phonological conference in 1930, where he not only delivered three important papers, but also prepared the wording of the ‘‘Outline of Standardized Phonological Terminology and of the Principles of Phonological Transcription’’; moreover, he edited the minutes of the discussions, not to speak about his editorial share in publishing the fourth volume of TCLP, containing all the materials of the conference. In a similar way it would be possible to demonstrate his indefatigable initiative and efficiency by enumerating further activities, e.g., in connection with the cycle of lectures on Standard Czech and language culture, a number of longer and shorter articles published in Slovo a slovesnost, and his last editorial work, which had to be anonymous, viz the edition of Trubetzkoy’s Grundzüge published as the 7th volume of TCLP. It was probably Jakobson to whom we are indebted for the arrangement of Trubetzkoy’s bibliography (outwardly signed by B. Havránek) appended to the 8th volume of TCLP, in which treatises and essays devoted to Trubetzkoy’s memory were contained. Jakobson’s own article could not, of course, appear here. (Some of his papers succeeded in being eventually printed, mostly in the miscellany edited by Mathesius (1939–1940) Co daly naše zemeˇ Evropeˇ a lidstvu (What our Countries Gave to Europe and Mankind): they appeared under the name of Olaf Jensen — yet the initiated knew well who was hidden under this pseudonym.) Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that if it had not been for Jakobson the Circle would have been deprived of many a characteristic feature and its activities as a whole would have been much less diverse. It can be even maintained that without Jakobson the Circle would not bear its name, which was to become a concept known all over the world: the name Prague Linguistic Circle was presumably chosen after the model of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, a progressive association of which Jakobson used to be a very agile member before he moved to Prague. Even after years Jakobson came back to this point and substantiated the choice by the intent to express by this name a nontraditional scientific endeavour striving for new, progressive ways (Jakobson 1965).

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

At the meetings of the Circle Jakobson belonged to the most regular and best informed debaters: his profound philosophical erudition (he was, e.g., an eminent connoisseur of Husserl’s phenomenology) enabled him prompt orientation in the problems in question and his clear rigorous logic qualified him to formulate his conclusions precisely and convincingly. In discussions with the adversaries of the Circle he was insuperable — his formulations were forceful as blows with a hammer and at the same time sharp as a razor. Nevertheless, he was completely devoid of any professional pride: at any time he was willing to discuss with anyone questions that fell within the domains of linguistics and poetics, being most obliging in this respect towards young adepts. Jakobson’s fervid interest in questions of verse, poetic language and poetics was closely connected with his constant contacts with poets, writers and artists in general who often attended the meetings of the Circle and contributed, as we already know, to its periodical. Jakobson thus represented, along with Jan Mukarˇovský, the main connecting link of the Circle with the artistic world. That is also why he very energetically took part in the cycle of lectures (often mentioned here before) on Standard Czech and language culture, where he subjected to scathing criticism the then puristic practice of Jirˇí Haller (at that time the editor of Naše rˇecˇ). The contacts with artists were naturally connected with Jakobson’s intensive social life: he liked to visit wine restaurants together with men of letters (as has been also recollected by such poets as Víteˇzslav Nezval and Jaroslav Seifert in their memoirs). It was obviously due to his influence that for long years it was a custom in the Circle to visit after finishing a lecture session some cosy wine bar ‘‘to continue the discussion’’. This is only seemingly a marginal fact that might be omitted in this outline: it was also through such informal meetings that friendly ties were strengthened, ties that served as one of the main guarantees of successful results of a work done collectively. However brief this outline may be, it must contain a mention of Jakobson’s (1936), as well as Frank Wollman’s (1936), dauntless denouncement of a monograph written in the spirit of aggressive German chauvinism by Konrad Bittner, senior lecturer of the Prague German University, entitled Deutsche und Tschechen I. Both articles were based on papers read at a lecture session of the Circle and they exposed the unscientific character of Bittner’s theses intended as ideological preparation of the Nazi occupation. It was this courageous deed that (in addition to the menace of racial persecution) forced Jakobson to leave Czechoslovak territory after the Nazi invasion as soon as possible. All these facts show in a very convincing manner how significant a role was played by Jakobson in the early PS. It would be possible to demonstrate in detail that a great majority of his theses (e.g., about the openness of the language system, about the therapeutic function of vowel changes, the need for finding general language laws, etc.) are valid till today not only within the confines of PS but on the international linguistic scene as well. It can be added here that even

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Jakobson’s well-known theory of binary oppositions of distinctive features has its origins already in the Prague period of his activity — for the first time he dealt with this topic more systematically in one of his Prague lectures, at the meeting of the Circle on March 21, 1938, devoted to acoustic classification of consonants; Jakobson’s conclusions were then printed in full in French in the Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Ghent, 1938. Further development of his theses falls within the postwar period, when Jakobson worked outside the Czechoslovak domain. *

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Another distinguished personality to be paid special attention is Bohuslav Havránek (1893–1978). He had entered the history of PS as one of the participants in the first meetings of the Circle, particularly by his very intensive cooperation in formulating the Prague theses from 1929 and, later, the general principles of language culture (1932). He substantially contributed to the success of the international Prague conference in 1930 and gave lectures at international congresses of Slavonic studies (beginning by the year 1929), where he always successfully promoted the functionally structural approach to the given language problems. Of great importance is his editorial work in the revue Slovo a slovesnost; here he originally collaborated with V. Mathesius and then, after Mathesius died, continued as its editor-in-chief. At the Prague University Faculty of Arts, where Havránek studied in addition to Czech also classical philology, his teachers were mainly Josef Zubatý and Jirˇí Polívka. The significance of Zubatý’s scepticism in the period of Neo-Grammarian hegemony has been mentioned above: among his pupils it was Havránek who belonged to the most perceptive. For Havránek’s further scientific development an important role was played by his assignment to the Office of the Dictionary of Czech, where he penetrated deep into the problems of Standard language and where he benefited greatly from discussions with the researchers then working on the Dictionary, especially Kvido Hodura and the untimely deceased Václav Ertl. Just as Ertl, the originator of the theory of ‘‘good authors’’, Havránek worked his way to the conception of language correctness given by function, not by historical purity, and, in the same way as Ertl, he was able to incorporate his theoretical views into practical schoolbooks. — Havránek was also an excellent dialectologist; his first lecture as senior lecturer was devoted to Czech dialectology. Havránek’s overview of Czech dialects as presented in the third volume of Cˇeskoslovenská vlastiveˇda (Czechoslovak National History and Geography) has not yet been surpassed, although a distance of more than six decades intervenes between its publication and our time. His two-volume monograph on verbal voice in Slavonic languages is regarded as a great contribution to the Slavonic as well as general

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

grammar. However, Havránek’s main contribution to Czech studies was made by his works devoted to the theory and practice of standard language. We have already mentioned Havránek’s fruitful discussions with Hodura and Ertl, which helped to form his functional approach to the problems in question. This approach can be traced already in his paper on Slavonic adjectives corresponding to the Latin type in -bilis; however, the study to be noted here above all, is Havránek’s extensive treatise based on his lecture on the tasks of standard language and on its culture (from the cycle organized by the Circle in 1932). This lecture laid firm foundations of the functional structuralist theory of language in respect of grammar as well as style. Havránek also showed how the function of standard language can influence the grammatical and phonological structure of the language; further, he drew a distinction between such important terms as ‘‘norm’’ and ‘‘codification’’, at a time when the Neo-Grammarian linguistics completely ignored this difference and when even progressive currents in western linguistics were not aware of the existence of these problems. Havránek’s collected works dealing with these problems were published in the sixties (Havránek 1963). Havránek’s interest in questions of bilingualism and linguistic areas (Sprachbund) must be regarded as equally modern. As an expert in Balkan languages he devoted special attention particularly to the Balkan language situation, having thus anticipated in this field by several decades the sociolinguistic research, so topical in the contemporary world. As an exacting but fair pedagogue, Havránek, who came from the family of a secondary school teacher, could unerringly pick young talented students; a long row of his pupils, Slavists, Bohemicists as well as specialists in Russian acquired university posts in Prague or Brno. He never denied any of his pupils advice and help, either during their studies, or after they finished them. Also his relationship towards the staff and employees of the Institute of Czech Language, the director of which he became in 1950, was always distinguished by humane kindness, although he never made concessions in his exacting demands on work. Moreover, we have not yet mentioned Havránek’s editorial participation in numerous dictionary projects beginning with Prˇírucˇní slovník jazyka cˇeského (A Shorter Dictionary of Czech Language) through Slovník spisovného jazyka cˇeského (A Dictionary of Standard Czech Language) up to the recent Slovník starocˇeský (A Dictionary of Old Czech); everywhere he joined in with pleasure and willingly placed his encyclopedic knowledge and many years’ experience at the disposal of all. In all these works Havránek’s contemporaries admired his amazing concentration on the given task and his precise matter-of-fact objectivity unaffected by transient moods, both being indispensable prerequisites of a successful scholar and teacher. In connection with the work on the Old-Czech Dictionary let us recall that Havránek succeeded in training the leader of the lexicographic collective of this dictionary, Igor Neˇmec; it was through the work of this scholar that the early idea

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of the Prague theses from the year 1929 has materialized: the concept of a teleologically conceived subsystem of the Czech language as seen in the course of its development from the forteenth century up to the present time. Neˇmec has fulfilled this task, after preparing himself by a longer series of profound partial studies of the same teleological orientation; he thus established a model to be followed by the work of further researchers in a similar conception (cf. J. Vachek 1994a). Havránek was truly one of the few scholars who combined profound scientific erudition with pedagogical mastery. He demonstrated this quality at secondary school as well as at University both in Brno and Prague, where he lived up to his teacher’s reputation, though being hampered by numerous official functions: in Brno he was the Dean of the Faculty until the Czech universities were closed by the Nazis, and in Prague he worked for a number of years as the Rector of the then University of the Russian Language. In these positions he often dauntlessly helped good causes — e.g., it was his merit that the valuable libraries of individual departments of Brno University lived through the war and occupation without having suffered substantial losses and were able to start operating normally soon after liberation. As an experienced teacher Havránek was aware of the importance of a reliable bibliography — especially for young adepts of science. That is also why for decades he devoted much energy and effort to this task. After the war he iniciated a number of more or less extensive bibliographical publications accomplished under the guidance of his disciple Zdeneˇk Tyl or of others (e.g., František Daneš, Marie Teˇšitelová, etc.) It is also in connection with Havránek’s pedagogical activities that several treatises characterizing the language of major literary works appeared: as early as 1921 he noted the folk features of the language of the writer Alois Jirásek, in the novel Babicˇka (Grandmother) by Božena Neˇmcová and in the language of the new post-war literature; later he also examined the language of the romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha. At the same time he was also an eminent specialist in older Czech and the language of the National revival period — all this perfectly qualified him to write his monumental ‘‘Vývoj spisovného jazyka cˇeského’’ (Development of Standard Czech) in the second series of the Cˇeskoslovenská vlastiveˇda (Czechoslovak National History and Geography; Havránek 1936). This work can be regarded as pioneering in its own way, namely in that it succeeded in joining the respect for the inner development of the language (regarded sometimes by some structuralists as an exclusively immanent matter) with attention given to social, economic and political context, local and temporal, within which the language developed. It is to be regretted that excess of other duties did not allow Havránek to prepare for print a new extended edition of this monograph. Havránek indisputably belongs to those members of PS who represent its veritable pillars of support — without his specific contribution involving a

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

specific touch the gamut of the working repertoire of PS would be considerably narrowed.10 *

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Last but not least, it is necessary to mention here in more detail Bohumil Trnka (1895–1984), who acted as secretary of the Circle for long years and who was also one of those standing at its cradle. A native of Kletecˇná near Humpolec, he studied modern philology at Prague University. By his profound and wide interests he attracted the attention of his teacher Vilém Mathesius, who chose him as his research assistant when such assistance was approved by the Ministry of Education after Mathesius had been afflicted with his serious eye disease. (It is worth mentioning that Mathesius never had an ordinary assistant and never asked for one to be appointed to him. This he explained by pointing out that cooperation with junior research assistants and student assistants suited him better.) At that time Trnka had already gone through some remarkable activities outside the domain of linguistics: he dealt with problems of shorthand systems in great detail and himself was the author of an original system of Czech shorthand. Although this system had failed to win in an official competition, it offered its author ample opportunity to contemplate the problems of combinatorics of Czech speech sounds and the frequency of their occurrence. This all came very useful to Trnka when he started to work on questions of phonology, both qualitative and quantitative. In the field of English studies, however, Trnka began his research not by phonology, but by thorough analyses of syntax, which led him from the Old English period to that of Early New English (his study of the syntax of the Early New English verb appeared as the third volume of TCLP, cf. Trnka 1930). The contacts with Jakobson and Trubetzkoy soon directed his attention to phonology, where — certainly under the influence of his earlier investigations in stenography, but also following the example of Mathesius — he presented a very original and elaborate quantitatively conceived phonological analysis of Present Day English (Trnka 1935). From there his linguistic interests, inspired among others by Karel Skála-Rocher (also handicapped by eyesight affliction — Trnka helped him out in his literary work, too), turned partly to the study of homonymy, partly to special questions of phonology and grammar. Trnka went into the problems of phonological neutralisation, subjected to critical analysis Trubetzkoy’s systematics of phonological oppositions, and, above all, elaborated his own systematics of the morphological language level resting on exactly ascertainable morphological oppositions of a given language (Trnka 1958). Trnka takes up a very prominent position also in the field of historical phonology. Already one of his first contributions compares the phonological system of Old English with that of New English (Trnka 1929a); later he dealt with

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the phonological situation in (Proto)Germanic, and lastly in Late Middle English and Early New English. Here, as we are convinced, Trnka definitively solved an old mystery of the English historical phonology, viz the motivation of a large complex of changes referred to as the ‘‘Great Vowel Shift’’ (Early New English shift of vowels). The initial impulse that had set this whole complex in motion Trnka correctly ascribed to changed relations between individual components of the short and long subsystem within the system of Middle English vowel phonemes (Trnka 1959, Vachek 1959). An important event may be seen in the foundation and subsequent lasting guidance by Trnka of the working group for functional linguistics attached to the Kruh moderních filologu˚ (Circle of Modern Philologists), whose members used to meet regularly in Trnka’s study and developed the principles of the Prague Linguistic Circle, then already disintegrated. From this group, by the way, originated the well-known programmatic declaration on Prague structural linguistics that Trnka’s group sent to Moscow, where it was published in the same year in Voprosy jazykoznanija and, a year later, in the Prague revue Philologica Pragensia (B. Trnka, J. Vachek et al.1957). In the context of the then unclear world situation such a declaration can be appreciated as a bold act indeed. Trnka explicated his overall conception of English grammar in his university textbook published in three parts (Trnka 1953–1956); in the same form his lucid explanations of Old English and Middle English literature appeared; he also wrote a profound treatise on Shakespeare’s philosophy. The sphere of his interests was very wide and Trnka, as a rule, reached very deep, aiming at crucial questions of the given theory. Although his conclusions were not always generally accepted (e.g., his objections to the motivation of changes at one language level by the structural situation at another level, his rejection of lexis as one of the language levels), it is beyond any doubt that his conception represents a fully original feature, a specific variant of the theory of PS, much appreciated abroad as well. Trnka acquired his reputation of a foremost pioneer in the world context by his interest in the quantitative aspects of language phenomena. He gained recognition after the postwar Paris Linguistic Congress appointed him Secretary of the International Commission for Quantitative Linguistics attached to the Permanent International Committee of Linguists charged with organizing linguistic congresses. Another of Trnka’s merits has already been mentioned: the preservation of the set of Trubetzkoy’s letters to Jakobson, which he kept concealed during the whole war at Jakobson’s request (see Jakobson 1975). Trnka had two important pupils, Jirˇí Nosek (who compiled a bibliography of Trnka’s works in PSE 11, 1955, 89–93) and Libuše Dušková, professor of English language at the Prague University Faculty of Arts. Nosek succeeded in obtaining the position of associate professor in time, but he had to wait for full professorship until the Communist régime in Czechoslovakia broke down in November 1989; he

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had been denied the nomination earlier for ‘‘ideological’’ reasons. On similar grounds the academic career of Dušková was delayed, although she was the author of a number of valuable treatises and, last but not least, the main author of the excellent Mluvnice soucˇasné anglicˇtiny na pozadí cˇeštiny (A Grammar of Contemporary English against the Background of Czech; 1988). For a long time she kept writing her works as an ordinary research worker in the Cabinet of the Academy of Sciences, as political authorities prevented her even from being appointed associate professor — only after November 1989 she received her satisfaction at last. *

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From among the prominent members of the Circle we shall mention, even though only briefly, the best known ones, starting by the non-Czech members. The first to be mentioned was the professor of Indo-European linguistics at the Prague German University, Friedrich Slotty. He was a convinced socialist who did not yield even to an intensive Nazi pressure and remained a member of the Circle all the same. After the war he voluntarily chose the East German State and worked there as a university professor until his death in 1964. Although a great friend of Czechs, he had a poor command of Czech (writing and lecturing in the Circle, but in German). Two other foreign scholars who regularly attended the lecture sessions of the Circle were two Ukrainian friends, professors of the provisional Ukrainian University in Prague, Agenor Artymovycˇ, a classical philologist, and Vasyl Simovycˇ, a Ukrainist. The former entered the history of PS by his lecture showing important autonomous features of written language (Artymovycˇ 1932). This topic had been dealt with in PS already before (Trubetzkoy, L’udovít Novák and Josef Vachek); Artymovycˇ, however, belonged to its pioneers. Artymovycˇ died in Prague in 1935 (a warm obituary by Jakobson himself appeared in SaS). Simovycˇ moved to Lviv, where he later died. Chronologically, two other Russian linguists belong to the first generation of PS, Sergej Karcevskij and Leontij Vasiljevicˇ Kopeckij. The former, well versed in the Saussurean theses, was teaching in the second half of the twenties at the Prague Russian (Exiled) Secondary School and communicated closely with Jakobson and Trubetzkoy, with whom he conceived the well-known theses for The Hague Congress in 1928. He wrote two valuable contributions to the first and fourth volumes of TCLP; later he returned to Geneva, where he lived as director of the Institute of Slavonic Studies until the end of his life. Kopeckij lived in Prague from the twenties as associate professor of Russian at the High School of Commerce, after the war as professor of Charles University. He was an eminent specialist in the didactics and methodology of foreign languages, in which domains he applied the principles of PS.

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From the Czech members of PS it was Karel Horálek, a Slavonic scholar, Vladimír Skalicˇka, a general linguist, the author of a structuralist typology, and, further, a prominent Germanist and Baltic scholar Pavel Trost, who all became well known in the subsequent generation. An important role, of course, was played by Havránek’s Czech and Moravian pupils, e.g., František Daneš from Prague; from among the Brno scholars the following must be named: Adolf Kellner, an excellent dialectologist, and, from the younger generation, Miloš Dokulil, Jaroslav Bauer, a Slavonic scholar, and Arnošt Lamprecht, a Bohemicist. To them also Miroslav Komárek from Olomouc can be added, who in recent times successfully confronted the teachings of PS with the objections raised to the Prague approach by post-structuralists such as Jacques Derrida. Also experts in other domains, often famous abroad nowadays, have learned much from PS, too (e.g., Anglicist Jan Firbas and Greek and Mycenian scholar Antonín Bartoneˇk). The Statutes of the Circle were signed by some further prominent linguists who thus became founding members of the Circle as an officially recognized association, yet they never used the functionally structural methods in their work (although occasionally manifesting considerable sympathies for them). It was, above all, the professor of comparative Indo-European linguistics Oldrˇich Hujer (1880–1942), an adherent of the Neo-Grammarian current, but at the same time an eminent methodologist and an excellent teacher of a number of linguists from Prague and Brno (for some years he used to give lectures there, too). One of his pupils, Václav Machek (1894–1965), became associate professor at Brno University; he had signed the Statutes as well and lectured in the Circle on the subject of his thesis submitted to obtain associate professorship. In some points he came very close to the principles of the Circle, however, he never accepted them in full. The third of these signatories was the associate professor, later full professor of Charles University František Oberpfalcer-Jílek, a researcher of encyclopedic knowledge, but of eclectic methodological conception. It was he who brought Sapir’s (1925) famous article on ‘‘sound patterns’’ to the attention of the Circle, but he did not deal with problems of phonology more profoundly. Lastly, let us recall as another signatory Vladimír Buben, professor of French, then teaching in Bratislava, later in Brno and Prague. Among the founding members of PLC also a signatory of its Statutes Jan Rypka (1886–1968), then associate professor of Turkish and Modern Iranian literature, later professor of Charles University must be mentioned. His main interest concerned the literature of these languages (History of Iranian literature, written under his guidance, appeared in English and Rypka was awarded distinctions for it also from the Iranian side). A special position, already among the members of the first generation of the Circle, was taken by Josef M. Korˇínek (1899–1945), a pupil of Josef Zubatý and Oldrˇich Hujer at Prague University, from the mid-thirties professor of compara-

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

tive linguistics at the University of Bratislava. His death after the war prevented his transfer to Charles University. He specialized particularly in problems of expressive function of language (his main work Studie z oblasti onomatopoje (Studies in Onomatopoeia) appeared in Prague in 1934); here he arrived at many significant conclusions. Korˇínek’s work as an academic teacher in Bratislava has been highly appreciated by his pupils. They dedicated to his memory the entire first volume of Recueil linguistique de Bratislava (1948).11

. Hard post-war decades of the Prague School (–) The undeniable successes of the Prague School of Linguistics and its systematic effort to go on working out the principles inherited from the founding generation must be appreciated still more if we consider the complicated situation in which its members were obliged to work after World War II. Let us state only that two of the leading members of the founding generation (presented in more detail in the preceding chapter) could not take part in the postwar work any more since they did not live to see the end of the war: Trubetzkoy left his collaborators at its very beginning, and the founder of the Circle himself, Vilém Mathesius, died shortly before its termination (on the same day as F. D. Roosevelt, April 12, 1945). No less a loss for the postwar Prague Linguistic Circle was incurred by the fact that it could not rely upon the participation of its Vice-President Roman Jakobson, who was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in a hurry due to the occupation. He temporarily stayed in Denmark, then in Norway, and after its occupation he took refuge with his wife in Sweden, from where he succeeded in getting to the US. For some time he worked at a university establishment founded for scholars who had to flee the countries governed by Nazi Germany, then for some time he lectured at the Department of Czech Language and Literature at the University of New York (Columbia University). After the war he would have preferred to return to Czechoslovakia, where he would have been accepted by the Circle with enthusiasm. However, on the inquiry of the presidium of the Circle, the Ambassador of the USSR in Prague, Zorin, advised ‘‘waiting with it’’. Soon it was to appear that the disapproval concerning Jakobson’s arrival in Prague had deeper roots. In the Russian postwar linguistics important positions had been occupied by stadialist conceptions of language, building on the theory of the Caucasiologist Nikolaj J. Marr; his conception under the term ‘‘new teaching on language’’ claimed to be the only one ideologically acceptable, antagonistic towards all ‘‘bourgeois linguistic trends’’, consequently towards the structuralism of the Praguian type as well. The first signal of ideologically motivated criticism of structuralism was given in an article by the Soviet linguist Nikolaj S. Cˇemodanov as early as 1947. The Circle responded to it in a lecture by Vladimír Skalicˇka (Skalicˇka 1947–1948) ‘‘The

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Copenhagen structuralism and the Prague School’’ (later published in Slovo a slovesnost), which pointed out significant differences between the conception of Louis Hjelmslev (which separates language reality from both the material realization and the meaning reality of the outer world, reducing thus language to an algebra of mutual relationships between its components) and the functional structuralist conception of PS, which is respectful of both the material realities, by which mainly phonic realization of language utterances is meant, and the functional sign nature of the language system with respect to external reality. Unfortunately, this argumentation soon proved to be a weak defence against the more and more powerful assaults of Marrism. Already by the end of 1947 and again a year later arguments by Alexander V. Isacˇenko could be heard at the meetings of the Circle, which showed a shift towards Marrist positions. A visible symbol of the installation of the ‘‘new teaching on language’’ as the official linguistic credo in our lands was presented in a lecture by a prominent advocate of Marrism, Marr’s disciple Ivan Ivanovicˇ Mešcˇaninov; the wording of this article duly appeared at the turn of the years 1948 and 1949 in Slovo a slovesnost (Mešcˇaninov 1949) — the desirable orientation of linguistic work in this country had been clearly marked out in it in the sense of Marrist stadialism. Fortunately, however, already in summer 1950 an essential reversal took place at the Soviet linguistic front. It happened so that Stalin (allegedly owing to the intervention by A. S. Cˇikobava) let himself be persuaded that an administrative measure was required against the Marrist vulgarizations, which compromised Russian linguistics in the international scientific context. This intervention naturally brought the Marrist era to an end in our country as well. In this situation something like reinstatement of the functional structural conception represented by PS could be expected. Curiously enough, a conclusion followed that was equally strange as nonsensical (obviously inspired by the Prague political sphere) resulting almost in practical identification of the teachings of PS with Marrism. As an external manifestation of that blatant disregard for facts, the prominent Party weekly Tvorba (years ago given at the disposal of the Communist Party by F. X. Šalda) started criticising (in a series of papers appearing regularly) various theses of PS, attacking especially Roman Jakobson. Although later, owing particularly to Havránek, the ideologically aggressive argumentation was substantially moderated, practical consequences of this campaign persisted in many respects. One of them involved actual dissolution of the Prague Linguistic Circle, ‘‘replaced’’ partly by Jazykoveˇdné sdružení (Linguistic Association) for Bohemist, Slavonic and general linguistic studies, partly by Kruh moderních filologu˚ (Circle of Modern Philologists), dealing with both linguistics and literature in the field of languages other than Slavonic. An important event was the establishment, within the Circle of Modern Philologists, of the Group for Functional Linguistics, thanks to the brave Trnka, who presided over it for years, having assembled a number of younger

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

researchers working fully in the spirit of the principles of the abolished Circle. Trnka’s group entered the history of our linguistics in 1957 by participating in the Soviet discussion on linguistic structuralism. Its report (Trnka, Vachek et al. 1957) subsequently appeared in the Soviet revue Voprosy jazykoznanija and was received with sympathies. This was indeed a bold step; the English translation of the theses of the report was then published in a new revue Philologica Pragensia (which had until then appeared as a Supplement to Cˇasopis pro moderní filologii). Another negative consequence of the confusing campaign of the post-Marrist period was the fate of the once renowned series of TCLP. From this series after the 7th volume (Trubetzkoy’s Grundzüge der Phonologie 1939) yet the 8th volume (Études phonologiques . . . 1939) appeared, originally intended to honour the fiftieth anniversary of Trubetzkoy’s birth, after his death published to pay homage to his memory. As the ninth volume Trubetzkoy’s Altkirchenslavische Grammatik was being prepared; however, its publication was hampered by an incredible number of obstacles. First, it seemed inappropriate to issue it in German; therefore, Trubetzkoy’s daughter translated it into French and in this version it was completely set up for print. Nevertheless, no one bold enough could be found in the given situation to support the publication, so that the type had to be broken up. At last the book was published by the Viennese Academic Publishing House in its original German version in 1954. The harm caused thus to our institutions, not only in terms of economy, but, above all, in respect of moral values, cannot be adequately appraised . . . It was largely Havránek’s merit that the subsequent confused post-Marrist period calmed down; in the sixties (1965) he complied with the call for ‘‘pure Marxist linguistics’’ by tentatively formulating the principles of such a theory — more or less in the spirit of good Praguian traditions (SaS 26, 1965:101–4). Also the author of a particularly sharp attack against the Jakobsonian conception of Prague structuralism (SaS 13, 1951:1–11) regretted his one-time rashness (SaS 17, 1956) and at his workplace at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics organized a team, in its own way implementing the classical objectives of functional structuralism, building its own conception of a stratificational grammar, in some respects close to the conception of the American linguist Sydney M. Lamb. His changed point of view was formulated in detail in a number of papers and publications of his own as well as in those of his team (E. Hajicˇová and others). In the interests of truth it should be added, however, that Jakobson did not respond positively to the change of the author’s opinions and persisted in his implacable attitude towards the repentant author permanently. On the other hand, it is also necessary to state that very unjust reproofs have also been (and still are) directed at Havránek (e.g., in the third part of Pameˇti (Memoirs) of Václav Cˇerný). However, as a matter of fact, it was Havránek, who, valuing his colleagues above all according to their honest scientific work, was always ready to help effectively many of those who failed to

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conform to the norms and ideas of the Party, to overcome their difficulties. Therefore, it was only he who could succeed in straightening out the post-Marrist confusion, which process, of course, took some time. Very convincing support for our above appreciation of Havránek can be found with an otherwise severe and not always just critic of the situation in our linguistics of the Marrist and post-Marrist period, viz Pavel Novák (1991). It is a proof contained in a footnote only (No. 14, p. 189), yet a very significant one. It says: ‘‘Soon the Memoirs of V. Cˇerný will be generally accessible (they appeared in 1992, note by J.V.) with very harsh formulations concerning the role of Professor B. Havránek after the coup d’état in 1948. All the same, the knowledgeable and sensitive Professor P. Trost, in his concluding speech at the meeting to honour his own seventieth birthday (in 1977) was able to state about Havránek: It was he to whom I owe most — not only myself but the majority of us, not only individuals, but our academic discipline and its very essence after it survived Marrism and anti-Marrism.’’ Among other things, it was also this approaching calm in the sphere of our linguistics that facilitated the publication of my Dictionaire de linguistique de l’École de Prague by the Dutch Publishing House Spectrum (Utrecht-Antwerpen 1960), again thanks to the approval of Havránek; the edition was successful even in Russia so that it appeared in Russian in Moscow. It might be concluded that the Russian translation of the terminological dictionary of PS was favourably accepted in our own as well as in Russian circles (where already in the past the Praguian theses were received with approbation by such scholars as V.A. Zvegincev, N.A. Kondrašov, M.M. Guxman, T.V. Bulygina, etc.). Especially the positive evaluation by the Estonian school of Tartu must be mentioned here, represented particularly by Jurij Mixailovicˇ Lotman (1922–1993), whose monograph Struktura xudožestvennogo teksta (Structure of artistic text; 1970) marked out with sympathies the work of Mukarˇovský. Thanks to the calming down at the ideological and political front it was possible to resurrect the Prague series of Travaux (though under the changed title Travaux linguistiques de Prague). There appeared four volumes of this revived series (1964, 1966, 1968 and 1971), the first two under my editorship. Perhaps it will not be regarded as immodest to recall that the permission to renew this series was obtained through the present author’s colleague, the technician Josef Bartolomeˇj Slavík, a personal friend of the corresponding member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Bacˇkovský, then in chair of the editorial commission of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, who gave his consent at Slavík’s intercession. It is only fair to mention that it was my colleague from the Institute of Czech Language Zdeneˇk Hlavsa who regularly participated in the editorial work for the new Travaux. This general loosening of the ideological and political atmosphere doubtless facilitated my holiday stay at Bloomington, Ind. in 1964, at the invitation by

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Thomas A. Sebeok, general linguist at the local University, to give two series of lectures. There also two books resulting from my stay were published: an anthology Prague School Reader in Linguistics 1964 and The Linguistic School of Prague 1966, both by the Indiana University Press. Instead of the royalties I asked for 300 copies of each of the books to distribute them among our linguists from the PS and to present them to the libraries, Departments of English and of general linguistics at all Czechoslovak universities. It is beyond any doubt that all this could not have materialized without the clearing up of the overall atmosphere at that time; this also concerns my stay at the famous Dutch University of Leiden as visiting professor of English, which took place in the unforgettable years 1968–69. The very dates show that during that time again ominous clouds started to gather over PS and its fate, which nearly prevented me from assuming my position in Leiden. In the end all came off well, in spite of the fact that the so-called ‘‘fraternal help’’ against the supposed counter-revolution was then organized (Soviet military invasion into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 — editor’s note). I succeeded in concluding the assignment in summer 1969 (and was able to invite my family to Benelux and to Britain for the saved-up salary), but hard times lay ahead of me and of the Prague linguistic school after my return . . . Bad times came also for the Institute of Czech Language, the members of which accepted the events connected with the Prague Spring with great sympathies; which, of course, could not remain unpunished by the ideologically ‘‘rectified’’ Presidium of the Academy. Therefore, another spell of ideological screening took place, which, on the whole, fortunately passed without substantial losses; even so, reprisals were taken against Alexander Stich, the scientific secretary of the Institute during the Prague Spring, not rehabilitated before November 1989 (since then professor of Czech studies), and Jitka Štindlová, who owing to premature death did not live to see her satisfaction. At the head of the Institute Havránek was replaced by František Daneš, whom Havránek himself recommended as his successor already before (although Daneš was not a member of the Communist Party); as for Havránek, he later worked for the Institute as a consultant only. However, Daneš did not remain in the position of director for a long time since he failed to comply with the order to make his adult son — a technician — come back from the German Federal Republic. Before Daneš could return home from this commission, he found himself deprived of the directorship; he got to know it only ex post facto. With the management of the Institute Miloš Dokulil was provisionally charged, who acted in a very serious and humane way in his function, although a hard and energetic policy was expected from him. Thus a need arose to replace him with someone more acceptable for the presidium. Also in other respects the situation grew more severe. The Travaux linguistiques de Prague, recently revived, for whose further volume a miscellany specialized in sociolinguistics was prepared under Daneš’s editorship, were

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liquidated again. The editorial commission of the presidium of the Academy denied the permission to publish the miscellany although this was already prepared and although it would be very advantageous: the famous Amsterdam publishing house John Benjamins wanted to participate as coeditor. The John Benjamins house had published our volume Praguiana in 1983. The sociolinguistic volume could be published only in 1987, with a changed editorial staff, in which Daneš’s name was not allowed to appear any more (as editors Jan Chloupek and Jirˇí Nekvapil were named). The Dutch publishing house was interested in the subsequent volume of Praguiana as well, yet not even that was approved by the editorial commission of the Presidium. At that time the Institute as well as the advisory board of linguistics of the Academy were directed by a confirmed enemy of PS Jan Petr, who pledged himself to ‘‘rid our linguistics of any remnants of non-Marxist conception’’. For a short period Petr was preceded in his post by Dokulil’s successor Karel Horálek, a man of great knowledge and scope of vision, but mentally unbalanced, who from a once compact collective soon made a set of people mutually distrustful and united only by their aversion to the director. When after Horálek Jan Petr was appointed director of the Institute, further changes involved abolition of some departments with good traditions, other departments were joined together and some eminent researchers were dismissed from the Institute. After the new Travaux ceased to exist, we were making an effort to revive them: since it was obvious that their main adversary, among other things, resented particularly the name Travaux in their title, Daneš and I suggested a change in the title of the series, viz Opera linguistica Bohemica. This proposal was refused again under the flimsy pretext that the Academy was not allowed to found a new series of publications — in spite of the fact that in our proposal we had explicitly emphasized that the series in question did not represent a new one, but a series already existing under another name . . . That was also why, for a number of years, the research workers of PS were entirely dependent on the series published by the Faculties of Philosophy of the Prague, Brno and, in part, Olomouc Universities — which, of course, offered very slight possibilities, not to mention the fact that the intervals between submitting the manuscripts and their publication kept increasing. The aversion to the term Travaux in the title of the series also manifested itself in the fact that the lectures on functional sentence perspective organized by the Institute in Mariánské Lázneˇ in 1970 could not be printed until four years later by the publishing house Academia (Daneš 1974), and, of course, under a title in which the term Travaux was not allowed to appear. It should be stated that in this situation publishers abroad helped us a lot (first the house Mouton, later mainly the above mentioned John Benjamins), but if the publication in question failed to appear in co-edition with the Academy participating — and such cases were more and more frequent — the books published abroad remained practically inaccessible to our readers.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Nevertheless, new books could be prepared just ‘‘for oneself ’’ or ‘‘into the drawer’’ as it used to be referred to, or, as the case might be, in the form of ‘‘samizdat’’. E.g., Sgall’s group published in this way a manuscript festschrift to honor the anniversary of Professor Hajicˇová); some works appeared owing to the help of our Viennese friends in their publication series. After the November ‘‘Velvet Revolution’’ of 1989 the Prague Linguistic Circle was resurrected, while already before November, on the premises of the Technical Museum there was a series of lectures initiated by both the linguists, above all Oldrˇich Leška, and literary scientists, pupils of Felix Vodicˇka, led by Miroslav Procházka, given to prepare that event. At the inaugural meeting on February 15, 1990 Havránek’s and Jakobson’s former disciple Miloš Dokulil was unanimously elected chairman; however, he resigned his post before long for health reasons. The present chairman comes from among the initiators of the renewal of the Circle; after Dokulil the above mentioned O. Leška was elected. The opening stages of this resurrection were not devoid of some tragic chords: in January 1991 Vladimír Skalicˇka, one of the members of the Old Guard of the Circle, passed away after a long disease; another component of this chord was the voluntary departure from the world in December 1989 of Jan Petr, a staunch adversary of PS, who failed to cope with the new situation both political and scientific; Petr was a gifted linguist — had he been able to face his failure, he might have contributed some useful work in the future. The restoration of PS, the revival of its organizational structure may have even outwardly marked the correctness of our firm conviction that the most important achievements of PS remain a lasting contribution to our own as well as to world linguistics, not merely a glorious but bygone chapter of its history; the correctness of this conviction of ours we try to prove in the following chapter of our Prolegomena. Hopefully, we needn’t refrain from a certain, however cautious, optimism concerning the future generations of our linguists, in the belief that PS will represent a lasting source of inspiration for their own work, too.12

.

The heritage of the Prague School in our domestic and in world linguistics

Although a more detailed history of PS in the last two or three decades should stay beyond the framework of the present Prolegomena (mainly because no satisfactory lapse of time has passed to separate us from the events that took place in them), it is possible, or even imperative, to raise the question what the classical period of PS, which we have been keeping track of here, has left as a lasting heritage to our contemporary linguistics and has been unquestionably further developed, and, of course, what on the contrary has become outdated. To answer this question no

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great historical distance is necessary since the point is rather the confrontation of two scientific states, two historical stages, not the evaluation (be it positive or negative) of the processes and motives which have brought the situation in our linguistics from the previous to the ensuing stage. If consistently thought out, these questions can be summarized in one that can be taken as, so to say, the common denominator of all the partial questions: is it possible to speak about the existence of PS at all, today? Isn’t it rather a once and for all closed, though glorious, epoch of Czechoslovak linguistics? This question is posed not only by linguists abroad (e.g., Robert Austerlitz 1964, even Tat’jana V. Bulygina 1964) but also by our linguists (in discussions such a sceptical view on the existence of PS today has been voiced by Jaromír Beˇlicˇ and Karel Hausenblas). Such doubts are partly due to the dissolution of the organisation of the Prague Linguistic Circle as the original centre and promoter of the principles of PS, partly to the changed situation in the world linguistics as a whole. On the other hand, however, it can be rightly maintained that some ideas and currents both in linguistics and elsewhere, are kept alive by the preserved vitality of their principles in spite of the changes in the overall situation in other respects. This criterion can be safely applied also to solve our question concerning the very existence of PS at present. If we avail ourselves of the above criterion, we find that the two basic theses, i.e., the respect to the structure of the language system and that to the function of concrete utterances materialized on the basis of this system, have become a more or less self-evident prerequisite of all linguistic research nowadays. Nowhere in serious linguistics today is an inquiry into isolated, atomized language facts conducted, but more or less systematically the relationships with other components of the language system, or, at least, of the pertinent partial subsystem, are considered. Likewise we do not find any serious linguistic approach today that would disregard the basic language function, i.e., the communicative function, by proclaiming that the semantic aspect of language units should be left aside. On the contrary, at the present time even in the U. S. linguistics (which in the period of dominating descriptivism as well as in the first phase of the generative transformational grammar refused to take semantics into consideration as a matter of principle), an increasing effort is made to develop a systematic semantic analysis performed with the aid of semantic components that would be analogous to the distinctive features in phonology; a similar effort supported by the experience of modern logic can be found elsewhere, too (cf. e.g. Geoffrey N. Leech 1969). Also the principle of PS according to which language is to be examined with the aid of synchronistic as well as diachronistic methods, is slowly but surely gaining ground in the world linguistics. This principle must be paid attention, at least in a passing mention, in what follows. The emphasis put by PS on the need for synchronistic analysis, formulated by Mathesius already in 1911, never implied a denial of the appropriateness and

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

usefulness of diachronistic analysis, though even serious scholars could be found, who had ascribed this false thesis to PS in earnest, e.g., the Prague Germanist comparative scholar Josef Janko and, after the war, the Brno Bohemicist František Trávnícˇek. As we have pointed out elsewhere (Vachek 1964a), the real dividing line separating the functional structuralistic linguistics from the older NeoGrammarian linguistics is not drawn between the diachronistic and synchronistic approach to language, but between the linguistics which essentially atomizes and the linguistics which approaches language from the positions of structuralist standpoints. A number of Prague publications, mostly by Jakobson and Trnka, bear evidence that since 1929 it has always been so, the functionally structuralist approach being applied to questions of language history as well. This approach has never diappeared in PS, although the works of synchronistic orientation have always considerably prevailed over the works examining the problems of language history. This is understandable since the teachings of PS reflected a reaction against the orientation of traditional Neo-Grammarian linguistics, which regarded diachronistic analysis of language as the only scientifically acceptable one. It should be noted that respect to language history disappeared for a long time from the linguistics in the USA, both from Bloomfieldian descriptivism and from generative-transformational grammar; only later the transformationalists started to pay at least partial attention to it (cf. Vachek 1970a). Various other factors are connected with the process of gradually bridging the gap between diachrony and synchrony, which need to be considered here. First of all, there is the question of the motivation of language changes and language development in general. In the second half of the twenties Jakobson formulated his principle of therapeutic changes (mentioned already above) which serve to restore or save the endangered or impaired balance of the language system, the balance of the system being understood as its reliable functioning in the given language community. This principle was applied by the members of PS to concrete examples from the history of individual languages (see, e.g., Trnka’s above mentioned explanation of the causes of the late Middle English vowel shift). This was highly appreciated even by some linguists standing outside PS; thus, e.g., Alphonse Juilland (1967) regarded it as ‘‘a primary explanatory principle of language development’’. It is interesting that Jakobson himself in the time after World War II refrained from using that explanatory principle directly in his works, although he never renounced it explicitly. The point here is essentially the principle of immanent language development which with some adherents of PS became, so to say, a battle-cry in the late twenties and early thirties. It is well worth noticing that Jakobson himself was not an advocate of an absolute, radical immanentism, even at that time. He stated (Jakobson 1929: 14) that ‘‘the action of a language system is not confined to reactions to blows received from without, and to the cure of blows suffered’’, but

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that ‘‘in the course of its development language reacts to its own internal problems as well’’, especially those of style — here it can be seen how important a role in PS was played particularly by the respect to the function of language utterances. In another place Jakobson admits (p. 95 f.) that the discovery of immanent laws of language development, though allowing characterization of any change of the system, at the same time fails to explain how fast the change will set in and in which direction the development is going to proceed, if there are more evolutionary possibilities. The solution follows, according to Jakobson, either from the mutual relationship between the phonological level and other language levels, or from the mutual relationship between the language system and other systems ‘‘of social and geographical order’’. All these systems, according to Jakobson, in their mutual relations constitute a system characterized by its own structural laws. Jakobson, however, adds that ‘‘heteronomous explanation of the development of a phonological system cannot replace immanent explanation, but only supplement it’’. Nevertheless, the very fact that Jakobson took heteronomous factors into consideration and was thus able to avoid radical immanentism (probably ideologically controversial anyway) is very important. It should be pointed out that the development of opinions concerning this question (as can be traced in PS) is connected with further expounding and working out the principles of this moderate immanentism, as they were in nuce given, yet not explicated, in Jakobson’s formulation quoted above. It is generally accepted today that regard to the balance of the system undoubtedly occupies an important place in the development of language, but it plays a supervising role rather than an initiating one. In other words, external factors indisputably intervene in the development of languages — such factors being facts of cultural, social as well as political and economic life (but also the laws of the mechanics of speech organs, etc.) — yet they function in this way to the extent as not to endanger the basic task of language, i.e., smooth fulfilling of the communicative function (cf. Vachek 1962). It is certainly no coincidence that we find this principle — though also in nuce only — suggested by another prominent member of PS, B. Havránek. In his contribution to the discussion at the Prague phonological conference as early as 1930 he pointed out that after all ‘‘it is inner causes that can decide the question why some foreign influences are effective while others remain without any effect’’ (cf. TCLP 4: 304). Today, of course, this thesis of Havránek’s has been refined and substantiated by a number of concrete examples, especially from the history of English (cf. Vachek 1961a). Another principle of PS dating back to pre-war times to be theoretically elaborated at the present time and concretely verified in individual languages concerns the so-called openness of the language system. This systemic openness followed indirectly from Jakobson’s original conception of teleologically conceived phonology: if the function of language changes consists above all in restoring the

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

balance of the system, it follows that no language system can ever be in a state of perfect balance, which is because language development is a general phenomenon (a language universal), which cannot be absent in any living language system. From this it necessarily follows that any language system is an open system and that in it, along with a relatively firm (‘‘closed’’) system core (centre), a less firm (‘‘open’’) language periphery can be found. Peripheral language phenomena are characterized either by being less firmly interconnected with the general systemic relationships dominating the given language system (if we want to use André Martinet’s (1955) term, they are less ‘‘integrated’’ in it), or by being distinguished from the elements of the system centre by their relatively very low functional load, or by their insignificant frequency of occurrence in the concrete utterances of the given language. This differentiation between the central and peripheral elements of the system has become a common feature in the post-war Czech linguistics maintaining the heritage of PS. How great an importance has been attributed to this differentiation can be seen from the fact that the central theme of the second volume of the renewed series of Travaux which appeared in 1966 was formulated as ‘‘Problems of the Centre and Periphery of the System of Language’’. The volume (TLP 2) brought a number of fundamental theoretical papers as well as concrete evidence clarifying the differentiation examined. On the other hand, on the part of Prague scholars it has been pointed out that Western linguistic currents very often fail to respect this important difference and that this lack of differentiation between the centre and periphery in their theories conduces to considerably less convincing conclusions (see, e.g., the criticism of Noam Chomsky’s arguments by Vachek 1964c). From the openness of the system of language it then follows that the character of any language system is dynamic, i.e. non-static at all times; also this property of the system of language was briefly stated in the prewar PS. So, e.g., Jakobson already 60 years ago (Jakobson 1931) wrote: ‘‘It would be a serious mistake to regard statics and synchrony as synonyms. Any static section is fictitious: it is only an auxiliary scientific procedure, not a special kind of existence. Perception of a film can be considered not only diachronically, but also synchronically: yet the synchronic aspect of the film is not identical with an isolated frame taken from this film — the perception of movement is present in the synchronic aspect as well. And so it is with language.’’ Nevertheless, this correct, though only figuratively sketched statement was later thoroughly reflected upon and again verified with the aid of concrete material from individual languages (especially for the phonological level, cf. J. Vachek 1968a and further literature listed there). In one of the quotations from Jakobson in the preceding paragraphs an interesting point must be noted. It is maintained there that if there are more possibilities of development, the solution can follow from the mutual relationship between the phonological and other language levels. This is again a very conse-

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quential statement, although — as far as we were able to verify — it was never confirmed by adducing concrete evidence in the early period of PS. Here again the contemporary Czech and Slovak linguistics works out the impulses from the past times: Rudolf Krajcˇovicˇ (1957) explains some important changes in Primitive Slavonic on the basis of morphology; J. Vachek then brings examples from the history of English illustrating the motivation of phonological changes by the situation at the morphological and lexical level (Vachek 1961a); in a similar way the preservation of the Czech phoneme /rˇ /, whose functional load is relatively low, can be accounted for by the situation in the Czech system of morphology (Vachek 1963), etc., etc. It can hardly be doubted that the main principles proclaimed by PS in the late twenties and early thirties have not ceased to be valid after those sixty and more years that separate us from their original formulation, but that they essentially prove to be right even today as a referential frame for functionally structural analysis of language. Moreover, it appears that at the present time these principles can be worked out more consistently than could have been done by the generation which formulated them for the first time. From all this it should naturally follow that PS is living up to its continually applied principles even today, in the representatives of the new generation, which is still connected with the founding generation through the remembrances of older members who were its younger contemporaries. It is, of course, natural that in the course of those 60 and more years that have elapsed since the original principles of the Circle were formulated, certain modifications were bound to take place. Nevertheless, if we consider the rapid development through which the world linguistics has passed only since the end of World War II, i.e., during a much shorter period, e.g., in the USA (where the leading positions were subsequently occupied by at least two linguistic schools with diametrically different basic approaches to the examined facts), then we can be rightly surprised by how relatively few and, on the whole, insignificant modifications had to be introduced into the teachings of PS in the past four decades, to make their ideas do justice to the contemporary atmosphere in the world linguistics. Perhaps, the most important of these modifications involves the change in viewing the relation of linguistics to other sciences. While at the time of the origins of the Circle an endeavour prevailed to delimit linguistics precisely and strictly against the rest of the sciences and thus secure its autonomy, nowadays, on the contrary, in the world linguistics the emphasis is increasingly laid on what connects different disciplines with one another. The existence of a number of disciplines, sometimes referred to under the term ‘‘hyphenated linguistics’’, e.g., sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, the study of paralinguistic phenomena, supplies a convincing proof of it. The cause of this changed attitude of the linguists was explained in a pertinent way by Jakobson himself in his Bucharest lecture on linguistics and the adjacent sciences (Jakobson 1969). He convincingly pointed out

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

that at the end of the first quarter of our century the objective of linguistics was to defend its right to be an independent scientific discipline. Therefore it was emphasized that it was not only its right but, what is more, its duty to examine facts that belonged to its domain of interest by its own methods and that it must not expect that its problems could be solved by some other scientific discipline. Therefore in the beginnings of PS such a great effort was made to eliminate from phonological theory the remnants of psychologism of the Baudouin type, still occasionally found in Trubetzkoy’s work, and even in early Jakobson as well. At the present time, however, the situation is completely different: the status of linguistics as an independent science has, according to Jakobson, been already won through and guaranteed beyond any doubts, and also purely linguistic procedures have been developed for the description of language facts and their scientific analysis. Thus linguistics can without fear confront its own scientific methods with those of related scientific disciplines, and, of course, on occasion, use the results of these methods to check the outcome of its own effort. The selfevident principle that linguistics must solve its own problems by means of its own methods and procedures, not by methods and procedures of other scientific disciplines naturally continues to hold. Taken all in all, a more detailed examination of the situation at the turn of the twenties and thirties will show that the procedure recognized as correct at present was not completely unknown to the then PS. It has been already mentioned here that the structuralist approach to language facts learned many a thing from the approach of Gestalt psychology, the musicologistic analysis of music forms, etc. Some other keen observations are known as well, which endeavoured to elucidate a linguistic problem with the aid of an analogous parallel taken from the domain of some other discipline — cf., e.g., Jakobson’s fitting comparison of mutual relationships between phonetics and phonology with the relationships which can be ascertained between the technology of goods and economics, or between numismatics and financial science. In all such cases the tertium comparationis is given by the contradiction between mere description and profound examination of a system of values. In the later development of PS an attempt can be observed at a more consistent and systematic engagement of linguistics and its problems in pansophist context, an engagement of such a scope that Jakobson attempted to suggest in Bucharest: there he, e.g., in a new way pointed to unsuspected analogies, which thanks to modern biology begin to stand out between the behaviour of linguistic and biological structures (Jakobson 1969: 100–3). For that matter, some time ago a British linguist and the founder of the London linguistic school, John Rupert Firth, looked on language as a means which makes it possible for a human individual as well as for a collective to survive; coping with situations in life with the aid of language he compared, by no means unfittingly, to the biological process of basal metabolism (Firth 1957).

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It is clear, of course, that the changing general atmosphere in science and particularly in linguistics, above all in the last decades, could not pass unnoticed in PS and that PS had to come to grips with it. In many cases, however, it was only necessary to resume some component of its own tradition and to develop it thoroughly and consistently. Thus, e.g., facing the world’s emphasis on the necessity to analyze language phenomena from the quantitative aspect, too, PS was able to meet this trend successfully by building on the foundations laid decades before by V. Mathesius, B. Trnka and their pupil Jirˇí Krámský — how successfully the followers of PS conduct themselves can be seen from a number of volumes of the new series Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics (since 1966), in which the problems of quantitative linguistics occupy a very important place indeed (though not to the exclusion of other points). In the same series (as well as in the new Travaux linguistiques de Prague) also contributions inspired by another very powerful current in the world linguistics can be found, the conception of the generative transformational grammar. Even to this current and its conception the Czechoslovak linguists building on the foundations laid by the former PS had to do justice in their own way. The representative of this trend in the works of the contemporary Prague linguists is Petr Sgall, a one-time severe critic of the Prague structuralist conception, who, nevertheless, in his more recent works positively appraises many of its results and strives in a remarkable way for a synthesis of new methodological advances of the generative transformational approach with some fundamental theses of PS; thus, e.g., a very important position in his conception is taken by the fact that there exist different language levels — in this respect his theory in its own way resembles the so-called stratificational conception of grammar as it had been worked out by a Yale linguist Sydney M. Lamb (1966) — and, of course, by an important methodological principle of the so-called functional sentence perspective. The generative approach to language is combined in an original and fruitful way with the Prague tradition of dependency grammar by a prominent Czech Bohemicist František Daneš (1964), who, following the example of Mathesius (already 1942!), deals with problems of the structure of texts (Daneš 1970,1994) and of the semantic analysis of verbal constructions. Other researchers, who in the field of mathematical linguistics and in the effort to achieve its maximum formalisation presented interesting contributions, are Pavel Novák and Ján Horecký. All that has been said here, naturally, should by no means be understood in such a way that in PS the principles of the generative transformational approach are accepted without any reservations — critical comments were voiced especially in the field of generative phonology (Vachek 1964a, 1970a). The contemporary linguists who develop in a creative way the heritage of PS of the twenties and thirties do not leave unnoticed even other important trends and currents that can be found in today’s world linguistics. This holds true about, e.g., sociolinguistic research, which is pursued promisingly in both Russian and

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

American linguistics, and which in more than one respect begins to discover the themes that were highly topical in PS already in the period between the two world wars (thus, e.g., the problems connected with the multiform stylistic differentiation of a given language, questions of external intervention into language processes, the so-called ‘‘language planning’’, including even normalisation and codification of standard language, problems of mutual relations between external and internal factors in the development of language, etc., etc.). Outwardly this continuing interest of contemporary Prague linguists in these questions materialized in the preparation for press and later publication of a volume of sociolinguistic studies (Chloupek and Nekvapil 1987). We have been able to touch upon at least some more important zones in which the present Prague linguists in a remarkable way try to further develop a number of fruitful principles that up to the present day represent a valuable heritage of the early PS. A more detailed analysis of the work in each of these fields would, of course, require a special monograph (and obviously not a single one). However, in our opinion even from this passing view a sufficiently convincing conclusion can be drawn that even at the present time, after more than six decades from their origins, the main principles of PS remain a basis of a great bearing capacity, no less than an inspiring point of departure for further revealing inquiry both in the field of concrete language research and in the domain of general language studies. It seems to us, therefore, that the question we posed at the very beginning of this chapter, whether we can even today speak about PS, or whether it represents but one of the chapters of the history of linguistics, can be answered quite univocally: so far as the principles of this school survive and acquit themselves — which they undoubtedly do — we can, and what is more, we must speak about the continuing life of the school which formulated them for the first time. We can do so the more plausibly because what we witness is not a mere survival of a few isolated theses of PS, but a continuously developing rich life of all the essential component parts of the whole functional structuralist conception of language. Therefore, we may declare with confidence that even in further development of the world linguistics this conception is able to play a significant role in domestic as well as world context. To what extent PS will really play such a role depends on those who represent it today and will represent it tomorrow, who will become bearers of its ideas and principles.

Notes . A brief introduction to the history and theoretical issues of PS at all language levels is given also there and in T. V. Bulygina (1964) and R. Jakobson (1963). See also P. L. Garvin (1964), where, among other things, basic information on the theory of the language of

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poetry is contained. . The French version of the Prague theses was published in TCLP 1 (1929), 3–25. The original Czech text can be found in PCˇSL 1 (1969), 35–65. . After the war fruitful contacts with PS were also maintained from the American side by a researcher in Indian studies Morris Swadesh, and a younger general linguist, the late Paul L. Garvin (died 15/5/1994), who propagated the principles of PS, later also through his well-known anthology (Garvin 1964). . A summary is contained in Slovo a slovesnost (Word and Verbal Arts, SaS) 3, 1937, pp. 62–4. . In Holland the work of PS was accepted with great sympathies, in general (see J. Vachek 1968b). . See Mathesius’ very lucid formulation already from the year 1911. .

Cf. N. Chomsky and M. Halle (1968); critical comment on it by J. Vachek (1970a).

. On this topic see recently J. Vachek (1994a). . See R. I. McDavid’s contribution to the dicussion concerning Vachek’s paper at the Bucharest Congress (Actes du Xe Congrès international des linguistes II., 236f.). . A comprehensive assessment of Havránek’s importance was presented in 1954 by K. Horálek; a detailed bibliography of Havránek’s writings compiled by M. Tylová appeared in the miscellany Slavica Pragensia 34, 1990 arranged on the occasion of the centenary of Havránek’s birth. . Korˇínek’s obituary was written in very warm words by J. Ru˚žicˇka in RLB 1948. . Inspirative themes for the perspectives of further development of the Prague Linguistic Circle were suggested by its chairman O. Leška in 1992 in CˇMF (Journal for Modern Philology) 74 (the works of the late professors V. Skalicˇka and B. Trnka are valued very highly there).

We have finished reading Vachek’s Prolegomena The literature on the Prague Linguistic Circle comprises today an impressive number of items; it includes monographic treatises as well as partial studies on members of the Circle or on the problems treated by them. The texts of the basic works representing the school are quite easily available in several miscellanies and in the selected works of their authors, which, too, allow the reader to form an idea of how the contributions of the individual scholars integrated into the whole. It would of course be easy to point out what remains to be done or what ought to be corrected to any degree — but these are points that would be made only by a rather well-informed inquirer. Jindrˇich Toman in his recently published The Magic of a Common Language. Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy, and the Prague Linguistic Circle (Cambridge, Mass. — London 1995) has partly covered, and also

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

pointed out the hitherto most sensitive deficit, i.e. the inadequate presentation of the Prague Linguistic Circle within the context of the period in which it was established and developed its activities: the author presents a number of archival documents with attached brief introductory notes, thus clarifying a number of matters, but even more valuable are the question marks that spring up intrusively on the margins. Toman’s book brings us to Vachek’s Prolegomena. Indeed, we are aware of how little we learn from the actual people involved of how they themselves perceived the times in which they lived. It was Vilém Mathesius who probably revealed the most in his memories, partly published in Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost (Language, Culture and Verbal Arts; 1983), and in his articles, collected in Možnosti, které cˇekají (Chances that Lie Ahead; 1944). In his talks with his wife Krystyna Pomorska (Jakobson and Pomorska 1980) Jakobson, of course, writes first about himself. Still, a glance into the name index reveals a surprisingly curt treatment of Prague and his Prague colleagues. Were it not for the perfect artistic memory of Milada Soucˇková (The Prague Linguistic Circle: A Collage in L. Mateˇjka´s collection Sound, Sign and Meaning. Quinquagenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle, 1976:1–5), we would never be able to imagine the atmosphere of the Circle’s debates at the café Louvre. In the Prolegomena, Professor Vachek was not writing reminiscences of the Circle and he certainly did not attempt to draw genre, let alone portrait studies — incidentally, that was not his greatest strength. The text is nonetheless valuable because Circle matters are being described by somebody who from the very start had linked his scholarly life to it, and had lived in the Circle also at times when the debating evenings were but a shadow of their former selves — which however did not divest them of their realness. In the introductory note the author apologises, quite unnecessarily, for any subjectivism in the text; in my view, the book is specially charming due to the audible note of the Professor’s intonation, permeating the written text of the occasional dialogues in which he speaks of the issues with a personal keenness and characteristic distribution of objective accents. Vachek presents a relatively uniform image of the Circle; personal participation covers the ruggedness of the relief caused by the flow of time and by the diversity of the individual dispositions and tempers of the protagonists: he is moving around in his own world, in the friendly and industrious atmosphere among his teachers and colleagues, accompanied by the echoes of the achievements of the pioneering days when he had been present still as a student. It is only natural that Vachek’s peers do not reach the titanic dimensions of the founding fathers, although he does realize quite correctly that it had been especially the first generation of pupils thanks to whom the Circle survived, as a living organism, the worst times until its restoration in the beginning of 1990. And so, by coincidence, linguistic stars of the first order, like Vladimír Skalicˇka and L’udovít Novák, are given but fleeting notice, although it had been precisely these ‘‘cheeky lads’’ — as

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they were reportedly called by the Circle (in many ways unlike the Circle’s founders and yet also their faithful spiritual sons) — who were the best proof of the source of the force that, again and again, revived the Circle. The core of the book is composed of five profiles: of V. Mathesius, N. S. Trubetzkoy, R. Jakobson, B. Havránek and B. Trnka. The author describes the issues of the day as could be experienced only by somebody deeply immersed in them, somebody who felt their pressing urgency as co-creator — that is without distancing himself by resorting to the medium of the book. Hence perhaps a certain apodictic aspect of the formulations: the questions are the same that Vachek posed to himself and wrestled with. He follows the development of Prague phonology along the road marked out by Jakobson when the latter was still in Prague (the decomposition of the phoneme into acoustic distinctive features) but — like Jakobson — he never exceeds the limits of the school. It is only natural that Vachek’s description reflects the times when the author selflessly promoted the Circle — and also courageously defended it; in his defensive he stressed the advantages of the ways in which the Prague position differed from other streams in modern linguistics. Only Vachek could make that generous gesture of distributing among our linguists hundreds of complimentary copies of his books acquainting foreign readers with the Circle. In his Prolegomena, Vachek restricted his topic to the linguistic component of the Circle; this may be a reasonable constraint as long as we do not lose sight of the fact that the Circle managed to incorporate linguistic issues into a broader semiotic framework and excluded a mechanistic understanding of this connection. If the Circle was at one time ideologically unacceptable, it was in particular because of this programmatic feature. Vachek’s book of reminiscences Vzpomínky cˇeského anglisty (Memoirs of a Czech Anglicist; H&H, Prague 1994) — containing an apposite portrait of Vachek by Libuše Dušková — has thus been joined by the non-commemorative, yet deeply personal Prolegomena. This is the last manuscript which Professor Vachek, with his typical meticulousness, prepared for print. He died on March 31, 1996; the Prague Linguistic Circle paid tribute to its Honorary Chairman at a commemorative meeting held in the beginning of May. Oldrˇich Leška

Appendix I

Articles of the Association Prague Linguistic Circle Pražský lingvistický kroužek Cercle linguistique de Prague Prager sprachwissenschaftliche Vereinigung Article 1 The mission of the association Prague Linguistic Circle is to apply the functionally structural method for the advancement of linguistic research. Article 2 The means of achieving this mission are: i. regular members’ meetings with lectures and debates; ii. administrative members’ meetings; iii. public meetings with the aim of spreading interest in general linguistic issues; iv. establishment of commissions for collective processing of scientific issues; v. publication of scholarly works; vi. establishment and maintenance of a specialised library and archive. Article 3 The resources needed to implement these goals shall be acquired from: i. annual membership dues paid both by regular and corresponding members; ii. the yield from the sale of the publications of the Circle; iii. subsidies from relevant scientific associations and foundations; iv. gifts and bequests. Article 4 The Prague Linguistic Circle consists of: i. regular members; ii. corresponding members.

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Article 5 The first regular members are the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle, whose names are listed below. Any scholar who, as a guest invited by the Committee, gives a lecture and has been accepted at the recommendation of the Committee as a regular member by a twothirds majority of the members present at an administrative meeting whose agenda explicitly includes the proposal at issue, shall also become a regular member. Any scholar whose works are in compliance with the goals of the Circle, yet who cannot for serious reasons attend Circle meetings, may be elected corresponding member at the recommendation of the Committee, by a two-thirds majority of the members present at an administrative meeting. Article 6 Regular members have the right to: i. attend lectures, debates and administrative meetings; ii. receive one free copy of the publications of the Circle; iii. elect the Committee (chairman, deputy-chairman, bursar and secretary), two auditors and members of the commission for the collective treatment of scientific issues; iv. introduce guests to lecture meetings of the Circle and recommend scholars to the Committee for regular or corresponding membership. Article 7 Regular members have the duty to: i. attend lectures, debates and administrative meetings, and participate in all the scholarly activities of the Circle; ii. pay membership dues set by the administrative members’ meeting for the current year. Article 8 The rights and duties of the corresponding members shall be the same as those of the regular members, with the exception of the duty to attend meetings other than meetings of the Committee and of the right to elect officers of the Circle or to be elected officers of the Circle. Article 9 A member shall cease to be a member of the Circle if: i. he informs the Committee in writing of his intention to leave the Circle; ii. for more than one year and without due excuse he does not meet any of the obligations of membership; iii. he is expelled from the Circle. Any member of the Circle shall have the right to propose to the Committee the expulsion of a member whose conduct contravenes the mission of the Circle. Such a proposal shall be voted on by an administrative members’ meeting under the same conditions as those applying to the acceptance of new members.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Article 10 The seat of the Circle is Prague. Article 11 The administration of the Prague Linguistic Circle shall be governed by a four-member Committee, also called the ‘‘Presidium’’, consisting of a chairman, deputy-chairman, secretary and bursar. The Committee shall meet at least once a month and shall constitute a quorum if three members are present. It shall decide by a simple majority of votes; in the event of an equal number of votes, the proposal supported by the chairman shall be adopted. The Committee may invite to its meetings officers and chairmen of research commissions for the collective treatment of scientific issues to report on the results of the work of the commissions. Such invited members of the Circle shall attend in an advisory capacity. Article 12 The election of the Committee shall take place at a general meeting convened every third year in January or, if necessary, at an extraordinary general meeting convened at any time on the basis of a decision by the Presidium or at the request of at least a two-thirds majority of regular members of the Circle. Besides the Committee, the general meeting elects two auditors, also for a term of three years. (Art. 14, 16 & 17.) Members are notified of the convention of the general meeting by an ordinary or open letter not later than ten days in advance. The general meeting decides (with the exception of the provisions of Art. 16 & 17) by a simple majority of members present if the meeting is attended by at least one-half of all regular members. Should the meeting not constitute a quorum, a new general meeting is convened half an hour later, which shall decide irrespective of the number of members present. Article 13 Administrative members’ meetings are convened at least twice a year. They discuss the internal matters of the circle. (Art. 5, Art. 6 para 3, Art 7 para 2, Art. 9.) At members’ meetings, with the exception of acceptance and expulsion of members, as well as at consultation meetings of research commissions, decisions about matters assigned to these Circle bodies shall be adopted by a simple majority of members present, irrespective of their number. In the event of an equal number of votes the decisive vote shall be that of the chairman of the meeting. Article 14 Disputes that may arise within the Circle shall be decided by a majority of votes of a threemember arbitration panel elected by the general meeting. Article 15 The Circle is represented externally by its chairman and in the absence of the latter by the deputy-chairman or secretary. All written documents of the Circle are signed by the

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chairman (or deputy-chairman or secretary), financial matters also by the bursar. Members shall be informed of Circle announcements in writing. Article 16 The Circle shall cease to exist if, at the recommendation of the Committee, two-thirds of the members present at an extraordinary general meeting convened for such a purpose decide so. The assets of the Circle shall in that case fall to the public and university libraries in Prague. Article 17 Any alterations of the Articles must be adopted by two-thirds of the votes of the members present at a general meeting. B. Trnka, V. Mathesius, P. Bogatyrev, O. Hujer, J. Mukarˇovský, J. Rypka, V. Buben, R. Jakobson, F. Oberpfalcer, Fr. Slotty, O. Fischer, L. Kopeckij, E. Rippl, M. Weingart, B. Havránek, V. Machek, G. Ružicˇic´ *

*

*

Notes These Articles were approved by the relevant authorities in an official letter on 23rd October, 1930, ref. 565919- ai 1930/19A3200/2 ai 1930. Two names must be added to those of the fifteen founding members who signed the Draft Articles, the Finno-Ugric scholar Pavel Bujnák and the Slavonic scholar Josef Kurz, who at the time of the signing of the Articles were not present in Prague. The administrative members’ meeting of the Prague Linguistic Circle held on 16th January, 1931, accepted these two scholars, too, as founding members. Besides the institution of members, there was also the institution of guests of the Circle (there had been more than fifty by the time of the tenth jubilee of the Circle); for a small fee, a guest would be invited to all lecture meetings but would not enjoy membership rights. The founding members’ meeting took place on 1st December, 1930, and elected the first Committee of the Circle (it in fact merely approved the officers of the hitherto existing free group). The first chairman, as we all know, was from the beginning until his death Vilém Mathesius, the deputy-chairman Roman Jakobson, the secretary Bohumil Trnka; the bursary was first entrusted to Jan Rypka who, however, had to resign this office due to a large workload and the office was then taken over by Jan Mukarˇovský. The composition of the Presidium of the Circle then remained unchanged until the end of the war when Bohuslav Havránek became chairman after the deceased Mathesius. The deputy-chairman post remained unoccupied after the departure of Jakobson from Czechoslovakia (this was obviously a protest gesture against his forced departure); in case of need, the secretary, B. Trnka, deputised for the chairman. Trnka, too, was secretary from the beginning until the disintegration of the Circle.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

The chairmen of the working commissions used to be invited regularly to Committee meetings: Bohuslav Havránek on behalf of the phonological section, Jan Mukarˇovský for the section for research into poetic language, Friedrich Slotty for the bibliographical section, and Miloš Weingart for the section for research into colloquial Czech. The report on the activities of the Circle in 1936 lists a further section — orthoepic, convener František Trávnícˇek (later a harsh critic of the Prague School). It ensues from the report that the original phonological section and the section for research into colloquial Czech merged into the commission for the description of the languages of Czechoslovakia — the convener was B. Havránek. During the whole life of the Circle four members resigned membership (J. V. Sedlák, M. Weingart. E. Rippl and F. Liewehr), nobody was expelled. The lecture meetings took place first in Mathesius’ office on the second floor in Veleslavínova street, where the English seminar was located until 1929; when the new building was opened the meetings were moved to the first floor, to Mathesius’ office (no. 126), and later to the English seminar classroom (no. 128), where the famous phonological conference of 1930 took place as well as the series of lectures on Standard Czech and language culture in 1932. When the Faculty started demanding payment for rent of the rooms, the lecture meetings started being held at Prague cafés (usually at the café Louvre, later the premises of the Prague Language School, and after that at the Zlatá husa café on Wenceslas Square). Towards the end of the war, the Circle found refuge at the Municipal Library on Mariánské Square; after the end of the war the meetings started being held once again at the Faculty of Arts, on what is today Jan Palach Square. Committee meetings used to be held at the café SIA (today’s Academic café on The Curies’ Square). The book series of the Circle, which the Circle used to publish itself before the war, i.e. TCLP and Studie Pražského lingvistického kroužku (Papers of the Prague Linguistic Circle), were sold through the Union of Czechoslovak Mathematicians and Physicists (in Czechoslovakia) and Otto Harrassowitz (abroad). Slovo a slovesnost, the journal of the Prague Linguistic Circle, was published by Melantrich. It survived the disintegration of the Circle and continues to be published as the journal of the Institute of Czech Language by the Academia Publishing House. The same Publishing House also published all four volumes of TLP. A short final note on the German name of the Circle. The name as proposed by F. Slotty is that printed in the sub-heading of the Articles. However, it has never become widely accepted, and the name ‘‘Prager linguistischer Zirkel’’ is more common.



Appendix II Lectures delivered at the Prague Linguistic Circle The list has been compiled on the basis of records in the ‘‘Report on the activity of the Circle in the first ten years’’ (until June 1936) and on the basis of reports and excerpts published regularly in SaS (until the end of 1948). Unfortunately, no reports on Circle activities, or attendance sheets (with the exception of the very last one) have been preserved from the 1949 to 1952 period. That is why those years are documented in our list only very sparsely. A very valuable source is L. Mateˇjka’s list of lectures (Mateˇjka 1976: 607–22). The report on the decade of the Circle makes a precise distinction between lectures presented in Czech or Slovak (here given in English translation) and in other languages (here given as such), while outlines and excerpts in Slovo a slovesnost are usually presented only in the Czech version — also in the case of lectures given originally in a foreign language. The exact wording can only be guessed. Nevertheless, in spite of all these shortcomings the list presented below is not without interest and documents very convincingly the broad range of themes treated by the Circle. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to find out the exact date of the last meeting of the Circle (it was probably in the autumn of 1952, the year when the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences started its activities). 1926 Oct. 6 Nov. 3 Dec. 2

H. Becker B. Havránek B. Ilek

Der europäische Sprachgeist The grammatical category of passive voice Language culture in some new Russian publications

1927 Jan. 13 Feb. 3 Mar. 3 Apr. 7 May 12 June 2

R. Jakobson B. Trnka F. Oberpfalcer J. Mukarˇovský S. Karcevskij V. Mathesius

Oct. 2 Nov. 2 Dec. 2

J. Rypka L. Tesnière F. Oberpfalcer

The concept of the sound law and the teleological criterion Semasiology and its significance for linguistics Bally’s Le langage et la vie On motoric processes in poetry Sur les rapports entre le langage et la pensée On linguistic characterology with illustration from modern English On the interpenetration of languages in the Islamic world Duel et géographie linguistique Psychoanalysis and linguistics

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

1928 Jan. 13 V. Buben Feb. 3 J. Mukarˇovský Feb. 6 N. Trubetzkoy Feb. 7 B. Tomaševskij Feb. 14 R. Jakobson (reporting) Mar. 9 L. Brun Mar. 30 J. Mukarˇovský May 11 P. Bogatyrev June 1

R. Jakobson

Oct. 5 Nov. 9 Dec. 14 Dec. 16

B. Trnka G. Vinokur V. Mathesius J. Tynjanov

Dec. 18 N. Trubetzkoy 1929 Jan. 11 Feb. 8 Mar. 1 & Apr. 9 May 7 May 10 May 31 June 28 Nov. 8 Dec. 16

French argot and the colloquial speech of Paris Sound repetition in Mácha’s Máj and its relation to other elements of the poem Alphabet und Lautsystem La nouvelle école d’histoire littéraire en Russie. A draft of the phonological theses for The Hague Congress Rémarques faites en traduisant du tchèque en français Three solutions to the subjectivity of epic poetry in Máj, Alfred and Satanela K voprosu ob ètnologicˇeskoj geografii [Toward the question of ethnological geography] New works on the role of Church Slavonic elements in Russian On the essence of verbal aspect Linguistik und Philologie On the phonological system of modern English Problema literaturnoj èvoljucii [The problem of literary evolution] Vergleich der Vokalsysteme

O. Fischer On Brˇezina’s rhymes J. V. Sedlák Literary history and literary science Kopeckij, Ober- Discussion of an international artificial language pfalcer, Trnka, and Jakobson (reporting) The Congress of Slavonic philologists: discussion of the program B. Trnka Synchronic and diachronic linguistics P. Savickij Les problèmes de la géographie linguistique du point de vue du géographe The Congress of Slavonic philologists: discussion of the Theses O. Fischer On Kollár’s sonnets V. Mathesius Notes on Czech word order

1930 Jan. 27 D. Cˇyževs´kyj Feb. 20 V. Vážný Mar. 11 F. Slotty

Phonologie und Psychologie Slovak linguistic atlas Die syntaktische Funktion der Wortart





Josef Vachek

Mar. 25 R. Jakobson J. Mukarˇovský (Formal public session) Apr. 7 V. Machek June 22 G. Becking Sept. 15 R. Jakobson Sept. 23 Oct. 16 Nov. 3 Nov. 17 Nov. 20 Nov. 24 Dec. 1

N. Trubetzkoy O. Fischer R. Jakobson M. Seeman M. Weingart L. Kopeckij V. Mathesius

1931 Feb. 13 Feb. 17 Mar. 5 Mar. 23

J. Mukarˇovský J. Vachek J. Mukarˇovský L’. Novák

Mar. 26 V. Jirát Apr. 10 May 4 May 15 May 22 June 5 June 18 Oct. 29 Dec. 14

O. Fischer V. Simovycˇ G. Ružicˇic´ J. Frcˇek V. Jirát J. Vachek L. Kopeckij

1932 Jan. 4 O. Fischer Jan. 12 V. Mathesius Jan. 25 B. Havránek R. Jakobson Feb. 8 M. Weingart J. Mukarˇovský

Linguistic questions in the work of Masaryk Masaryk as a stylist

On the coining of expressive terms Schallanalyse Toward a phonological characterization of the Eurasian league Phonologie und Dialektologie Erben’s Kytice On polytony On the significance of phoniatry Leoš Janácˇek as a phonetician On the use of phonology in teaching On the problem of capacity and combinatory potential of phonological units

The semantics of Brˇezina’s poetic language (I) On the phonological nature of diphthongs The semantics of Brˇezina’s poetic language (II) The history of Standard Slovak from a phonological point of view and the problem of the reform of Czechoslovak orthography Mácha’s rhyme Discussion of the language of instruction in Sub-Carpathian Ukraine Konrad Wallenrod Adjective inflection in Ukrainian Measuring the melody in Czech words and sentences The vertical series of consonantal disturbances Rhyme in the work of Viktor Dyk Notes on combinatory structural analysis in phonology Recent linguistic discussion in the USSR

Echo of Russian Songs On the requirement of stability in the standard language On the tasks of the standard language and its culture Concerning the problem of purism On the cultivation of the sound aspect of language Poetry and the standard language

The papers read on Jan. 12 and 25 and Feb. 8 were delivered in public sessions as a cycle entitled Standard Czech and language culture.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Feb. 24 Feb. 25 Mar. 14 Mar. 15 Apr. 2 May 6

A. Artymovycˇ L’. Novák M. Rostohar N. Trubetzkoy V. Mathesius B. Trnka R. Jakobson Nov. 30 G. Becking Dec. 6 A. Bém 1933 Jan. 9 D. Cˇyževs´kyj Jan. 17 O. Zich Feb. 1 S. Pus¸cariu Feb. 13 Mar. 13 Apr. 4 May 24 May 27 Sept. 29 Nov. 27 Dec. 4 Dec. 18

J. Mukarˇovský K. Kožešník J. M. Korˇínek V. Jirát R. Jakobson O. Jespersen B. Bareš H. Siebenschein A. Artymovycˇ

1934 Jan. 8 Jan. 15 Jan. 29 Feb. 21 Mar. 12 Mar. 19 Apr. 23 Apr. 28 May 7 May 14 May 28 June 4 June 25 Oct. 5

V. Skalicˇka B. Trnka A. Bém V. Vážný R. Wellek F. Slotty D. Cˇyževs´kyj J. L. Fischer E. Otto A. Artymovycˇ B. Havránek F. Ružicˇic´ P. Bogatyrev

Oct 6

N. Trubetzkoy S. Karcevskij Oct. 15 G. Seidel Nov. 5 A. Isacˇenko

The written language On the historical phonology of Romance vocalism The psychological foundations of phonetics Dostojevskijs humoristische Erzählungen Loan words from a synchronic point of view On structural morphology Morphology of the Russian verb Musikwissenschaft und Phonologie Proper names in Dostoevskij

Zur Geschichte der russischen Philosophie The tempo of poetic language Phonologisches und Phonetisches auf dem Gebiete der rumänischen Sprache Milota Zdirad Polák Formal analysis of morals in La Fontaine’s fables Notes on the phonic realization of interjectional structures Aural and visual spheres in the images of Platen’s lyrics On Slavonic clitics Über Verners Gesetz German sound shift and the substratum theory Problems of translation (concerning Fischer’s Vilém Busch) Phonologie und Schrift

Towards a typology of external form On the phonological system of English On the question of literary influence Purism in Slovakia Šklovskij’s theory of prose Zur Theorie des Nebensatzes Eine neue Sprachphilosophie System of meanings Hauptfragen der Sprachwissenschaft Die Potentialität der Sprache Some problems of Czech dialectology On syllabic [r] Problems of structural ethnography Reports on congresses: Isacˇenko on the International Anthropological Congress in London; Mukarˇovský and Havránek on the International Slavonic Congress in Warsaw. Struktur des altkirchenslavischen Alphabets Réforme de l’orthographe russe Zum Problem der Sprache H. Heines Phonologie der slovenischen Mundarten





Josef Vachek

Nov. 19 B. Havránek Dec. 10 A. Bém & R. Wellek

Preliminaries to a structural history of Standard Czech Discussion of the methodological problems encountered in J. Mukarˇovský’s work on M. Z. Polák

1935 Jan. 4 Jan. 14 Feb. 4 Feb. 25 Mar. 18 Mar. 25 Mar. 30 Apr. 8

Interrogative intonation Musikwerk als Zeichen Concerning questions of phonological oppositions From the history of Middle Slovak Die Barockdichtung Tasks of linguistic pedagogy The science of verbal arts and its relation to adjacent sciences Víteˇzslav Hálek

Apr. 15 Apr. 29 May 6 May 13 May 20 June 3

June 4

S. Petrˇík G. Becking V. Skalicˇka L’. Novák D. Cˇyževs´kyj S. Hessen F. Wollman J.Mukarˇovský (public session) V. Brøndal R. Jakobson E. Utitz F. Trávnícˇek R. Carnap R. Jakobson, J. Mukarˇovský (reporting) J. Arnaudiès

P. Trost Oct. 21 J. Rypka Nov. 2 B. Trnka & J. Mukarˇovský B. Havránek R. Jakobson Nov. 4 R. Jakobson B. Trnka Nov. 18 E. Husserl Dec. 2 L. Silberstein Dec. 16 O. Kraus Dec. 17 B. Havránek & R. Jakobson

1936 Jan. 13 J. Cˇada Z. Vancˇura Jan. 27 P. Eisner & A. S. Magr (reporting) Feb. 3 A. Bém

Etymologie et problème des lois phonétiques Poetry of the Hussite period Sprache als Kultur Questions of normative pronunciation of Czech Über die logische Syntax Methodological discussion of Grund’s book Karel Jaromír Erben. Quelques remarques sur l’expression des relations de causalité en français Probleme des Sprachtabu A scholar’s impressions of Iran The Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Research trip to the USSR Research trip to Bulgaria and Rumania To the memory of A. Artymovicˇ General laws of clustering of phonemes Phänomenologie der Sprache Die tschechische philosophische Terminologie Reistische Sprachbetrachtung in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Logistik und Phänomenologie The critical and scholarly methods of Professor Weingart

Problems in the language of economists The language of economists Retrospect of the first year of Slovo a slovesnost The method of detailed observation in literary science

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Feb. 22 Feb. 24 Feb. 29 Mar. 9 Mar. 16

B. Václavek V. Chaloupecký A. Mráz J. M. Korˇínek J. Arnaudiès

Mar. 23 Mar. 30 Apr. 6 Apr. 7 Apr. 27 May 11 May 18 May 25 June 4 June 22 June 23

B. Trnka S. Lyer P. Trost V. Brøndal C. Brailoiu A. Novák A. Frinta L. Landgrebe O. Fischer J. Hrabák Vl. Helfert E. Otto

Oct. 19 J. M. Korˇínek R. Jakobson & B. Trnka Nov. 3 V. Mathesius

Czech folklike songs Church Slavonic tradition in Bohemia (I.) L. Tolstoj and Slovaks Some remarks on the concepts of ‘‘langue’’ and ‘‘parole’’ Les idées de David García sur la proposition et le symbolisme logique The application of phonological principles in stenography Pause and its function in the Romance languages Structural analysis of Céline’s novel Voyage au bout de la nuit La structure des systèmes vocaliques Sur la doîna roumaine Style of the Czech literary criticism between 1870 and 1890 Jan Blahoslav: the oldest linguistic theory of Czech Feldbegriffe in Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie The symbol of mothers in Goethe’s Faust A comparison of Old Czech and Old Polish verse On the question of musicality in poetry Grammatik und Stilistik vom Standpunkt der Wissenschaft und des Bildungsprozesses In memory of A. Meillet The International Congress of Linguists in Copenhagen Decennial Celebration of the Prague Linguistic Circle Ten years of the Prague Linguistic Circle (Introductory lecture)

Salutatory addresses : Professor Dr. A. Salacˇ (Dean of Charles University) Professor Dr. M. Murko (Slavonic Institute) Professor Dr. J. Rypka (Oriental Institute) Professor Dr. J. Cˇada (College of Business Trade) Professor Dr. E. Utitz (Prague Philosophical Circle) Lecturer Dr. K. Krejcˇí (Literary historical society) Dr. L’. Novák (The Matice slovenská society) gen. K. Herˇman (on behalf of the guests) Answer to the salutatory addresses : V. Mathesius, B. Havránek, R. Jakobson Salutatory communications : Professor Dr. J. Schrijnen (Nijmegen) (Permanent International Linguistic Committee) Professor Dr. P. Kretschmer (Vienna) (Indogermanische Gesellschaft) Professor Dr.V. Brøndal (Copenhagen) (Copenhagen Linguistic Circle) Professor Dr. E. Husserl (Freiburg) Professor Dr. L. Tesnière (Strassburg) Professor Dr. A. Sommerfelt (Oslo) Professor Dr. V. Simovycˇ (Lvov)





Josef Vachek

Professor Dr. S. Pus¸cariu (Cluj) V. Vancˇura (Union of Czech writers) L. Novomeský (Union of Slovak writers) and others Nov. 16 F. X. Šalda Nov. 23 E. Rippl Dec. 7 R. Jakobson & F. Wollman (reporting) Dec. 14 N. Trubetzkoy 1937 Jan. 18 L. Silberstein Feb. 3 Feb. 8 Mar. 8 Mar. 22 Mar. 24 Apr. 26 May 10 May 31 Oct. 1 Oct. 10 Oct. 25 Oct. 26 Nov. 8 Dec. 6

J. Horák R. Jakobson É. Benveniste F. Trávnícˇek V. Brøndal J. Mukarˇovský K. H. Menges P. Eisner R. Wellek E. Utitz L. Hjelmslev V. Skalicˇka F. Lexa F. Slotty

1938 Jan. 1 Feb. 14 Feb. 28 Mar. 21 Apr. 4 Apr. 5

A. Hartl A. Florovskij A. W. de Groot R. Jakobson J. M. Korˇínek J. Ružicˇka

Apr. 23 Apr. 25 May 30 May 31 June 27

K. Sandfeld N. van Wijk F. Trávnícˇek O. Broch B. Trnka

Nov. 7

J. Mukarˇovský

Mácha’s prose Humor in popular Czech Discussion of the book Deutsche und Tschechen by K. Bittner

Gedanken über das Indogermanenproblem

Historical terminology, the sociology of knowledge, and semantics Puškin and Mickiewicz On Puškin’s symbolics L’expression linguistique de la quantité The bases of Czechoslovak word order Le concept et les systèmes de cas en grammaire In memory of F. X. Šalda The languages of Turkestan The birth of poetic translation The development of English literary scholarship Towards a linguistic aesthetics Forme et substance de la langue Notes on the case system On the development of Egyptian Methods of deciphering Etruscan

The linguistic situation in Sub-Carpathian Ukraine Czech features in Old Russian literature Das Wesen der Wortarten Acoustic classification of consonants On the relation between sounds and word semantics Notes on the declension of the adjective in Indo-European with particular reference to its development in the Germanic and Balto-Slavonic languages Problems of linguistic interference Problèmes phonologiques et extra-phonologiques Genitive of negation in Czech Bedeutungsunterschied durch Intonationsunterschied Notes on the theory of combinatory variants and neutralization Concerning the semantic structuring of Mácha’s work

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Nov. 23 F. Trávnícˇek Dec. 19 G. Porru 1939 Jan. 16 J. Vachek Feb. 27 J. Ružicˇka Mar. 6

G. Devoto

Mar. 13 M. Pavlovic´ May 22 June 12 June 19 Oct. 23 Nov. 13

J. Mukarˇovský J. Pru˚š ek P. Bogatyrev J. Mukarˇovský M. Gessman

Dec. 18 B. Trnka 1940 Jan. 15 J. Mukarˇovský Mar. 4 J. Vašica Mar. 18 Apr. 1 Apr. 22 May 27 June 24 July 1 Sep. 16 Oct. 7 Oct. 21 Nov. 19 Dec. 2

V. Skalicˇka J. Vachek J. Korˇínek J. Heidenreich J. M. Korˇínek J. Honzl J. Mukarˇovský J. Kurz V. Skalicˇka M. Seeman S. Lyer

Dec. 4 B. Havránek Dec. 16 A. V. Florovskij

1941 Jan. 13 Feb. 3 Feb. 17 Feb. 24 Mar. 3 Mar. 24

F. Žilka J. Mukarˇovský B. Trnka Cˇ. Loukotka F. Vodicˇka J. Mukarˇovský

Passive voice in Czech Italienische Phonologie

Remarks on some problems of the written language Phonological analysis of the primitive Indo-European gutturals Le système des occlusives indoeuropéennes à la lumière de la géographie linguistique et de la phonologie On the question of the affricates [cˇ], [dž], in Macedonian dialects Semantic structure and compositional basis of Cˇapek’s prose On the semantic structure of Chinese narratives Czech and Slovak folk theatre On Vancˇura’s semantic structure The phonological reconstruction of the Indo-European consonant system Some new publications on phonology

Problems in the aesthetics of language Liturgical character of the Kiev Leaflets: an attempt at a new solution Problems in morphology Morphological problems in Czech Monophonematic words On tradition and traditionalism in the works of Arne Novák On the substitution of languages in different styles The stage as a complex of signs Dialogue and monologue Chapters on Old Church Slavonic demonstrative pronouns Development of Czech declension Special means of voice formation The controversy about Catalanian in the light of comparative phonology Basic problems of style and stylistics The Czech Bible in the history of East Slavonic culture and literature

On methods of translating Scriptures Between literature and visual art The individual and the social in style On South American languages Methodological notes on the reception of a literary work On the poet





Josef Vachek

Mar. 31 Apr. 7 Apr. 21 Apr. 28 May 5 May 12 May 26

L. Rieger V. Buben Z. Kalista K. Horálek J. Veltruský J. Frey B. Trnka

June 19 B. Trnka

1942 Feb. 9 I. Poldauf Feb. 23 K. Horálek Mar. 9 B. Trnka Mar. 30 Apr. 13 Apr. 27 May 11

A. Frinta L. Rieger J. Mukarˇovský P. Poucha

B. Trnka & B. Havránek Sep. 21 J. Nováková Oct. 5 B. Havránek

Semantic analysis of philosophical texts The Slavonic influence on the Rumanian verb Czech legends in the Baroque era The place of Bulgarian in the area of the Balkan Sprachbund Dramatic text and the theater Verbal training of pre-school children Pronunciation of foreign words, especially proper names, in Czech On the analysis of children’s language from a phonological point of view (reporting on R. Jakobson’s Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze, written in exile)

Morphology of verbal aspect in Czech Analysis of Old Czech verse and the nature of stress Development and archaisms in the spoken and written language Foreign influences on language On the relation between phenomenology and structuralism Proverbs as a constituent of a text Phonology of Tocharian and Old Indian

Sep. 7

On the scholarly work of Professor Vilém Mathesius

Nov. 2 V. Skalicˇka Nov. 30 J. Mukarˇovský

Quantity in the Czech tonic verse Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle in relation to the Shorter Dictionary of the Czech Language and to the Rules of Czech Orthography Ends and means of morphological typology The place of the aesthetic function among the other functions

1943 Jan. 11 J. Heidenreich Jan. 15 J. Mukarˇovský Feb. 17 V. Polák Mar. 17 May 5 May 26 June 7 June 23 Oct. 25 Nov. 22

B. Trnka J. Nováková J. Mukarˇovský V. Skalicˇka B. Trnka J. Nováková J. Slavík & J. Vachek Dec. 22 K. Horálek

Thematic structure in a work of poetry The concept of the development in art The problem of Indo-European protolanguage from the point of view of language interference Frequency and number in phonology Consonantal clusters in Czech verse Intentionality and unintentionality in art Typology of Bantu languages System and tense in linguistics Czech verse under the influence of quantity based meter The acoustics of the auditorium in theatrical praxis Greek model of the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Gospels

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

1944 Jan. 26 Feb. 21 Mar. 13 May 31 July 7

J. Honzl F. Vodicˇka V. Skalicˇka J. Beˇlicˇ A. Jedlicˇka

1945 Jan. 9 Feb. 12 Mar. 26 Apr. 30

J. Polišenský V. Skalicˇka J. Nováková J. Mukarˇovský & B. Trnka June 27 J. Mukarˇovský Oct. 9 J. Beˇlehrádek Oct. 15 J. Beˇlehrádek Dec. 10 J. Mukarˇovský 1946 Jan. 1 J. Nováková Jan. 28 A. Sychra Mar. 4 F. Vodicˇka Mar. 26 S. Urban´czyk

Apr. 7 June 3 June 11 Nov. 4 Nov. 25

A. V. Isacˇenko E. Pauliny J. Nováková K. Zeman V. Skalicˇka

Sign and signal in facial expression Jungman’s role in the development of Czech prose On the grammatical structure of Chinese Extra-linguistic factors in the development of dialects Jungman’s role in the creation of Czech terminology of literary scholarship and linguistics

Linguistic data and the work of historians Linguistic diversity Czech quantity based hexameter Professor Vilém Mathesius died The sentence in Vancˇura’s prose Structure and holism Holism and linguistics Structuralism

Czech syllabo-tonic hexameter Music and the word in the folk song The era of Jungmann in the development and periodization of Czech literature Geneza spółgłosek [s], [z], [c´], [n´] w polskich spieszczeniach [Genesis of the consonants [s], [z], [c´], [n´] in Polish terms of endearment] On the conative function of language Tense and Aktionsart in the Slovak verb Indian meters in the work of J. Jungmann and his school Distribution of Czech consonants Analogy and anomaly

1947 Feb. 17. L. Cejp Structural features of business correspondence Mar. 3 J. Honzl On the philosophy of sign in the theater Mar. 10 J. Vachek English vowel system according to American linguists Mar. 31 V. Polák Notes on the West European Sprachbund Apr. 18 S. C. Ross The Phoneme Apr. 21 S. C. Ross Philologica mathematica Session held conjointly with Charles University Institute of Mathematics May 5 May 19 June 23 Oct. 6

L.Cejp L. Hjelmslev E. J. Simmons A. Sychra

Art and journalism in the work of H. G. Wells Langues de différents degrés The study of modern languages in the United States The material of music from the phonological point of view





Josef Vachek

Oct. 20 Oct. 27 Nov. 17 Dec. 1

V. Skalicˇka G. Devoto K. Horálek M. Mayenowa

Dec. 8

A. V. Isacˇenko

1948 Jan. 19 L. Cejp Feb. 27 A. Belic´ I. Lekov Mar. 1 V. Skalicˇka Apr. 26 J. Nováková May 24 I. Poldauf Oct. 11 J. Vachek & K. Horálek (reporting) Dec. 6 A. V. Isacˇenko Dec. 13 J. Pru˚šek

Copenhagen structuralism and the Prague school Contributions à la problématique des cas On disputed questions of Proto-Slavic phonology An attempt at distinguishing poetic language from other types of language Subject matter and limits of synchronic linguistics

The Cambridge school On the principles of studying standard languages Regularity in the development of Slavonic languages Concerning case Latin of the Silver Age Atemporality as a grammatical category of the Czech verb Reports on the Sixth International Linguistic Congress in Paris Morphology, syntax and phraseology On the aspect of the Chinese verb

1949 Nov. 14 I. I. Mešcˇaninov The role of N. J. Marr in the development of Soviet linguistics No further notes of sessions preserved 1950 Nov. 20 K. Horálek Concerning Indo-European No further notes of sessions preserved 1951 No notes of sessions preserved 1952 Jan. 24 A. V. Isacˇenko Feb. 6 J. Beˇlicˇ Mar. 10 K. Horálek Mar. 31 J. Šedivý May 12 V. Skalicˇka No further sessions held

Indo-European and Slavonic kinship terms in the light of Marxist linguistics Czech language as national language On the so called motivatedness in language Friedrich Engels’ Fränkischer Dialekt and some problems of Germanistic studies On dialects

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

References Abbreviations used in the references BSE CˇMF CˇOJ

Brno Studies in English. Brno. Cˇasopis pro moderní filologii. [Journal for Modern Philology]. Praha. Cˇeština a obecný jazykozpyt. [Czech Language and General Linguistics]. Praha. See Mathesius 1947. NRˇ Naše rˇecˇ. [Our language]. Praha. PCˇSL Prameny cˇeské a slovenské lingvistiky, rˇada cˇeská. [Sources of Czech and Slovak Linguistics, Czech series] Praha. See Vachek (ed.) 1970, 1972. PLK Pražský lingvistický kroužek. [Prague Linguistic Circle]. PP Philologica Pragensia. Praha. PSE Prague Studies in English. Praha. PSML Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics. Praha. PŠ Pražská škola jazykoveˇdná [Prague School of Linguistics]. RLB Recueil linguistique de Bratislava. Bratislava. SaS Slovo a slovesnost. [Word and Verbal Arts]. Praha. SPFFBU Sborník prací filosofické fakulty brneˇnské university. Brno. TCLP Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague. Praha. See Cercle . . . 1929, 1931; Jakobson 1929, Trnka 1931. TLP Travaux linguistiques de Prague. Praha. See Vachek (ed.) 1964, 1966; Isacˇenko (ed.) 1968. Artymovicˇ, A. 1932. ‘‘Pysana mova’’. In Naukovyj Zbirnyk Vys. ukrajin. ped. instytutu v Prazi 2,1–8. Austerlitz, R. 1964. Review of J. Vachek, 1964d. Word 20, 458–65. Baudouin de Courtenay, J. 1895. Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen. Strassburg. Beˇlicˇ, J. 1956. Sedm kapitol o spisovné cˇeštineˇ. [Seven Chapters on Standard Czech]. Praha. Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York. Bühler, K. 1931. ‘‘Phonetik und Phonologie’’. In TCLP 4, 22–52. Bulygina, T. V. 1964. ‘‘Pražskaja lingvisticˇeskaja škola’’. In M. M. Guxman and V. J. Jarceva, 1964, 46–126. Cercle linguistique de Prague 1929. ‘‘Thèses présentées au Premier congrès des philologues slaves’’. In TCLP 1, 3–29. (Czech version in PCˇSL 1, 1970) Cercle linguistique de Prague 1931a. ‘‘Principes de transcription phonologique’’. In TCLP 4, 323–65. Cercle linguistique de Prague 1931b. ‘‘Projet de terminologie phonologique standardisée’’. In TCLP 4, 309–23. Cercle linguistique de Prague 1931c. ‘‘Masaryk a rˇecˇ’’. [Masaryk and speech]. Praha. Cercle linguistique de Prague 1932. Charisteria Guilelmo Mathesio quinquagenario a discipulis et Circuli linguistici Pragensis sodalibus oblata. Praha. Cercle linguistique de Prague 1948. ‘‘Thèses’’. In Actes du Sixième congrès international de linguistes, 135–6 ff.

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Chloupek, J. and Nekvapil, J. (eds) 1987. Reader in Czech Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Chomsky, N. A. 1964. Current Trends in Linguistics. Den Haag. Chomsky, N. A. 1968. Language and Mind. New York. Chomsky, N. A. and Halle, M. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York — Evanston — London. Cˇyževs´kyj, D . 1931. ‘‘Phonologie und Psychologie’’. In TCLP 4, 3–21. Daneš, F. 1956. Intonace a veˇta ve spisovné cˇeštineˇ. [Intonation and the Sentence in Standard Czech]. Praha. Daneš, F. 1964. ‘‘A three level approach to syntax’’. In TLP 1, 225–40. Daneš, F. 1966. ‘‘The relation of centre and periphery as a language universal’’. In TLP 2, 9–21. Daneš, F. 1970. ‘‘Zur linguistischen Analyse der Textstruktur’’. In Folia Linguistica 4, 72–8. Daneš, F. (ed.) 1974. Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective. Praha: Academia. Daneš, F. 1994. ‘‘Odstavec jako centrální jednotka tematicko-kompozicˇní výstavby textu’’. [The paragraph as the central unit of the thematic and compositional structure of text]. SaS 35, 1–17. Daneš, F. and Vachek, J .1966. ‘‘Prague Studies in Structural Grammar Today’’. In TLP 1, 21–32. Daneš, F. and Filipec, J. 1978. Slovník spisovné cˇeštiny pro školu a verˇejnost. [A dictionary of Standard Czech for Schools and the General Public]. Praha: Academia. (2nd ed. 1994) Dokulil, M. 1962. Teorie slov v cˇeštineˇ 1: Teorie odvozování slov. [Word Formation in Czech 1: Theory of Derivation]. Praha: Academia. Dokulil, M. and Daneš, F. 1958. ‘‘K tzv. významové a mluvnické výstavbeˇ veˇty’’. [On the socalled semantic and grammatical structure of the sentence]. In O veˇdeckém poznání soudobých jazyku˚, 231–46. Praha. Doležel, L. 1964. ‘‘Vers la stylistique structurale’’. In TLP 1, 257–66. Firbas, J. 1962. ‘‘Ze srovnávacích studií slovosledných’’. [From comparative word order studies]. SaS 23, 161–74. Firth, J. R. 1957. ‘‘Synopsis of linguistic theory, 1930–1955’’. Studies in Linguistic Analysis 1930–1955. Oxford. Fischer, O. 1932. ‘‘Vzpomínka’’. [A remembrance]. In Cercle 1932, 3–4. Praha. Fries, C. C. and Pike, K. L. 1949. ‘‘Coexistent phonemic systems’’. Language 25, 29–50. Garvin, P. L. (ed.) 1964. A Prague School Reader in Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style. Washington, D. C. Guxman, M. M. 1964. ‘‘Istoricˇeskije i metodologicˇeskije osnovy strukturalizma’’. In: Guxman, M. M. and Jarceva, V. N. 1964, 5–45. Moskva. Guxman, M. M. and Jarceva, V. N. 1964. Osnovnyje napravlenija strukturalizma. Moskva. Hais, K. 1938. Anglicky v 30 lekcích. [English in 30 lessons]. Praha. Hamm, J. (ed.) 1967. Phonologie der Gegenwart. Graz — Wien — Köln. Hausenblas, K . 1955. ‘‘K základním pojmu˚m jazykové stylistiky’’. [On basic concepts of linguistic stylistics]. SaS 16, 1–15) Havránek, B. 1928–1929. Genera verbi v jazycích slovanských I.–II. [Genera Verbi in Slavonic Languages]. Praha.

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Havránek, B. 1929a. ‘‘Influence de la fonction de la langue littéraire sur la structure phonologique et grammaticale du tchèque littéraire’’ In TCLP 1, 108–20. (Czech version in B. Havránek 1963, 19–30) Havránek, B. 1929b. ‘‘Prˇíspeˇvek k tvorˇení slov ve spisovných jazycích slovanských (Adjektiva s významem latinských adjektiv na -bilis)’’. [A contribution to word formation in Standard Slavonic languages (Adjectives with the meaning of Latin adjectives in -bilis)]. Slavia 7, 766–84. Havránek, B. 1932. ‘‘Úkoly spisovného jazyka a jeho kultura’’. [The tasks of the standard language and its culture]. In: B. Havránek and M. Weingart (eds) 1932, 32–84. — Partly translated in P. L. Garvin (ed.) 1964, 3–16. Havránek, B. 1933. ‘‘Zur phonologischen Geographie. Das Vokalsystem des balkanischen Sprachbundes’’. In Archives Néderlandaises de la phonétique experimentale 8–9, 28–34. Havránek, B . 1936. ‘‘Vývoj spisovného jazyka cˇeského’’. [The development of standard Czech]. In Cˇeskoslovenská vlastiveˇda II. — Spisovný jazyk cˇeský a slovenský (Czechoslovak National History and Geography II — Standard Czech and Slovak Language). Praha. Havránek, B. 1962. ‘‘Aktuální metodologické problémy marxistické jazykoveˇdy’’. [Current methodological problems of Marxist linguistics]. In Problémy marxistické jazykoveˇdy, 9–19. Praha. Havránek, B . 1963. Studie o spisovném jazyce. [Studies of Standard Language]. Praha. Havránek, B. 1965. ‘‘Stav cˇeské lingvistiky v jubilejním dvacátém roce’’. [The state of Czech linguistics in the anniversary year 1965]. SaS 26, 101–4. Havránek, B. 1970. ‘‘Principi praške lingvisticˇke škole’’. In Zbornik za filologiju i lingvistiku, XLII/I, 7–17, Novi Sad. Havránek, B. and Daneš, F. 1965. ‘‘Slovo a slovesnost a cˇeská lingvistika v novém období’’. [The journal Slovo a Slovesnost and Czech linguistics in the new era]. SaS 26, 310–17. Havránek, B., Horálek. K., Skalicˇka. V. and Trost, P. 1958. Réponses aux questions linguistiques au IVe Congrès international des slavistes. Moskva, 50–3. Havránek, B., Kopeckij, L., Starý, E. and Získal, A. 1933–1936. Cvicˇebnice jazyka cˇeského pro první (druhou, trˇetí, cˇtvrtou) trˇídu strˇedních škol. [A Textbook of the Czech Language for the First (Second, Third, Fourth) Form of Secondary Schools]. Praha. Havránek, B. and Mukarˇovský, J. (eds) 1942. Cˇtení o jazyce a poesii. [Studies in Language and Poetry]. Praha: Družstevní práce. Havránek, B. and Weingart, M. (eds) 1932. Spisovná cˇeština a jazyková kultura [Standard Czech and Language Culture]. Praha: Melantrich. Horálek, K. 1948. ‘‘La fonction de la ‘structure des fonctions’ de la langue’’. In RLB I, 39–43. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d, 421–5. Horálek, K. 1954. ‘‘Prˇehled Havránkovy veˇdecké cˇinnosti’’. [A survery of Havránek’s scholarly activities]. Studie a práce lingvistické I, 11–35. Horálek, K . 1964. ‘‘Les fonctions de la langue et de la parole’’. In TLP 1, 41–6. Isacˇenko, A. V. 1948. ‘‘O prizyvnoj funkcii jazyka’’. In RLB I, 45–57. (English version in J. Vachek 1964d, 88–97) Isacˇenko, A. V. (ed.) 1968. Études structurales dédiées aux Sixième Congrès des slavistes à Prague. Praha: Academia. (= TLP 3).

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Jakobson, R. 1923. O ˇcešskom stixe, preimušcˇestvenno v sopostavlenii s russkim. Berlin. (Czech version Základy cˇeského verše. [The Principles of the Czech Verse]. Praha 1926) Jakobson, R. 1928. ‘‘Pojem hláskoslovného zákona a princip teleologický’’. [The concept of the sound law and the teleological principle]. CˇMF 14, 183–4. — English translation in Jakobson 1962a) Jakobson, R. 1929. Remarques sur l’évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves. (= TCLP 2), Praha. — Reprinted in R. Jakobson 1962a, 7–116. Jakobson, R. 1931. ‘‘Prinzipien der historischen Phonologie’’. In TCLP 4, 247–67. (French version in R. Jakobson 1962a, 202–20) Jakobson, R. 1933. ‘‘La scuola linguistica di Praga’’. La Cultura 12, 633–41. Jakobson, R. 1936. ‘‘Usmeˇrneˇné názory na starocˇeskou kulturu’’. [Adjusted views on old Czech culture]. SaS 2, 207–31. Jakobson, R. 1938. ‘‘Observations sur le classement acoustique des consonnes’’. In Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Ghent, 1938, 34–41. — Reprinted in R. Jakobson 1962a, 272–9. Jakobson, R. 1939. ‘‘Nikolaj Sergeevicˇ Trubetzkoy’’. In Acta Linguistica I, 64–76. — Reprinted in T. Sebeok 1966, 526–42. Jakobson, R. 1956. ‘‘Serge Karcevski’’. Cahiers F. de Saussure 14, 9–13. — Reprinted in Sebeok 1966, 493–7. Jakobson, R. 1962a. Selected Writings I. Phonological Studies, Den Haag: Mouton. Jakobson, R. 1962b. ‘‘Retrospect’’. In Jakobson 1962a, 631–58. Jakobson, R. 1963. ‘‘Efforts towards a means-ends model of language in the inter-war period’’. In Trends in Modern Linguistics 104–8, Utrecht-Antwerpen. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d, 481–5. Jakobson, R. 1965. ‘‘An example of migratory terms and institutional models (On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Moscow Linguistic Circle)’’. In Omagiu lui A. Rosetti 427–31, Bucuresti. Jakobson, R. 1969. ‘‘Linguistics and the adjacent sciences’’. In Actes du Xe Congrès des linguistes 75–122, Bucuresti. Jakobson, R. (ed.) 1975. N. S. Trubetzkoy’s Letters and Notes. Den Haag: Mouton. Jakobson, R. and Pomorska, K. 1980. Dialogues. Paris: Flammarion. Jakobson, R., Karcevskij, S. and Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1928. ‘‘Propositions’’. In Actes du premier congrès international de linguistes à La Haye, 336. Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff — Reprinted in Jakobson 1962a, 3–6. Janko, J. 1928. ‘‘První mezinárodní sjezd lingvistický v Haagu’’. [The first international congress of linguists in The Hague]. CˇMF 14, 313–16. Jedlicˇka, A.1964. ‘‘Zur Prager Theorie der Schriftsprache’’. In TLP 1, 47–58. Juilland, A. 1967. ‘‘Perspectives du structuralisme évolutif ’’. Word 23, 350–61. Karcevskij, S. 1927. Système du verbe russe. Praha. Karcevskij, S. 1931. ‘‘Sur la phonologie de la phrase’’. In TCLP 4, 188–227. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d, 206–51. Kondrašov, N. A. (ed.) 1967. Pražskij lingvisticˇeskij kružok. Sbornik statej. Moskva. Kopeckij, L. V. 1935. Ruština pro Cˇechy. [Russian for Czech].Praha. Kopecˇný, F. 1962. Slovesný vid v cˇeštineˇ. [Verbal Aspect in Czech]. Praha.

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Korˇínek, J. M. 1934. Studie z oblasti onomatopoje. [Studies in Onomatopoeia]. Praha. Korˇínek, J. M. 1939. ‘‘Laut und Wortbedeutung’’. In TCLP 8, 58–65. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d, 98–107. Korˇínek, J. M. 1942. ‘‘O jazykovém vývoji’’. [On language development]. CˇMF 28, 371–5. Krajcˇovicˇ, R. 1957. ‘‘Zmena g > y > h v západoslovanskej skupine’’. [The change g > (> h in West Slavonic]. Slavia 26, 341–57. Kru˚ta, J. and Roubícˇek, K. 1941. Anglicky od A do Z. [English from A to Z]. Praha. Kufner, H. L. 1962. The Grammatical Structure of English and German. Chicago & London. Lamb, S. M. 1966. Outline of Stratificational Grammar. Washington, D. C. Leech, G. N. 1969. Towards a Semantic Description of English. London. Leška, O. 1992a. ‘‘K lingvistické tematice Pražského lingvistického kroužku klasického období’’. [On linguistic subject matter of the Prague Linguistic Circle of the classical period]. CˇMF 74, 1–7. Leška, O. 1992b. ‘‘Pražská a ženevská fonologie’’. [The Praguian and the Genevese phonology]. CˇMF 74, 65–71. Lüdtke, H. 1959. ‘‘Das prosodische System des Urslawischen und seine Weiterentwicklung im Serbokroatischen’’. In Phonetica, suppl. ad vol.4, 125–56. Luelsdorff, P. A. (ed.) 1994. The Prague School of Structural and Functional Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Machek, V. 1930. Studie o tvorˇení výrazu˚ expresívních. [A study of the formation of expressive words]. Praha. Martinet, A. 1955. Économie des changements phonétiques. Berne. Mateˇjka, L. (ed.) 1976. Sound, Sign and Meaning. A Quinquagenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Ann Arbor, Mich. Mathesius, V. 1911–1912. ‘‘O potenciálnosti jevu˚ jazykových’’. [On the potentiality of the pheomena of language]. In Veˇstník Královské cˇeské spolecˇnosti nauk 1911–1912. Trˇída historicko-filosoficko-filologická. — Reprinted in PCˇSL 1, 1970, 5–34; Mathesius 1982, 9–28. English translation in Vachek 1964d, 1–32. Mathesius, V. 1926. ‘‘New currents and tendencies in linguistic research’’. In MNHMA (Miscelany dedicated to J. Zubatý), 188–203. — Czech translation in PCˇSL 2, 5–17. Mathesius, V. 1927. ‘‘Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpyteˇ’’. CˇMF 13, 35–40. — Reprinted in CˇOJ 9–16; English version ‘‘On linguistic characterology with illustrtion from modern English’’ in Actes du Premier congrès international des linguistes à la Haye 56–63 (1928); reprinted in Vachek 1964b, 59–67. Mathesius, V. 1929. ‘‘La structure phonologique du lexique du tchèque moderne’’. In TCLP I, 67–84. — Reprinted in Vachek 1964d, 156–76; Czech version in CˇOJ 59–86. Mathesius, V. 1931a. ‘‘Zum Problem der Belastungs- und Kombinationsfähigkeit der Phoneme’’. In TCLP 4, 148–52. — Reprinted in Vachek 1964d, 177–82. Mathesius, V. 1931b. ‘‘Die Persönlichkeit Josef Zubatýs’’. In Prager Rundschau I, 239–47. — Reprinted in Sebeok 1966, II, 77–86. Mathesius, V. 1932a. ‘‘La place de la linguistique fonctionelle et structurale dans le développement général des études linguistiques’’. CˇMF 18, 1–7. (Czech version in CˇOJ, 17–38)

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Mathesius, V. 1932b. ‘‘Cizí slova ze stanoviska synchronického’’. [Loan words from the synchronic point of view]. CˇMF 18, 231–9. — German version reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d: 398–412; Czech version reprinted in CˇOJ, 96–109. Mathesius, V. 1932c. ‘‘O potrˇebeˇ stability ve spisovném jazyce’’. [On the need for stability in the standard language]. In Havránek and Weingart 1932, 14–31. — Reprinted in v CˇOJ, 415–35. Mathesius, V. 1936a. ‘‘Deset let Pražského lingvistického kroužku’’. [Ten years of the Prague Linguistic Circle]. SaS 2, 137–45. Mathesius, V. 1936b. Nebojte se anglicˇtiny! Praktický pru˚vodce jazykem. [Don’t be afraid of English. A practical guide to the language]. Praha. Mathesius, V. (ed.) 1939–1940. Co daly naše zemeˇ Evropeˇ a lidstvu. [What our Countries Gave to Europe and to Mankind]. Praha: Evropský literární klub. Mathesius, V. 1942. ‘‘Rˇecˇ a sloh’’. [Speech and style]. In Havránek and Mukarˇovský (eds) 1942, 11–102. Mathesius, V. 1944. Možnosti, které cˇekají. [Chances that lie ahead]. Praha. Mathesius, V. 1947. Cˇeština a obecný jazykozpyt. Soubor statí. [Czech Language and General Linguistics. Selected Papers]. Praha: Melantrich. Mathesius, V. 1961. Obsahový rozbor soucˇasné anglicˇtiny na základeˇ obecneˇ lingvistickém. [A Functional Analysis of Present Day English on a General Linguistic Basis], edited by J. Vachek. Praha: Nakladatelství Cˇeskoslovenské akademie veˇd. — English translation by L. Dušková, Den Haag — Paris: Mouton & Praha: Academia. Mathesius, V. 1982. Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost. [Language, Culture and Verbal Arts.] Praha: Odeon. Mešcˇaninov, I. I. 1949. ‘‘Nové ucˇení o jazyku v SSSR a jeho soucˇasné vývojové fáze’’. [The new teaching on language in the USSR and its present stages of development]. SaS II, 1–7. Moulton, W. G. 1962. The Sounds of English and German. Chicago & London. Mukarˇovský, J. 1932. ‘‘Jazyk spisovný a jazyk básnický’’. [Standard language and poetic language]. In Havránek-Weingart 1932, 123–56. — Partly translated in P. L. Garvin 1964, 17–30. Mukarˇovský, J. 1982. Studie z poetiky. [Studies from poetics]. Praha: Odeon. Neústupný, J. V. 1966. ‘‘On the Analysis of Linguistic Vagueness’’. In TLP 2, 39–51. Nickel, G. (ed.) 1971. Papers in Contrastive Linguistics. Cambridge. Nosil, J. 1941. Poznejte neˇmcˇinu. [Get to Know German]. Praha. Novák A. 1936–1938. Prˇehledné deˇjiny literatury cˇeské [Outline of Czech Literature]. Praha. — Reprint, 1995. Novák, P. 1991. ‘‘K poválecˇným osudu˚m cˇeské lingvistiky’’. [On the post-war situation of Czech linguistics]. SaS 52, 183–93. Osicˇka, A. and Poldauf, I. 1948. Velký anglicko-cˇeský slovník Unikum. [Large English-Czech dictionary Unikum]. Praha. Pauliny, E. 1943. Štruktúra slovenského slovesa. [The structure of the Slovak verb]. Bratislava. Pauliny, E. 1948. ‘‘La phrase et l’énonciation’’. In RLB I, 59–66. PCˇSL: Prameny cˇeské a slovenské lingvistiky: Rˇada cˇeská. 1–2. 1970–1972. PCˇSL 1. U základu˚ pražské jazykoveˇdné školy. [The Foundations of the Prague Linguistic School]. Praha. (= Vachek 1970)

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

PCˇSL 2. Z klasického období pražské školy 1925–1945. [From the Classical Period of the Prague School 1925–1945]. Praha. (= Vachek 1972) Pos, H. J. 1939. ‘‘Perspectives du structuralisme’’. In TCLP 8, 71–8. Potter, S. and Trnka, B. 1926–28: Ucˇebnice jazyka anglického pro strˇední školy I-III. [A textbook of English for secondary schools I-III]. Praha. Ray, P. S. 1963. Language Standardization. Studies in Prescriptive Linguistics. Den Haag. Rohrer, Chr. 1967. ‘‘Die Behandlung der französischen Nasalvokale in der generativen Phonologie’’. In J. Hamm 1967, 287–97. Ružicˇka, J. 1948. ‘‘Josef Miroslav Korˇínek’’. In RLB I, 5–11. Ružicˇka, J. 1956. Skladba neurcˇitku v slovenskom jazyke. [The syntax of the infinitive in Slovak]. Bratislava. Rypka, J. 1968. History of Iranian literature. Written in collaboration with Otakar Klíma and others. Dordrecht, D. Reidel. Sapir, E. 1922. Language. New York. Sapir, E. 1925. ‘‘Sound Patterns in Language’’. In Language 1, 37–51. Sebeok, Th. A. (ed.) 1966. Portraits of Linguists I-II. Bloomington & London. Sgall, P. 1964. ‘‘Zur Frage der Ebenen im Sprachsystem’’. In TLP 1, 95–106. Skalicˇka, V. 1937. ‘‘Promluva jako lingvistický pojem’’. [The utterance as a linguistic concept]. SaS 3, 163–6. Skalicˇka, V. 1941. Vývoj cˇeské deklinace. [The development of Czech declension]. Praha. (= SPLK 4). Skalicˇka, V. 1947–1948. ‘‘Kodanˇský strukturalismus a ‘pražská škola’’’. [The Copenhagen structuralism and the ‘Prague school’]. SaS 10, 1947–1948: 135–42. SPLK: Studie Pražského lingvistického kroužku. [Papers of the Prague Linguistic Circle]. 1–4. 1937–1941. Praha. SPLK 1, 1937. Josef Hrabák, Staropolský verš ve srovnání se starocˇeským. [Old Polish Verse in Comparison with Old Czech Verse]. SPLK 2, 1939. Bohuslav Indra, Havlícˇkovy práce o verši cˇeské lidové písneˇ. [Karel Havlícˇek Borovský’s Works on the Verse of Czech Folk Songs]. SPLK 3, 1941. Josef Hrabák, Smilova škola. [The Literary School of Smil Flaška z Pardubic]. SPLK 4, 1941. Vladimír Skalicˇka, Vývoj cˇeské deklinace. [Development of Czech Declension]. Stankiewicz, E. 1965. Review of J. Vachek 1964d. In The Slavic and East European Journal 9, 196. Šcˇerba, L. V. 1912. Russkije glasnyje v kacˇestvennom i kolicˇestvennom otnošenii. SanktPeterburg. TCLP: Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague 1–8. 1929–1939. TCLP 1, 1929a. Mélanges linguistiques dédiés au Premier congrès des philologues slaves. Praha. TCLP 2, 1929b. Remarques sur l’évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves. Praha. (= Jakobson 1929) TCLP 3, 1930. On the Syntax of the English Verb from Caxton to Dryden. (= Trnka 1930) TCLP 4, 1931. Réunion phonologique internationale tenue à Prague (18–21/XII 1930). Praha. TCLP 5, 1935. Description phonologique du russe moderne. I–III. — Only part II (= TCLP 52) appeared, cf. Trubetzkoy 1935. TCLP 6, 1936. Études dédiées au Quatrième congrès de linguistes.

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TCLP 7, 1939a. Grundzüge der Phonologie. (= Trubetzkoy 1939) TCLP 8, 1939b. Études phonologiques dédiées à la mémorie de N. S. Troubetzkoy. TLP: Travaux linguistiques de Prague 1–4. 1964–1971. TLP 1, 1964. L’école de Prague d’aujourd’hui. Praha: Éditions de l’Académie Tchécoslovaque des Sciences. (= Vachek 1964e) TLP 2, 1966. Les problèmes du centre et de la périphérie du système de la langue. Praha: Academia. (= Vachek 1966d) TLP 3, 1968. Études structurales dédiées aux Sixième Congrès des slavistes à Prague. Praha: Academia. (= Isacˇenko 1968) TLP 4, 1971. Études de phonologie, typologie et de la linguistique générale, ed. by F. Daneš. Praha: Academia. Trnka, B. 1928. ‘‘Pražský lingvistický kroužek’’. [The Prague Linguistic Circle]. CˇMF 14, 182–6. Trnka, B. 1929a. ‘‘Some Remarks on the Phonological Structure of English’’. In Xenia Pragensia 357–64, Praha. Trnka, B. 1929b. ‘‘Méthode de comparaison analytique et grammaire comparée historique’’. In TCLP I, 33–8. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964d, 68–73. Trnka, B. 1930. On the Syntax of the English Verb from Caxton to Dryden. (= TCLP 3) Trnka, B. 1935. A Phonological Analysis of Present Day Standard English. (= PSE 5) Trnka, B. 1946. ‘‘Vilém Mathesius’’. CˇMF 29, 3–13. (English version in Sebeok 1966, II, 474–89) Trnka, B. 1948a. ‘‘Jazykozpyt a myšlenková struktura doby’’. [Linguistics and the ideological structure of the period]. SaS 10, 53–70. — English translation in J. Vachek 1966a, 152–65. Trnka, B. 1948b. ‘‘From Germanic to English’’. In RLB I , 139–49. Trnka, B. 1953–1956. Rozbor nyneˇjší spisovné anglicˇtiny I-III. [An Analysis of Present-day Standard English]. Praha. Trnka, B. 1958. ‘‘Morfologické protiklady’’. [Morphological oppositions]. In O veˇdeckém poznání soudobých jazyku˚, 93–104. Praha. Trnka, B. 1959. ‘‘A Phonemic aspect of the great vowel shift’’. In Mélanges F. Mossé in memoriam, 440–3. Paris. Trnka, B. 1966. ‘‘The distribution of vowel length and its frequency in Czech’’. In PSML 1, 11–16. Trnka, B., Vachek, J. et al., 1957. ‘‘K diskussii po voprosam strukturalizma’’. In Voprosy jazykoznanija 1957, nr. 3, 44–52. (English version PP 1, 1958, 44–52) Trost, P. 1936. ‘‘Bemerkungen zum Sprachtabu’’. In TCLP 6, 288–94. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1935. Anleitung zu phonologischen Beschreibungen. Brno. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. (= TCLP 7) Vachek, J. 1932. ‘‘Professor Daniel Jones and the Phoneme’’. In Cercle 1932, 28–33. Praha. Vachek, J. 1933. ‘‘Professor Karl Luick and problems of historical phonology’’. CˇMF 19, 273–92. Vachek, J. 1939. ‘‘Zum Problem der geschriebenen Sprache’’. In TCLP 8, 94–104. — Reprinted in J. Vachek 1964b, 441–52. Vachek, J. 1946a. ‘‘Za hrdinou ducha. K prvému výrocˇí skonu univ. prof. dr. Viléma

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

Mathesiuse’’. [In memory of a spiritual hero. On the first anniversary of the death of Professor Vilém Mathesius]. In Vyšehrad 1 (24): 13–15. Vachek, J. 1946b. Anglicky sveˇže a spolehliveˇ. [A Bright and Safe Road to English]. Praha . Vachek, J. 1959. ‘‘Notes on the quantitative correlation of vowels in the phonematic development of English’’. In Mélanges F. Mossé in memoriam, 444–56. Paris. Vachek, J. 1960. Dictionnaire de linguistique de l’Ecole de Prague. Utrecht-Antwerp. — Reprinted in 1966. Russian version Lingvisticˇeskij slovar’ pražskoj školy, Moskva 1964. Vachek, J. 1961a. ‘‘Some less familiar aspects of the analytical trend of English’’. In BSE 3, 9–78. Vachek, J. 1961b. ‘‘A propos de la terminologie linguistique et du système de concepts linguistiques de l’Ecole de Prague’’. In PP 4, 65–78. Vachek, J. 1962. ‘‘K otázce vlivu˚ vneˇjších cˇinitelu˚ na vývoj jazykového systému’’. [On the influence of external factors on the development of the system of language]. In Slavica Pragensia 4, 35–46. (English version in Lingua 11, 433–48.) Vachek, J. 1963. ‘‘The place of the sound [rˇ] in the structures of Slavonic languages’’. In SPFFBU A 11, 81–92. Vachek, J. 1964a. ‘‘Prague phonological studies today’’. In TLP 1, 7–20. Vachek, J. 1964b. ‘‘Notes on gender in modern English’’. In SPFFBU A 12, 189–94. Vachek, J. 1964c. ‘‘On some basic principles of ‘Classical’ Phonology’’. Zeitschrift für Phonetik . . . 17, 409–31. Vachek, J. (ed.) 1964d. A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington. Vachek, J. (ed.) 1964e. L’école de Prague d’aujourd’hui. (= TLP 1) Vachek, J. 1965. ‘‘Slovo a slovesnost jako tribuna pražské školy jazykoveˇdné v letech 1935–1943’’. [The journal Slovo a slovesnost as the platform of the Prague School of Linguistics in the years 1935 to 1943]. SaS 26, 305–10. Vachek, J. 1966a. The Linguistic School of Prague. An lntroduction to its Theory and Practice. Bloomington & London. Vachek, J. 1966b. ‘‘On the integration of the peripheral elements into the system of language’’. In TLP 2, 23–37. Vachek, J. 1966c. ‘‘Soveˇtský sborník o jazykoveˇdném strukturalismu’’. [A Soviet miscellany on linguistic structuralism]. Review of M. M. Guxman and V. N. Jarceva 1964. SaS 27, 56–66. Vachek, J. (ed.) 1966d. Les problèmes du centre et de la périphérie du système de la langue. (=TLP 2) Vachek, J. 1968a. ‘‘O dynamickém pojetí fonologie, zvlášteˇ cˇeské’’. [On the dynamic conception of (mainly Czech) phonology]. SaS 29, 246–55. Vachek, J. 1968b. Dutch Linguists and the Prague Linguistic School. Leiden. Vachek, J. 1968c. ‘‘Phonology today’’. Linguistics 46, 77–98. Vachek, J. 1968d. Dynamika fonologického systému soucˇasné spisovné cˇeštiny. [The dynamics of the phonological system of Present-Day Standard Czech]. Praha. Vachek, J. 1970a. ‘‘Z nových cest generativní fonologie’’. [Generative phonology looking for new ways]. SaS 31, 111–24. Vachek, J. 1970b. ‘‘On some less known aspects of the early Prague linguistic school’’. In Actes du Xe Congrès international des linguistes II, Bucharest, 333–7.

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Vachek, J. 1970c. ‘‘Peˇtadvacet let od skonu Viléma Mathesia’’. [Twenty-five years since the death of Vilém Mathesius]. CˇMF 52, 121–6. Vachek, J. (ed.) 1970. U základu˚ pražské jazykoveˇdné školy. [The Foundations of the Prague Linguistic School]. Praha. (= PCˇSL 1) Vachek, J. (ed.) 1972. Z klasického období pražské školy 1925–1945. [From Classical Period of the Prague School 1925–1945]. Praha. (= PCˇSL 2) Vachek, J. (ed.) 1983. Praguiana. Praha: Academia & Amsterdam: Benjamins. Vachek, J. (ed.) 1989. Written Language Revisited. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Vachek, J. 1994a. ‘‘K teleologickému pojetí zmeˇn v historii jazykového systému’’. [On the teleological approach to changes in the history of the language system]. NRˇ 77, 127–32. Vachek, J. 1994b. Vzpomínky cˇeského anglisty [Memoirs of a Czech Anglicist]; Praha: H&H. Wollman, F. 1936. ‘‘Literárneˇveˇdné metody v Bittneroveˇ knize Deutsche und Tschechen’’. [Methods of literary criticism in Bittner’s book]. SaS 2, 201–7. Zvegincev, V. A. 1964–65: Istorija jazykoznanija XIX i XX vekov v ocˇerkax i izvlecˇenijax, I–II. Moskva.

Editors’ note Habent suafata libelli. In the early 1990s, Professor Josef Vachek, the honorary chairman of the recently re-established Prague Linguistic Circle, offered the publishing house H&H two manuscripts for publication: Vzpomínky cˇeského anglisty (Memoirs of a Czech Anglicist) and Prolegomena k deˇjinám Pražské školy jazykoveˇdné (Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School of Linguistics). The latter was much more on Vachek’s mind, but the publisher, a newcomer to the Czech book market, preferred the Memoirs. Only when the book appeared in 1994 did H&H decide to publish the Prolegomena as well. Vachek’s introduction to it bears the date of October 29, 1994, yet it was only in summer of 1996, almost three months after Josef Vachek’s death (March 31, 1996), that the publisher asked Professor Oldrˇich Leška, the then chairman of the Prague Linguistic Circle, to write an afterword. In the same year, the Circle’s Committee made a thorough revision of the Appendices and Secondary sources. All the same, neither Oldrˇich Leška (d. August 9, 1997) lived to see the book published as the Prolegomena appeared only in 1999. Josef Vachek’s Prolegomena provide a specific perspective on the history of the Prague Linguistic Circle, one that present-day scholars working in the same linguistic tradition can no longer offer. The editors of the new Travaux series are therefore pleased to be able to present this historical document in an English translation to the international community of linguists. The whole body of Josef Vachek’s text was translated by Zdeneˇk Kirschner. The Afterword and Appendix I were translated by Nad’a Abdallaová, Appendix II and References were adapted by the editors. In this translation of Vachek’s Prolegomena, proper names from languages using non-Latin alphabets (mostly Russian and Ukrainian) are rendered in philological transcription with diacriticized letters, e.g. Dostoevskij, Cˇexov (instead of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov), which was the usage already in the pre-war Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague as well as in Roman Jakobson’s Selected Writings. The philological

Prolegomena to the history of the Prague School

transcription of the name of Roman Osipovicˇ Jakobson is identical to the usual spelling (when leaving out his patronymic), while the philological transcription of the name of Nikolaj Sergeevicˇ Trubeckoj is not. Since Trubeckoj used two canonical Latin alphabet spellings of his family name, viz. Trubetzkoy when writing in German and Troubetzkoy when writing in French, we render his name, as the only exception, rather in his own German spelling, than in the philological transcription.

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Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

Oldrˇich Leška

0. Topicality of Anton Marty’s work Metaphysical philosophy was having a strong and long lasting impact on linguistic thought, esp. as far as problems of meaning were concerned. For Aristotle (De interpretatione) the content of language expressions (words, . . .) in different languages was common both to Greeks and to the rest of the linguistic world, i.e. to the Barbarians. The problem of linguistic relativism was nonexistent: the content was fixed, given and thus independent of the structure of a language. This provided an inexhaustible feeding ground for both parties to the dispute between anomalists and analogists which cannot be considered as resolved and thus a matter of a distant past (Seuren 1985). But this is not the line of thought to be followed here. A consequence of a metaphysical frame of mind is reification of meaning. It should be noted that questions like what does ‘sarcastic’ mean? are quite normal and do not presuppose a metaphysical frame of mind or a definite philosophical outlook whatsoever. We are dealing here with a case when the language user in his reply ‘sarcastic’ means . . . isolates the meaning as a result of a natural hypostatic attitude by which he verbalizes his own linguistic experience. Hypostasis is not exclusive to matters of meaning; we can meet it at whatever level of linguistic structure. Analytical philosophy (philosophy of everyday language) noticed quite aptly that the linguistic form may lead one astray (cf. questions like what is a peony? : : what is virtue?) by inducing the same understanding of the ontological status of the items in question. It is with Franz Brentano’s philosophy which was further developing in the work of his circle including A. Marty that an antimetaphysical turn came about. So that if we term the period in philosophy since Descartes as modern then Brentano’s school made the first decisive step along the path towards philosophical postmodernism. Thus one can see Marty’s work in a definite general perspective. As Professor of philosophy at the Prague German university Marty asembled here a circle of followers and thus strengthened the position of Brentanian philosophy; through mediation of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, another Brentanian,

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Oldrˇich Leška

Professor at the Prague Czech university, Marty was instrumental in changing the outlook of Czech national philosophical community. Marty’s teachings have left an unmistakable trace in the theory and practice of the Prague Linguistic Circle. The memory of A. Marty has not faded away with time; interest in his ideas may be attested throughout the decades following his death up to the present reaching far beyond the limits of Europe now.

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A few data concerning A. Marty’s life and work

Anton Marty was borne 1847 in Schwyz, Switzerland, into a family whose atmosphere combined with the young boy’s penchant led him to an early decision to become priest. Marty started his theological studies with success but he was never ordained. The reason why he did not feel fit to continue along the chosen path was the announcement of new doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the papal infallibility and the immaculate conception of Virgin Mary, two points he found unacceptable. At the same time he became acquainted with Franz Brentano and his philosophy. He studied under his guidance in Würzburg (1869) and the relationship between Brentano — teacher and Marty — student developed into a deep and lasting friendship. Although completely different in temperament, these two shared the same painful experience of a conflict between the inner voice of conscience and the clerical discipline which both of them resolved — quite independently — in the same way: as rebels. This was interpreted in some circles as an anticlerical gesture which made Brentano’s position all the more attractive. The basic lines of Marty’s language conception were formulated in his thesis on the origin of language (Marty 1875). After a brief stay in Czernowitz/Cernauti at a new founded Austrian university Marty accepted the proposed professorship at the Prague German university (1880) where he was active to his end (1914; Brentano — by 9 years senior of Marty — outlived his friend and died in Florence 1917). Because of scientific authority and rare features of character Marty served later as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and finally (1909) was elected Rector of the University. His philosophy of language was elaborated in detailed studies that were assembled for the most part and published by his Prague pupil and follower Oskar Kraus (Kraus 1916–1920). Marty was preparing a synthesis of his ideas in a voluminous work of which only the first book was published during his lifetime (Marty 1908); the rest remained in manuscript fragments or sketches. Thanks to Marty’s student Otto Funke we are in possession of a reconstruction of the whole (Marty 1940, 1950); Funke published some important parts of the text (Marty 1950). Luckily enough, Funke found and published the text of Marty’s lectures on philosophy of language held in the academic year 1904/5, which represent a résumé of Marty’s unfinished work (Marty 1940).

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

The published first volume of Marty’s Untersuchungen found a ready though limited resonance. Karl Bühler wrote a detailed review (Bühler 1909) which was critical but it reflected a real understanding for the problems treated by Marty. On the other hand, Antoine Meillet (Meillet 1909) dismissed the book as rather irrelevant for understanding any concrete language. One does not find this very surprising: Meillet never had any deep rooted interest in theoretical problems of language. One must however concede that reading Marty could have been hardly a treat, esp. for Meillet. Marty’s texts are not easy to read; he follows the professorish style of exposing his ideas with lenghty digressions commenting on what his colleagues wrote on the subject so that his own line of thought is not always easy to follow. On the whole none of Marty’s published texts passed unnoticed; the appearence of some was followed by a lenghty polemic. He was very alert to what was going on in his field. Throughout his scientific life he was on the guard against the ideas of Wilhelm Wundt, Heyman Steinthal and Moritz Lazarus; on the other hand, he liked Karl Brugmann, Herman Paul, Ludwig Tobler, one of the finest syntacticians I have ever read.

.

What was characteristic of Brentano’s philosophy

For understanding Marty’s philosophy of language a few words on Brentano’s philosophy should be useful. Franz Brentano (1838–1917) started with a critical analysis of Aristotle’s philosophical system. On this basis he developed his phenomenal-descriptive psychology setting it in opposition to the then predominant line of thought in psychology which concentrated on the mechanistically conceived processual aspect of psychical phenomena (Brentano 1874). The underlying notion for Brentano’s philosophy is the inherent intentionality of human consciousness which makes it possible to abstract from the existence of the objective reality as an indispensable presupposition of a philosophical system. It is in the intentional act that reality constitutes itself; the objects one is conscious of may be independent of one’s consciousness (as, e.g. a tree ) or dependent on it (as in the case of a unicorn), both kinds of objects are real. A concrete intentional act should be distinguished from its content which is linguistically communicable and thus stripped of any subjective uniqueness. In this way of thinking, language is set as the guarantee of the intersubjective objectivity; it is clear why problems of language (of its character and structure) move — in the framework of Brentano’s system — into the focus of attention. It was natural that one had to concentrate on those features of language which were universal so that the dividing line between philosophy of language and linguistics, whose concern is all that is specific of a given language, could be clearly drawn. At the same time one had to pay attention to the distinction between what

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Oldrˇich Leška

is present in the linguistic conscience of a native speaker as an active component of the linguistic structure and those components that have to be arrived at in the process of scientific analysis of language. This is connected with important problems of elementary psychological relevance of language and conditions of experiencing language, which are problems that cannot be passed over in silence even now. The approach to language must take into acount synchronic relationship (statics) on the one hand and diachronic relationship that obtain in the process of linguistic change on the other (dynamics) as different points of view. It is the synchronic relationship that are harbingers of linguistic change. It was characteristic of Brentano’s philosophical circle that its members who had taken important positions at Austrian and German universities were continuing to share the basic ideas of their teacher while applying them to particular domains of knowledge (cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alfred Kastil, Emil Utitz, Edmund Husserl). This fact explains why Brentano’s philosophy had become so influential (Brentano exerted his influence mainly through personal contact — most of his writings remained in manuscritp form; it is characteristic that a short stay in Italy achieved more in spreading his ideas than what he had written). At the same time this philosophy was not a closed system, it opened new vistas for philosophical thought as evidenced by the work of Edmund Husserl.

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Marty’s functionalist and teleological conception of language

As we know, Marty introduced himself to the world of science by his thesis on the origin of language (Marty 1875). Usually one does not start reading books on this topic without a suspicion of diletantish speculation. Marty’s book however is not an attempt at substituting speculative phantasy for lack of facts. One can say that the title of the book was misleading because what the author was trying to do was to pinpoint the constitutive features of human language, to determine on what condition it is justified to call a communicative system — a natural language. Language emerged as a practical tool of communication and it preserved its instrumental character throughout its history. The inherent goal-orientedness of language provides a natural basis for its teleological conception. Language does not follows in the course of its development any definite blueprint. It is supposed to respond to the requirements of the communication; thus one cannot expect any systematicity in the changing make-up of language. Practical considerations decide whether a new addition based on individual linguistic creativity will be sanctioned by usage and thus included into the commonly accepted stock — or not. In this way, through language processes, the relative order characteristic of the synchronic coherence is maintained.

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

If onomatopoeic and/or affective expressions played some role in the formation of language, this can be understood only in the sense that they served as the inner form of nominative expressions (cf. waw waw as an imitation of the bark of a dog and wawaw meaning and denoting a dog or the dog is barking in child language). The inner form does not arrest the hearer’s attention. It serves as transitory component in the internal structure of the expression leading to its meaning function as the case is, e.g. in metaphors (chick ‘a young girl’ ) or metonymic expressions (roof ‘house’, ‘home’ ), see below. If language is goal-oriented, instrumental in its character, it is quite natural that it should be differentiated according to its diverse functions. Thus it is erroneous to apply the same criteria to the poetic use of language as to its use in communication. It is possible to complement language when adjusting particular sets of its means to new branches of knowledge (language of scientific discourse); language may be trimmed and pruned to the needs of a smooth everyday linguistic intercourse, esp. to the tastes of the cultured social strata. Language may be subject to critical analysis from the logical point of view. Evaluative judgments on language matters from the ethical point of view may be found in what we call language politics in cases of language suppresion or aggresion. Texts, Marty says, have according to their function a specific tonality, in other words they are marked by a stylistic homogenity/cohesion.

. Marty’s philosophy of language Marty makes a distinction between a practical and a theoretical branch of philosophy of language. The problems making up the contents of the practical philosophy of language were indicated in the preceding paragraph. The theoretical branch of philosophy of language should not overlap with linguistics, i.e. with the science whose object are concrete historical languages, language groups or language types. Having as its empirical basis the descriptive/ phenomenal psychology, it should deal with general semasiology (allgemeine Bedeutungslehre). This is based on the following types of intentional acts as postulated by Franz Brentano: 1. representation acts / Vorstellungsakte 2. judgment acts / Urteilsakte 3. evaluative acts / wertende (heischende) Akte. These types form a hierarchy: evaluative acts presuppose judgment acts, judgment acts presuppose representation acts. In language they find correspondences in universal functional categories:

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1. representation suggestives (Vorstellungssuggestive, Ausdrücke) 2. judgment suggestives (Urteilssuggestive, Aussagen) 3. value suggestives (Emotive, wertende Aussagen). These universal functional categories are language nonspecific, i.e. nonspecific as far as their form/structure is concerned. Thus a representation suggestive (Ausdruck) may take a form of a word (cf. seamstress), of a combination of words (cf. sowing machine), of a sentence (cf. what you may call it as an indefinite filling pronoun). Against these universal functional categories Marty opposes the language specific Ausdrucksmethoden, i.e. ways of their structuring in different languages; it is linguistics that has to deal with these problems. Because of their universality the functional categories can serve as a basis for contrastive linguistics. A general semantic distinction between linguistic formations is the distinction between autosemantics and synsemantics. Autosemantics are those formations that can function as selfcontained utterances. All other cases that do not meet this condition are synsemantic; thus synsemantics are e.g. a sentence term or a clause: the hearers attention does not concentrate on them passing on to their complements until the possibilities of the construction frame are exhausted (cf. verbal forms and their complements). Nouns in an independent position are considered theoretical autosemantics, however not as a morphological category: abstracts like waiting, fondness are — according to Marty — synsemantics because they are nominalizations, i.e. nominal substitutions for more complex and explicit constructions and in this sense abreviations sui generis. Words like conjunctions (e.g. but) are not empty words; they are synsemantics like other synsemantic expressions; their alledged ‘‘semantic emptiness’’ results from the fact that synsemanticity is only another way of saying that complex formations are wholes/constructions whose components are structurally context bound; these constructions ties in a case like that of conjunctions are especially strong. In Marty’s terminology die konstruktive Form (the construction form) is a universal feature of language. At first sight Marty’s conception may look like a psychologistic one, but it is not so. Let us see what he says about meaning: the meaning (Bedeutung, Bedeutungsfunktion) of a linguistic expression (e.g. of a word) consists in its function to call forth / elicit in the mind a certain representation; thus the meaning is not the elicited representation itself. A word is understood by the speaker and the hearer if the content of the representations produced is identical with or essentially similar to the content of the representations which as a rule are elicited by this word; this could be paraphrased in a modernized — yet adequate — way as follows: the word is propely understood if it is used according to the rules of its current use. Besides meaning/meaning function (Bedeutungsfunktion) a word (an expression) has a naming function (Nennfunktion); from the situational context it is

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

possible to infer what the word (the expression) is related to, what its referent is. In the system of Marty’s logic the referential relationship has a form of a judgment in which the expression is a predicate like in a formula A is p. This makes it possible to tell whether an utterance is true or false if the truth value does not consist in the form of the construction itself (cf. p ∨ — p ). The naming function makes interlinguistic understanding possible as manifested in translation. The term Nennfunktion (naming function) can be understood as a presupposition of particular naming acts in which the context of an intentional act by taking on a definite linguistic shape is subject to the rules of usage thus being stripped of its subjective individuality. In cases like honey (address), blacksmith, plumber the meaning has a sliced structure: at the dinner table when saying I like the parson’s nose one almost certainly does not refer to the face of a particular parson; one may be aware of the humorous aspect of the expression, but one does not dwell on the semantic elements immediately present in the expression, these are the inner form (die innere Form) of the meaning function. Marty’s innere Form is — besides the construction form — another universal feature of language. The term inner form was introduced into linguistics by Wilhelm von Humboldt in a different sense: thanks to language the world perception has a certain shape (form), in relation to it — language is its inner form.

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Anton Marty and the Czech national setting

The position of the Brentanian philosophy was rather strong at German universities including the German university in Prague. The situation at the Czech university in Prague was different; the climate in Czech philosophy was determined by a long tradition of Herbartian philosophy; it was only with T. G. Masaryk, another of Brentano’s students, coming to Prague that the situation shows signs of a change. Masaryk’s participation in the political life was extraordinarily significant, perhaps even more effective than his university teaching. In his programmatic book Cˇeská otázka (Topical problems of Czech national life; Masaryk 1895), he demonstrated convincingly the grave shortcomings of the onesided historicism and proclaimed the necessity of a thorough knowledge of the Czech society in its current state including matters of language. However this was not Masaryk’s first attempt at rehabilitating synchrony and its laws as a legitimate object of scientific inquiry. He made his views concerning this problem known in his book Základové konkrétní logiky (An outline of a concrete logic; Masaryk 1885) with references to A. Marty. To form an idea of what the relationship of the Czech and German speaking communities was in Prague, a closer look at Marty in his ambiance at the begin-

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Oldrˇich Leška

ning of twentieth century may be useful. Marty lived on Marienstraße (Mariastreet to honor the Empress Marie Anne) which is known as Opletalova since 1945. In Marty’s time it was not only a quiet, but an extremely pleasant street bordering a beautiful park. Marty used to lecture in the study of his appartment; after a lecture attended not only by his students but by some of his followers as well his audience would move to the Café Louvre on the then Ferdinand street (Národní trˇída now) next to the corner formed by Národní and Spálená streets (Národní 20). It was there that discussions of this Brentanian circle continued in a more relaxed and informal atmosphere to which the quiet appartment of A. Marty formed a natural transition. This was typical of the Brentanians: Brentano would spend hours with his students after a class taking them for long walks and then bringing them to his hospitable home for dinner. When one goes through memoirs of contemporaries to find out who belonged to Marty’s circle, one can find, e.g., the name of Franz Kafka and of others of the Jewish community, but thus far I have not come across any Czech name. But it was typical also of that period of time. Prague was no sleepy town any more: people would form discussion groups according to their social and cultural complexion; these would rival with each other, jealously guarding their identity. Things were changing during the First Czechoslovak Republic (i.e. between the Wars). The Brentanians formed a Franz Brentano Society (Franz Brentano Gesellschaft) which was active until 1939 when it had to transfer most of its archives to Oxford. In the 1930s, Prague became a safe haven, at least for a short while — for refugee intellectuals from Nazi Germany; everything acquired a specific flavour. At that time instead of the old Café Louvre, which disappeared in the prewar years, there appeared (1936) on the same place a modern café with the same old name — Louvre. It could be hardly a mere coincidence that the meetings of the Prague Linguistic Circle moved there (Soucˇková 1976). By this time, the landscape of Czech philosophy changed considerably. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) who may be considered as one of the Brentanians exerted a strong influence in Czech circles, e.g. on František Xaver Šalda (1867–1937), an outstanding figure in Czech cultural, esp. literary life. Phenomenology — a further step in the Brentanian direction — was taking roots; a phenomenologically oriented Philosophical Circle was formed here, one of E. Husserl’s students — Jan Patocˇka — became active at the Czech (Charles) University. The heritage of A. Marty moved at that time, as we shall see, into the focus of attention.

. A. Marty and V. Mathesius Vilém Mathesius (1882–1945) — as we know from his recollections — was not happy with what university course would offer him. His independent mind could

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

not be let astray by attempts to underpin the Neogrammarian practice by a theory based on the traditional psychology (cf. Paul 1920) which could not — as convincingly shown by E. Husserl (Husserl 1913) — serve as a basis of any viable theory. Matheisus was intuitively feeling, since his student days, that the synchronic state of a language is a legitimate object of scientific analysis. The topics of his term papers clearly bear witness to this fact; nothing could have been more alien to the routine of the Neogrammarians than the young Mathesius’ deep interest in problems of word order in Czech, German and English — and more generally — in problems of syntax throughout his university studies. Mathesius enrolled in both Prague universities, Czech and German, because the German university could offer him more in French and esp. in English. Thus one is not surprised to find Mathesius’ name among those who attended A. Marty’s lectures on philosophy of language in the academic year 1904/1905, which was mentioned earlier. Mathesius undoubtedly knew about the meetings of the Brentanian circle at Café Louvre and this might be one of the reasons why in the 1920s he embraced Jakobson’s idea to form a discussion circle, which was to become known as the Prague Linguistic Circle. In Marty Mathesius — a young man with perspective of a scholarly career — found a sound notional basis for what he intuitively felt was opening new vistas in linguistics. Marty was not the only source of his theoretical inspirations. We know he was acquainted with Masaryk’s Základové konkrétní logiky that contained useful information on problems of methodology. He attended lectures of František Cˇáda (1865–1918) on the logic of science. As Mathesius tells in his memoirs he was very interested in new developments in natural history, esp. in the field of physiology of plants. All this proves a searching mind of a young man entering the scientific world. What must have attracted Mathesius in Marty’s theory? First of all, it was a sound basis for a non-apriori functional theory and description of language discriminating between synchrony and diachrony. Second, it was inherently content oriented; as we know, Marty’s philosophy of language was a general semasiology (allgemeine Bedeutungslehre). Because of its functional/instrumental orientation, this theory made it possible to rely on simple evidence in establishing differences and identities in meaning. Besides, it explains why the basic idea of phonology — the content relatedness — could be so readily adopted and implemented. As the functional categories were universal as opposed to their diverse formal structuring in different languages, it was possible to arrive at a better understanding of the factors organizing language into a structure-based and goal-oriented whole. Finally, Marty’s universal categories defined a framework for a contrastive analysis of different languages, no matter whether genetically related or unrelated. Thus a pendant to the historical comparative method was introduced into the linguistic arsenal. Marty’s distinction between autosemantics and synsemantics established a new hierarchy of levels of linguistic structure.

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Oldrˇich Leška

It was easy for Mathesius to translate these general ideas into an effective system of descriptive functional grammar. When he was appointed head of a newly organized chair of English philology in 1908, he started his course on history of English with a then provocative introduction presenting an analysis of the contemporary English, both of its expression and content plane. It may be assumed that the internal structuring of the content plane analysis was basically that which we find in his paper O potenciálnosti jevu˚ jazykových (On the potentiality of the phenomena of language), read in the meeting of the philological section of the prestigious Czech Royal Society of Sciences and then published in the Veˇštník KCˇSN (Annals of the Czech Royal Society of Sciences; Mathesius 1911). Mathesius’ system of functional grammar contains two chapters: one dealing with devices of nomination (nominative/naming acts; functional onomatology), the other with syntagmatic procedures of sentence forming acts (functional syntax). This basic outline remained unchanged throughout Mathesius’ career; we have a good idea of what his course looked like in detail in its later version (Mathesius 1942). After what has been said about Marty’s universal categories (Vorstellungssuggestive, Ausdrücke; Urteilssuggestive, Aussagen) it was easy to recognize the source of Mathesius’ inspiration. Each of these chapters deals with the formal features of the respective functional units; in other words morphology in Mathesius’ conception is not a separate stratum in the model as in traditional grammar, it is rather a way of looking at things. One would say — in paraphrasing Marty — that morphology deals with the language specific Ausdrucksmethoden. Mathesius’ approach allows to see linguistic objects without the spectacles of traditional linguistic notions, which is exactly what he says: ‘‘I do not discover things in texts, I rather create them in the process of analysis’’. It was this non-apriori approach operating on living speech combined with contrastive method that led Mathesius to formulate the basic principles of the functional sentence perspective. In functional styles and functional types of language we recognize Mathesius’ deep rooted interest in these matters dating back to his highschool years, which was only strenghtened when he became familiar with Marty’s applied philosophy of language.

.

A. Marty and R. Jakobson, B. Trnka, J. Mukarˇovský

In the mid 1930s, when the Prague Linguistic Circle was reviewing its achievements at the close of the first decade of its existence (Mathesius 1936a) and was formulating a new program, problems of meaning and semiotics were considered pilot topics for the years to come. This was due to the changes in the overall climate which were touched upon in the proceeding section of this paper. Besides the Circle had to capitalize on its vast experience accumulated in dealing with avantgard art of the

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

time and to bring in notional clarity. A witness to this development is the editorial published in the first issue of the journal Slovo a slovesnost (Word and verbal arts). A pansemiotic outlook of this editorial may lead to A. Marty as the most probably source of inspiration even if there were no references to his work. There was much more than just programmatic announcement. Starting with Roman Jakobson is by no means a random choice. He had read Marty (Marty 1908) before he came to Prague 1920. We know Jakobson’s unsatiable curiosity which could have led him in the right direction, to Marty’s work. But it could have been the Moscow philosopher Gustav Špet who recommended it to Jakobson. Špet, a propagator of Husserl’s ideas, held seminars on phenomenology at the Moscow University and Jakobson was one of his enthusiastic students. It is characteristic of this period that semiotic thinking finds its way into such well established disciplines as phonology which was soon to become known in its canonical version presented by Trubetzkoy in his Grundzüge (Trubetzkoy 1939). Jakobson, who must be considered — besides Trubetzkoy — one of the founders of the Praguian phonology, undertook a thorough revision of its basic notions from the semiotic point of view in two lectures delivered in Copenhague in 1939 after he was forced by circumstances to leave Czechoslovakia and was in search for a new home (Jakobson 1939). It is very interesting to see the superficial sign conception of language replaced by a rigorous analysis introducing semiotic thinking into linguistic professional practice; it is then that it becomes a powerful analytical tool. Jakobson makes de Saussure’s notion of a purely differential character of structural units a point of departure for his analysis of what phonology is. Thus far his position of 1939 is identical with what he announced at the beginning of his theses on phonology at the Congress in The Hague in 1928; in this sense, Jakobson was right by pointing to de Saussure as to the father of phonology. A phoneme is a specific kind of sign, different from other signs, because its purely distinctive (negative) character is its only semiotic value; phonemes are signs of signs, and as constituent components of the expression plane of a sign they are signs on signs as well. In passing from phonemes over to contextually conditioned sound units (variants), one is passing to signs of a higher order because these signs are not only distinctive (i.e. negative), but indexical as well (i.e. positive) in referring to their conditioning context. A phonology understood as pure phonemics is unable to differentiate properly these two kinds of signs as it deals with distinctive (negative) signs only. Stylistic sound features (Lautstylistik) were reinterpreted; they are analogons to morphemes as far as content is concerned (they have a positive content component as morphemes have); their expression plane however cannot be analyzed into expression constituents, i.e. phonemes (as it is the case with morphemes). Similarly, junctures and all of the repertory of phrase phonology may be interpreted

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

Oldrˇich Leška

as signs related to signs, however with a positive semiological value which makes them different from phonemes. This summary of Jakobson’s reinterpretation of basic notions of phonology shows how the semiotic approach cleared the ground; in this light, many discussions appear useless and misleading because they are not language oriented but aim at solving general ontological problems which do not relate to phonology only; those engaged in these discussions must be found guilty of trespassing: phonology is a linguistic discipline, ontology — dealing with modes of existence — belongs to philosophy. The accent put on the instrumental, action related character brought Jakobson close to J. R. Firth (Firth 1964) and C. Bally (Bally 1944), which could have triggered new developments in the Praguian phonology. However, as mentioned above, it was too late to think of an unhindered organic development of the Praguian phonology: those who used to assemble in the meeting room at the Café Louvre were not to meet again after the war. Jakobson dealt with the same topic again in his eventual host country — at the French École libre in New York where he found a position thanks to his friend Lévy Strauss (published under the title Six leçons sur les sons et le sens). Jakobson’s interest in semiotics and phonology was not epizodic. As a matter of fact it dated back to the time of Jakobson’s first appearances on scientific scene when the problem was approached in a way that combined youthful fascination by avantgard poetry with curiosity of a searching mind: were the possibilities of correlating sound expression with content in the poetic use of language really limitless as they seemed to be? It was Velemir Xlebnikov by whom Jakobson was attracted and who was for Jakobson, esp. on his recollections of old age a powerful source of inspiration (Jakobson 1921, Holenstein 1988). During his American years, Jakobson became acquainted with the writings of C. S. Peirce and found them very stimulating. He adopted Peirce’s view according to which any linguistic sign may be included in a synonymic series whose members relate to each other differing in their explicitness and precision; this series may be eventually extended. By this metalinguistic procedure the problem of meaning was considered resolved. There was another point in Peirce’s semiotics which was important — or rather welcome — to Jakobson. Peirce teaches that one may distinguish indexical sings based on contiguity (cf. come here), iconic signs motivated by similarity (cf. swalow tailed coat) and symbols which are conventional (cf. hat). This does not mean of course that a sign repertory consists of three separate compartments; these sign types should be understood rather as aspects that may be combined in a sign in different proportions. This was a very important hint for Jakobson who engaged throughout his scientific life in a polemic with de Saussure’s basic principles, one of them being the arbitrary character of the linguistic sign. It is clear that by expanding the realm of iconicity in language, conventionality (arbitrariness) should shrink. This is what Jakobson was doing in his reprise of an old theme he

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

was busy with in Prague in the mid 1930s. At that time, Jakobson established a system of invariant meanings which organized the repertory of the Russian verbal forms (Jakobson 1932) and that of the Russian case forms (Jakobson 1936) into a hierarchical system of binary oppositions. Thus Jakobson’s structural morphology formed a parallel to (was isomorphic with) the phonological system which was established in the opening period of the Prague Linguistic Circle and which made the linguistic world speak of the Prague School. In America Jakobson (Jakobson 1956, 1958) changed his approach, esp. his treatment of verbal forms; but these differences are not of major interest in connection with our topic. What must however attract attention to Jakobson’s American variations on the Prague theme is his thorough analysis of the expression : : content relationships that one does not find in the Prague version. Iconicity is not limited to such simple cases as illustrated above; it obtains in paradigmatic series as well that exhibit a clear mirroring of content features in the sound, shape on the expression level. These cases are called by Peirce diagrams (diagrammatic iconicity). Thus in Russian, e.g. the peripheral cases D pl and I pl exhibit diagrammatic iconicity in correlating the content features directional plural with the distinctive feature nasality on the expression level. If one takes substantives, then all peripheral cases plural (I D L pl) exhibit desinence initial =a- , i.e. the feature compactness (in contradiction to the adjectives that have a desinence initial =iwhich is diffuse). The sound features are in these cases indices of the respective content feature. Diagrammatic iconocity restricts the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign indeed. At the same time, this should be understood as Jakobson’s attempt at proving the psychological relevance of the distinctive features, which played an important role in his polemic with another of de Saussure’s principles — that of linearity of the linguistic sign; since, e.g., a phoneme is according to Jakobson a bundle (and not a sequence) of distinctive features, then the structure of a sign is not linear in all of its constituent elements. It should be noted that in the same direction, i.e. towards proving the psychological relevance of distinctive features, there point Jakobson’s analysis of poetry (cf. the analysis of C. Baudelaire’s poem Les chats written in collaboration with Lévy Strauss): in poetry, because of the specific principle of structuring a poetic text (paradigmatic relationships are being projected onto the syntagmatic axis), the reader may experience linguistic structural elements that otherwise, in a nonpoetic use of language, would pass unnoticed, including both phonological and content (grammatical) distinctive features. The unity of the Prague School should not be understood in a doctrinaire sense: it was a natural result of striving towards a common goal along individual paths. This is clearly demonstrated by the responses to the spirit of the Circle’s new program. Quite significant is the reaction of V. Mathesius.





Oldrˇich Leška

When Vladimír Skalicˇka published his structural typology under a rather misleading title Zur ungarischen Grammatik (Skalicˇka 1935), Mathesius recognized the importance of Skalicˇka’s book and concluded his review by saying that the character of modern linguistics may be propely understood only when the functional approach is complemented by a structural analysis (Mathesius 1936b); this may be seen as an indication of a shift in his basic position. As we know, Mathesius used — in matters of meaning — to rely on simple evidence; later he recognized the importance of this problem (Mathesius 1942). Bohumil Trnka (1895–1984), one of the key figures in the Circle, was building up systemtically a stratificational model of laguage since the early 1930s. Since the early 1940s he was interested in what he termed experiencing language, i.e. in the process in which the linguistic structure becomes part of the activities of its user (Trnka 1948) who is its discoverer and caretaker. In Jakobson’s Festschrift published on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Trnka expounded his theory of meaning which can be characterized as a bridge between Marty’s conception of meaning and de Saussure’s valeurs (values) manifested in language use by significations (Marty: Bedeutungsfunktionen; Trnka: meaning functions). Exactly as a dollar is a dollar, a word is a word; Bühler (Bühler 1934) says that one cannot buy anything with a word whereas one can with a dollar. This is simply not true: one can acquire a piece of reality with a word, i.e. one can grasp it by a creative use of a word, which is made possible thanks to the potential openness of the word as a structural element to further concretizations. Above we have mentioned the vast experience, esp. with avantgard art that has accumulated in the Circle. In verbal art, the Russian formalism was influential, but it had became clear quite early that this conception with the notions like device, make-up had serious limitations. It calls forth an idea of blueprint which allows for variations within certain limits; it presents a poetic work as a static construction and could not account for its inherent dynamism. A real turning point in Prague semiotics is marked by Jan Mukarˇovský’s functional structuralism. Its principles were formulated in his studies Umeˇní jako semiologický fakt (Art as a semiotic fact; Mukarˇovský 1934), Estetická funkce, norma a hodnota jako sociální fakty (Aesthetic function, norm and value as social phenomena; Mukarˇovský 1936) and Místo estetické funkce mezi ostatními funkcemi (Aesthetic function in its position among other functions; Mukarˇovský 1942). Mukarˇovský gives a definition of the term function: facing the outside world which may be either immediate (nonsemiotic behavior, plain action — practice) or mediate (semiotic behavior — semiotic). A symbolic function is directed towards an object while the aesthetic function implies that a sign was not put to use as a tool, as an instrument. An aesthetic sign does not reflect a certain reality, does not relate to a certain reality. On the contrary — reality in its totality finds a reflection in this sign and the subject reads its image into it according to his internal

Anton Marty’s philosophy of language

complexion. Mukarˇovský’s system of pragmatic functions differs from the functions established earlier by Bühler in his Organonmodel (Bühler 1934) or the communicative functions set up by R. Jakobson (Jakobson 1962, 1972). There is a striking similarity between Mukarˇovský’s and Marty’s conception of a poetic work (Marty 1908). According to Marty, a poetic text is defined by lack of the referential dimension. Reference reaching out beyond the text would be in conflict with the constitutive selfcontained character of the thus defined space. A poetic text is for A. Marty a fiktive Rede. It is a global representation suggestive of a fictious world/space; this is why all linguistic entities — no matter what their character and size are — become components of the inner form of a thus structured whole. Linguistic material being relieved of its primary symbolic function can be perceived as representing pure value. The pliability of a poetic text/work and its multifarious character may be understood as conditioned by its very nature.

References Bally, C. 1944. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Bern. Brentano, F. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Reprint: Hamburg 1955. Bühler, K. 1909. (= Review of A. Marty, Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie l. Halle 1908). Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 171 (1909) 947–79. Bühler, K. 1934. Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: G. Fischer. Firth, J. R. 1964. Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Holenstein, E. (ed.) 1988: Roman Jakobson, Semiotik: Ausgewählte Texte 1919–1982. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Husserl, E. 1913. Logische Untersuchungen. 2nd ed. Halle: Niemeyer. Jakobson, R. 1921. ‘‘Novejšaja russkaja poèzija’’. Praha 1921, — Reprinted in SW V, 299–354. — German version: Die neueste russische Poesie. Texte der russischen Formalisten II. Texte zur Theorie des Verses und der poetischen Sprache. Hg. von W.-D. Stempel. München 1972. Jakobson, R.1932. ‘‘Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums’’. Charisteria 1932, 74–84. (Reprinted in Vachek 1964, 347–59; SW II, 3–15). Jakobson, R. 1936. ‘‘Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre (Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus).’’ TCLP 6, 240–88. — Reprinted in SW II, 23–71. Jakobson, R. 1939. ‘‘Zur Struktur des Phonemes’’. Zwei an der Universität von Kopenhagen in Mai 1939 gehaltene Vorträge. SW I, 280–310. — Reprinted under the title ‘‘Die eigenartige Zeichenstruktur des Phonems’’. See: Holenstein 1988. Jakobson, R. 1956. Shifters, Verbal Categories and the Russian Verb (=Russian Language Project, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University. — Reprinted in SW II, 130–47. Jakobson, R. 1958. ‘‘Morfologicˇeskije nabljudenija nad slavjanskim sklonenijem (Sostav russkich padežnych form).’’ In American Contributions to the Fourth International

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Congress of Slavicists, Moscow, Sept. 1958, 127–56. The Hague: Mouton. — Reprinted in SW II., 154–83. Jakobson, R. 1961. ‘‘Linguistics and communication theory.’’ In Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics, vol. XII, Structure of Language and its mathematical Aspects. American Mathematical Society, 245–52. — Reprinted in SW II, 570–9, Jakobson, R. 1962. ‘‘Les Chats’’ de Charles Baudelaire. L’Homme 2: 5–21. — Reprinted in SW III. Jakobson, R. 1972. ‘‘Verbal communication’’. Scientific American 227/3, 73–80. Jakobson, R. 1976. Six leçons sur le son et le sens. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Kraus, O., Eisenmeier, J. and Kastil, A. (eds) 1916–1920: see Marty 1916–1920. Marty, A. 1875. Ursprung der Sprache. Göttingen. Marty, A. 1908. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie. Halle. Marty, A. 1916–1920, Gesammelte Schriften I. Bd. 1, 2. II. Bd. 1, 2. Hg. von Oskar Kraus et al. Halle: Niemeyer. Marty, A. 1940. ‘‘Grundfragen der Sprachphilosophie’’. Eine Vorlesung A. Martys aus dem Jahre 1904. ‘‘Psyche und Sprachstruktur’’. Nachgelassene Schriften von Anton Marty, hg. von Otto Funke. Bern. Marty, A. 1950. Gesammelte Schriften II, ‘‘Satz und Wort’’. Hg. von Otto Funke. Bern. Erste Ausgabe 1925. Reichenberg i. Böhmen:Stiepel; Gesammelte Schriften III. ‘‘Über Wert und Methode einer allgemeinen beschriebenden Bedeutungslehre’’. Hg. von Otto Funke. Bern. Erste Ausgabe 1926. Reichenberg i. Böhmen: Stiepel. Masaryk, T. G. 1885. Základové konrétní logiky. [An outline of a concrete logic]. Masaryk, T. G. 1895. Cˇeská otázka. [Topical problems of Czech national life]. Mathesius, V. 1911. ‘‘O potenciálnosti jevu˚ jazykových’’ [On the potentiality of the phenomena of language]. In Veˇstník Královské cˇeské spolecˇnosti nauk: Trˇída filosoficko-historickojazykoveˇdná 2, 1–24. — Reprinted in Vachek 1970; Mathesius 1982, 9–28. English translation in Vachek 1964, 1–32. Mathesius, V. 1936a. ‘‘Deset let Pražského lingvistického kroužku’’ [Ten years of the Prague Linguistic Circle]. Slovo a slovesnost 2, 137–45. — English translation in Vachek 1966, 137–51. Mathesius, V. 1936b. ‘‘Pokus o theorii strukturální mluvnice’’ [An attempt at formulating a theory of structural grammar] (= Review of Skalicˇka 1935). Slovo a slovesnost 2, 47–54. Mathesius, V. 1942. ‘‘O soustavném rozboru gramatickém’’ [On ways of a systematic grammatical analysis of language]. Slovo a slovesnost 8, 88–92. — Reprinted in Mathesius 1947, 157–75; 1982, 50–9. Mathesius, V. 1947. Cˇeština a obecný jazykozpyt. Soubor statí. [Czech language and general linguistics: Collection of papers]. Praha: Melantrich. Mathesius, V. 1982. Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost. [Language, culture and verbal arts]. J. Vachek (ed.). Praha: Odeon. Meillet, A. 1909. (= Review of A. Marty, Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie 1. Halle 1908.) Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 16, No 57 (1909), 60–1. Mukarˇovský, J. 1934. ‘‘L’art comme fait sémiologique’’. In Actes du Huitième congrès

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international de philosophie à Prague 2–7 Septembre 1934, 1065–1072. Praha 1936. — Czech version ‘‘Umeˇní jako semiologický fakt’’ in Mukarˇovský 1966, 85–8. Mukarˇovský, J. 1936. Estetická funkce, norma a hodnota jako sociální fakty. [Aesthetic function, norm and value as social phenomena]. Praha: F. Borový. — Reprinted in Mukarˇovksý 1966, 17–54; 1971, 7–65. Mukarˇovský, J. 1942. ‘‘Místo estetické funkce mezi ostatními funkcemi’’. [Aesthetic function and its position among other functions] (A lecture delivered in the Circle on November 30, 1942). First published in Mukarˇovský 1966, 65–73. Mukarˇovský, J. 1966 [1971]. Studie z estetiky. Výbor estetických prací J. Mukarˇovského z let 1931 až 1948. [Studies in aesthetics: Selected papers 1931–1948]. K. Chvatík (ed.). Praha: Odeon 1966. 2nd ed. 1971. Paul, H. 1920. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle: Niemeyer. Seuren, A. M. 1985. Discourse Semantics. B. Blackwell (ed.). Oxford. Soucˇková, M. 1976. ‘‘The Prague Linguistic Circle: A Collage’’. In Sound, Sign and Meaning. L. Matejka (ed). Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 1–5. Skalicˇka, V. 1935. Zur ungarischen Grammatik (= Práce z veˇdeckých ústavu˚, 39). Praha : Filos. fak. University Karlovy. — Extract ‘‘Morphem und Sema’’ reprinted in Vachek 1964, 320–8. SW: The Selected Writings of Roman Jakobson. 1962–1988. The Hague, Paris & New York / Berlin, Amsterdam & New York: Mouton SW I: Phonological Studies (= Selected Writings I). 1st ed. 1962; 2nd, expanded ed. 1971. SW II: Word and Language (= Selected Writings II). 1971. SW III: Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry (=Selected Writings III) ed. by S. Rudy. 1981. SW V: On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers (= Selected Writings V). S. Rudy and M. Taylor (eds). 1979. TCLP: Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague. 1–8. 1929–1939. TCLP 6, 1936: Études dédiées au Quatrième congrès de linguistes. TCLP 7: see Trubetzkoy 1939. Trnka, B. 1948. ‘‘Jazykozpyt a myšlenková struktura doby’’ [Linguistics and the ideological Structure of the Period]. Slovo a slovesnost 10, 73–80. — English translation in Trnka 1982, 49–60. Trnka, B. 1982. Selected papers in structural linguistics: Contributions to English and general linguistics written in the years 1928–1978. Ed. by V. Fried. Berlin — New York — Amsterdam: Mouton. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie (= TCLP 7). Praha. Vachek, J. ed. 1964. A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press. Vachek, J. (ed) 1966. The Linguistic School of Prague: An introduction to its theory and practice. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press. Vachek, J. (ed) 1970. U základu˚ pražské jazykoveˇdné školy. [Foundations of the Prague linguistic school]. (= Prameny cˇeské a slovenské lingvistiky: Rˇada cˇeská, 1). Praha: Academia.



Die Typologie des Ungarischen

Vladimír Skalicˇka Übersetzt und eingeleitet von Markus Giger Am Anfang der sprachtypologischen Forschungen von Vladimír Skalicˇka und damit der ›Prager Typologie‹ steht die Beschäftigung mit dem Ungarischen (Skalicˇka 1935). Dennoch kehrte Skalicˇka nur einmal ausführlich zur Frage der typologischen Stellung des Ungarischen zurück, im Aufsatz »A magyar nyelv typológiája«, welcher im Sammelband »A magyar nyelv története és rendszere« (Redaktion S. Imre, I. Szathmári) 1967 in Budapest erschien. In diesen dreißig Jahren hatte sich Skalicˇkas Typologiekonzeption weiterentwickelt und vervollkommnet; es mag hier genügen, an die Erweiterung der syntaktischen Komponenten in Skalicˇka (1942) oder die Einführung des introflexiven Typus in Skalicˇka (1946– 1948) zu erinnern. In die Entstehungszeit des hier übersetzten Aufsatzes fallen die Reformulierung des Prinzips vom Sprachtyp als Konstrukt (Skalicˇka 1966), die typologische Definition des Begriffs ›Inkorporation‹(Skalicˇka 1968a) sowie die Auseinandersetzung mit der Greenbergschen Wortfolgetypologie (Skalicˇka 1968b), welche alle in diesem Text eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Aus diesen Gründen schien es wünschbar, den vorliegenden Aufsatz in einer Übersetzung breiter zugänglich zu machen, wobei sich das Deutsche in Analogie zu Skalicˇkas weiteren Arbeiten über die Typologie finno-ugrischer Sprachen anbot (vgl. neben Skalicˇka 1935 zum Ungarischen und Finnischen auch Skalicˇka 1968c, 1968d, 1975). Der vorliegende Aufsatz ist — wie so mancher Text von Vladimír Skalicˇka — sehr knapp und dicht gehalten, so daß dem mit seiner Typologiekonzeption nicht vertrauten Leser möglicherweise manches nicht auf Anhieb verständlich sein wird. Ich möchte es deshalb nicht versäumen, auf einige neuere zusammenfassende Darstellungen zu verweisen (Skalicˇka 1979; Skalicˇka/Sgall 1994; Sgall 1995). Im Text wurden Übersetzungen der ungarischen Beispiele beigefügt (wo nötig auch Interlinearübersetzungen) sowie die Literaturangaben ergänzt. Alle Beifügungen stehen in []. Ein Verzeichnis der verwendeten Abkürzungen findet sich am Ende. Für einige Hinweise danke ich Lucie Hašová (Prag) und Zsuzsanna Kovács (Zürich). Markus Giger (Zürich und Prag)

In den letzten Jahren sind viele neue linguistische Theorien entstanden. Wenn auch ich heute eine neue vorbringe, kann ich mich nur dadurch rechtfertigen, daß diese Theorie, von der ich sprechen will, von verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten aus wichtig ist. Die Typologie ist kein gänzlich neuer Zweig der Linguistik — das ist bekannt. Offensichtlich ist aber auch, daß wir uns mit der Typologie anders beschäftigen müssen als bisher.

 Vladimír Skalicˇka

Bislang sind viele typologische Schulen entstanden. Aber diese typologischen Schulen hatten einen gemeinsamen Fehler: Die Typologen wollten immer die charakteristischen Eigenarten der Sprachen herausheben — und daraus konnte kein System entstehen. Noch im Band mit dem Titel »Universals of Language« [Greenberg 1966a] betonten die amerikanischen Linguisten, daß die Linguistik nur mit empirischer Methode arbeiten kann. Daraus würden sie folgern, daß die Aufgabe des Typologen das Sammeln der Eigenarten sei [vgl. Greenberg 1966b:xii, Hockett 1966: 1–5]. Von einem System kann in diesem Fall keine Rede sein. Aber die Lage ist nicht dermaßen aussichtslos. In der Linguistik ist auch die deduktive Methode möglich — und in der Typologie ebenfalls. Die Zahl der Eigenschaften von Sprachen ist nicht unendlich. So unterscheidet sich z. B. die Länge des Wortes in Einzelsprachen. Aber das Wort kann nicht weniger als ein Morphem enthalten, und es kann nicht länger sein als der Satz. Ein anderes Beispiel: Die Verbreitung der Anomalie (das sind etwa Synonymie und Homonymie) unterscheidet sich je nach Sprache: Im Latein ist sie größer als im Ungarischen, so gibt es z. B. im Latein viele Deklinationen, im Ungarischen dagegen nur eine. Diese Unterschiede haben Grenzen: Die Zahl der Unterschiede kann nicht größer sein als die Zahl der Wörter, und sie kann nicht kleiner sein als null (der letztere Fall ist im Volapük verwirklicht). Daraus ergibt sich, daß die Zahl der möglichen Sprachen nicht unendlich ist, aber doch um vieles größer als die Zahl der verwirklichten Sprachen. Demnach ist es die primäre Aufgabe des Typologen festzustellen, welchen Platz eine Einzelsprache unter sämtlichen möglichen Sprachen einnimmt. Die möglichen Sprachen sind nicht alle gleichermaßen wahrscheinlich. Es gibt solche, die gänzlich unwahrscheinlich sind (z. B. eine solche Sprache, in der jedes Wort eine besondere Deklination hätte), es gibt wahrscheinlichere und weniger wahrscheinliche. Die verwirklichten natürlichen Sprachen gehören unter die wahrscheinlicheren. Die Regeln, welche die wahrscheinlicheren Sprachen von den weniger wahrscheinlichen trennen, sind zahlreich und kompliziert. Der größte Teil dieser Regeln verbindet die sogenannten Typen miteinander. Deshalb ist die einfachste Beschreibung einer Sprache die Feststellung dessen, zu welchem Typus die Sprache gehört. Die hundertprozentige Verwirklichung mancher Typen ist nicht wahrscheinlich und in vielen Fällen unmöglich. Deshalb kann man in Einzelsprachen mehrere Typen beschreiben. Wenn ich im weiteren versuche, das Ungarische typologisch zu beschreiben, bin ich mir bewußt, daß diese Beschreibung nur skizzenhaft und oberflächlich ist, keineswegs endgültig. Ich möchte nur zeigen, auf welche Weise eine Sprache typologisch beschrieben werden kann. Ich muß festhalten, daß ich hier nur von der sogenannten Makrotypologie spreche, welche sämtliche Sprachen, d. h. die existierenden und nicht existierenden, die möglichen und unmöglichen, die verwirklichten und noch nicht verwirklichten behandelt, also nicht von der

Die Typologie des Ungarischen 

Mikrotypologie, welche sich nur auf miteinander verwandte Sprachen erstreckt, z. B. auf die finnougrischen Sprachen. Der Auffassung der herkömmlichen Typologie gemäß gehört das Ungarische unter die sogenannten agglutinierenden Sprachen. Das heißt nichts anderes als daß die Sprachen in der herkömmlichen Typologie in vier, fünf Gruppen aufgeteilt werden und daß das Ungarische zu einer dieser Gruppen, zur agglutinierenden Gruppe gehört. Den neueren Typologien gemäß ist für das Ungarische das Wortfolgeschema SOV charakteristisch (Greenberg [1966c: 109]) oder ein geringes Passiv (Šaumjan [vgl. Šaumjan 1971: 449–55]) usw. Meiner Meinung nach ist das Wichtigste in der Typologie der Typus. Deshalb beginnt die typologische Beschreibung mit den Typen. Im Ungarischen ist der agglutinierende Typus der wichtigste. Auch im Ungarischen ist dieser Typus nicht rein, da ja ein reiner Typus unmöglich ist. Am wichtigsten ist im agglutinierenden Typ das Verhältnis zwischen sogenannten Semantemen und formalen Elementen. Im reinen (nicht verwirklichten) Typus wäre die Verkettung der Morpheme folgende: —...¦—...¦—...¦—... Das heißt, daß das Wort eindeutig charakterisiert ist, daß sich in einem Wort ein und nur ein Semantem befindet, daß keine formalen Wörter existieren (Artikel, Postpositionen, Pronomina, Konjunktionen), und es gibt keine Komposita. Dieses Schema wird im Ungarischen in großem Maße realisiert. Das Ungarische hat viele wort- und formbildende Suffixe und wenig formale Wörter. Es hat viel mehr formbildende Suffixe als etwa das Latein; das Russische etwa hat wiederum mehr als das Finnische. In vielen Fällen entspricht ein ungarisches Suffix einer anderen Konstruktion in den übrigen Sprachen: barát-a-i-m-nak [Freund-poss-pl-1.sg-dat] — to my friends, amicis meis; vár-hat-lak [wartkönn-1.sg subj/2. sg obj]- ich kann dich erwarten; autó-z-t-am [Auto-suff-prät1.sg] — ich fuhr Auto. Damit hängt eine weitere Erscheinung zusammen: Es entwickelt sich kein großer Unterschied zwischen den wort- und formbildenden Suffixen. Im reinen agglutinierenden Typus, im »Konstrukt«, existiert dieser Unterschied überhaupt nicht. Wenn er im Ungarischen besteht, so heißt das, daß ein anderer Typus, und zwar der flektive Typus sich mit dem agglutinierenden Typus verbindet. Damit hängt wiederum eine weitere Eigenschaft zusammen: Die Wortarten unterscheiden sich nicht so deutlich voneinander wie in den übrigen Sprachen. Im agglutinierenden Konstrukt gibt es keine Wortarten. Unter den verwirklichten Sprachen gibt es solche — z. B. das Tscherkessische — , in denen die Wortarten nur schwer zu unterscheiden sind. Im Ungarischen finden sich Spuren eines Zustandes, in dem die Grenze zwischen Verb und Nomen undeutlicher war als heute; vgl. z. B. die sogenannten

 Vladimír Skalicˇka

‘igenévszók’ [»Verbonomina«] (les [›auflauern‹] und les [›Hinterhalt‹], nyom [›drücken‹] und nyom [›Spur‹] usw.). Die infiniten Verbformen, d. h. die Übergangswortarten (Infinitiv, Partizip, Adverbialpartizip), spielten früher eine viel wichtigere Rolle als jetzt. Dieses Phänomen ist sehr wichtig vom syntaktischen Standpunkt aus: Wenn die infiniten Verbformen viel wichtiger waren, dann spielten wiederum die Nebensätze eine kleinere Rolle als heute. Es ist offensichtlich, daß in dieser Frage die ungarische Sprache nicht dermaßen agglutinierend ist wie etwa die türkische. Aber es gibt im Ungarischen viele andere agglutinierende Erscheinungen: das nominale Prädikat, die geringe Kongruenz (a szép ház-nak [def schön Haus-dat ›dem schönen Haus‹], három ló [drei Pferd ›drei Pferde‹] usw.), die grammatikalisch gebundene Wortfolge (a szép ház [›das schöne Haus‹], a ház [›das Haus‹], a ház ello˝tt [›vor dem Haus‹]), die aus vollen Silben bestehenden Endungen (-ban [iness], -ból [elat], -hoz [allat], -nak [dat], -tok [2.pl] usw.), die Vokalharmonie usw. Die Wortbildung ist überwiegend agglutinierend: Suffixe sind in großem Maße gebräuchlich (vgl. auch solche Wörter wie vadászik [›jagen‹ (< vad ›Wild‹)], halászik [›fischen‹ (< hal ›Fisch‹)], kártyázik [›Karten spielen‹ (< kártya ›Karte‹)], autózik [›autofahren‹ (< autó ›Auto‹)], dohányzik [›rauchen‹ (< dohány ›Tabak‹)] usw.). Aus alldem wird offensichtlich, daß der agglutinierende Typus sehr wichtig ist im Ungarischen, aber daraus ist nicht alles erklärbar. Jetzt werden wir die Untersuchung der anderen Typen versuchen. Der flektive Typus ist gemäß der herkömmlichen Typologie charakteristisch für die indoeuropäischen Sprachen. Wenn wir nun diesen Typus im Ungarischen nachzuweisen versuchen, dann postulieren wir damit nicht etwa indoeuropäischen Einfluß, z. B. Einfluß der slavischen Sprachen. Wir wollen nur nachweisen, daß die ungarische Sprache mit Sicherheit in Teilen zum flektiven Typ gehört. Sehr charakteristisch ist für den flektiven Typ, daß der Unterschied zwischen wort- und formbildenden Suffixen wichtiger ist als jener zwischen Semantemen und formalen Elementen. Dieses Prinzip ist im Ungarischen im Detail verwirklicht. So gibt es z. B. mehr Alternationen zwischen dem Wortstamm und der Endung als zwischen der Wurzel und dem Wortbildungssuffix: vgl. szamár [Esel-sg] –szamar-ak [Esel-pl], tehén [Kuh-sg]–tehen-ek [Kuh-pl], kehely [Kelch-sg]–kelyhek [Kelch-pl], sarok [›Ecke‹]–sark-a [Ecke-poss ›seine Ecke‹] usw. Im agglutinierenden Typus kann das Suffix nach einer Endung stehen, z. B. türkisch ben-im-ki [ich-gen-da ›meines da‹]. Das ist unbekannt im flektiven Typus und ebenso im Ungarischen. Wie gesagt unterscheiden sich die Wortarten im Ungarischen voneinander, aber nicht so rein wie in anderen Sprachen. Z. B. unterscheidet sich das Nomen vom Verb: Die sogenannten ‘igenévszók’ [»Verbonomina«] sind nur in Spuren vorhanden, die infiniten Verbformen kommen nicht sehr oft vor. Das nominale Prädikat existiert im Ungarischen, aber seine

Die Typologie des Ungarischen 

Verbreitung ist geringer als in anderen Sprachen. Kongruenz tritt im Ungarischen selten auf, aber dennoch existiert sie, in erster Linie zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat. Sehr wichtig unter typologischem Gesichtspunkt ist die ungarische Wortfolge. Die grammatikalisch gebundene Wortfolge kommt nur in einigen Fällen vor (a ház elo˝tt [›vor dem Haus‹]). Viel wichtiger ist im Ungarischen ein anderer Wortfolgetyp, der den Akzent audrückt (jártam az iskolába [›ich ging zur Schule‹] gegenüber az iskolába jártam [›ich ging zur Schule‹]). Voraussetzung für diese Wortfolge ist, daß der syntaktische Zusammenhang der Wörter ganz klar wird. Dies ist für den flektiven Typus charakteristisch. Für den agglutinierenden Typus ist dagegen die grammatisch gebundene Wortfolge charakteristisch, welche in der Regel auch die grammatischen Verhältnisse ausdrückt. Diese Wortfolge ist in anderen Sprachen verwirklicht, z. B. im Türkischen oder im Mongolischen. Die Erscheinungen des flektiven Typus sind somit nicht häufig im Ungarischen. Es ist aber sehr wichtig, auf sie aufmerksam zu werden: Der Charakter der ungarischen Sprache besteht in einer eigenartigen Verbindung der agglutinierenden und flektierenden Elemente. Der isolierende Typus (den wir aus der englischen oder französischen Sprache kennen) ist nicht bedeutend im Ungarischen. Formwörter sind nicht häufig (es gibt den Artikel, zusammengesetzte Verbformen: fogok várni [›ich werde warten‹], vártam volna [›ich hätte gewartet‹]; es gibt Modalverben und Modalwörter: kell [›es ist nötig, man muß‹], szabad [›es ist erlaubt, man darf‹], szoktam [›ich pflege (zu tun)]). Eine weitere Erscheinung des isolierenden Typs, die Verwendung von Nebensätzen, hängt offensichtlich mit dem Vorkommen des flektiven Typus zusammen: Nebensätze bedeuten Abbau der infiniten Verbformen, das heißt deutlichere Unterscheidung der Wortarten. Besonders wichtig ist in der ungarischen Sprache der sogenannte polysynthetische Typus, das heißt ein solcher Typus, in dem kein Unterschied besteht zwischen semantischen und nicht-semantischen Morphemen. Der polysynthetische Typus wäre in reiner Form die bloße Verkettung von Semantemen. Dieser reine Typus ist wiederum unmöglich. Der polysynthetische Typus ist im Chinesischen und in anderen ostasiatischen Sprachen verwirklicht. Unter den europäischen Sprachen hat er sich im Ungarischen am stärksten entwickelt. In der ungarischen Wortbildung ist der Anteil des polysynthetischen Typus sehr stark. Die Komposition ist in allen finnougrischen Sprachen wichtig, aber im Ungarischen hat sie sich am weitesten entwickelt. Uns ist nur ein Gebiet der nominalen Wortbildung bekannt, wo die ungarische Sprache weniger Komposita hat als eine andere Sprache: Dieses Phänomen hängt offensichtlich mit dem agglutinierenden Charakter des Ungarischen zusammen: Es gibt Komposita — z. B. im Deutschen — , in welchen die Funktion des zweiten Gliedes sehr abstrakt ist — eigentlich eine Suffixfunktion. In solchen Fällen steht im Ungarischen ein

 Vladimír Skalicˇka

Suffix: dt. Kaufmann–ung. keresked-o˝ [< kereskedik ›handeln‹], dt. Bergmann– ung. bányá-sz [< bánya ›Bergwerk, Grube‹]. In denjenigen Sprachen, in welchen der polysynthetische Typus wichtig ist, aber keine dominierende Rolle spielt, wie z. B. in einigen amerikanischen und paläoasiatischen Sprachen, kommt noch eine andere Eigenschaft vor, die sogenannte Inkorporation. Syntaktisch zueinandergehörende Wörter verschmelzen oft zu einem Wort, so bilden z. B. das Objekt und das Prädikat, die Adverbialbestimmung und das Prädikat, das regierende und das regierte Wort zusammen ein neues Wort. Die genaue Interpretation ist oft nicht einfach, so ist z. B. im Giljakischen (Nivch) die ganze Sache strittig, und wahrscheinlich können wir nur von unvollkommener Inkorporation (Subinkorporation) sprechen. Meiner Ansicht nach sind Beispiele für diese Inkorporation auch in der ungarischen Sprache leicht zu finden. Das eine Beispiel sollen die Verbalpräfixe geben. Ich weiß sehr wohl, daß auch dies nicht eindeutig ist; oftmals ist das Verbalpräfix überhaupt nicht nennbar als Adverbialbestimmung: el-nézni [›ansehen‹], ki-vívni [›erkämpfen‹], meg-találni [›auffinden‹]. Oftmals hat das Verbalpräfix nicht Semantemcharakter, z. B. in megtalálni. Aber die Zahl der Verbalpräfixe, welche eher zu den Semantemen gehören, ist groß: össze- [›zusammen-‹], vissza- [›wieder-‹] usw. Es gibt noch solche wie hátra- [›zurück‹] (hátramarad [›zurückbleiben‹]), elo˝re- [›vor, voraus‹], tovább- [›weiter-‹] usw. Groß ist auch die Anzahl der Fälle, in denen das Verhältnis zwischen Verbalpräfix und Verb dem Verhältnis zwischen Adverbialbestimmung und Prädikat ähnlich ist, z. B. vissza-néz [›zurückschauen‹], hozzácsatlakozik [›sich anschließen‹], el-ment [›ging weg‹], be-ment [›ging hinein‹], kiment [›ging hinaus‹]. Infolge dieser Gründe sind die Verbalpräfixe mindestens z. T. Manifestationen des polysynthetischen Typs.[1] Ein Beispiel für die Subinkorporation sehe ich in der ungarischen Attributkonstruktion. Das bestimmende und das bestimmte Wort bilden zwar kein Wort, aber oftmals bilden sie eine einzige Betonungseinheit (a nagy asztal [›der große Tisch‹]) — ihre Verbindung ist also enger als diejenige von zwei zusammengehörigen Wörtern. Ich beabsichtigte, nur eine kurze Skizze der ungarischen Typologie zu geben. Ich hoffe, es gelang mir zu zeigen, daß die Typologie der ungarischen Sprache nicht einfach ist und daß eine eigentümliche Verflechtung der Typen charakteristisch für sie ist.

Bemerkung [1]

Vgl. dagegen Giger 1998: 93, wo für die Interpretation der ungarischen ablösbaren Verbalpräfixe als Manifestation des agglutinierenden Typs argumentiert wird.

Die Typologie des Ungarischen 

Abkürzungen allat dat def elat gen iness obj

Allativ Dativ definiter Artikel Elativ Genetiv Inessiv Objekt

pl poss prät sg subj suff

Plural Possessivaffix Präteritum Singular Subjekt Suffix

Literaturverzeichnis Giger, M. 1998. »Zur typologischen Stellung des Obersorbischen innerhalb der westslavischen Sprachen: Das Verbalsystem«. In Beiträge der Europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV) 1, M. Giger und B. Wiemer (Hrsg.), 83–96. München. (Die Welt der Slaven. Sammelbände/Sborniki 2) Greenberg, J. H. (ed). 1966a. Universals of Language. Cambridge, Mass.-London. (2. Auflage; 1. Auflage 1963) Greenberg, J. H. 1966b. »Introduction«. In Greenberg (1966a), xi-xiii. Greenberg, J. H. 1966c. »Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements«. In Greenberg (1966a), 73–113. Hockett, Ch. F. 1966. »The Problem of Universals in Language«. In Greenberg (1966a), 1–29. Šaumjan, S. 1971. Strukturale Linguistik. München. (Internationale Bibliothek für Allgemeine Linguistik 12) — Original: Šaumjan, S. K. 1965. Strukturnaja lingvistika. Moskva. Sgall, P. 1995. »Prague School Typology«. In Approaches to Language Typology, M. Shibatani und T. Bynon (eds), 49–84. Oxford. Skalicˇka, V. 1935. Zur ungarischen Grammatik. Praha. (Facultas Philosophica Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis. Práce z veˇdeckých ústavu˚ XXXIX) Skalicˇka, V. 1942. »Problém druhého slovesa«. Cˇeský cˇasopis filologický 1, 9–14. Skalicˇka, V. 1946–1948. »Sur le rôle de la flexion interne dans la langue«. Linguistica Slovaca IV-VI, 13–22. Skalicˇka, V. 1966. »Ein ‘typologisches Konstrukt’«. In Travaux linguistiques de Prague 2, 157–63. Skalicˇka, V. 1968a. »Die Inkorporation und ihre Rolle in der Typologie«. In Travaux linguistiques de Prague 3, 275–9. Skalicˇka, V. 1968b. »Problém syntaktické typologie«. Slavica Pragensia X, 137–42. Skalicˇka, V. 1968c. »Über die Typologie der finnisch-ugrischen Sprachen«. In Congressus internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum Helsinki 23.-28. VIII. 1965. Pars I. Acta Linguistica, 494–8. Helsinki. Skalicˇka, V. 1968d. »Zum Problem des Donausprachbundes«. Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 40, 3–9.

 Vladimír Skalicˇka

Skalicˇka, V. 1975. »Über die Typologie des Estnischen«. In Congessus tertius internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum Tallinae habitus 17.-23. VIII. 1970. Pars I. Acta Linguistica, 369–73. Tallinn Skalicˇka, V. 1979. Typologische Studien. Mit einem Beitrag von Petr Sgall. Braunschweig/ Wiesbaden. (Schriften zur Linguistik 11) Skalicˇka, V., Sgall, P. 1994. »Praguian Typology of Languages«. In The Prague School of Structural and Functional Linguistics, P. Luelsdorff (ed), 333–57. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. (Linguistic and Literary Studies in Eastern Europe 41).

Section II

Grammar

Theoretical description of language as a basis of corpus annotation The case of Prague Dependency Treebank*

Eva Hajicˇová Prague

.

Introduction

The raised interest in corpus linguistics in the last two decades of the past century has opened new horizons for linguistic (and not only linguistic) research, but also brought along several fundamental issues for discussion. One of them is that of designing annotation (tagging) scenarios. This issue is topical esp. at the present stage when no problems of principle are connected with a mere compilation of very large corpora of texts (not that much of speech, though, which is still a serious problem, mostly of a technical and organizational nature). In the present contribution we would like (i) to argue that such scenarios should include an underlying level of syntactic annotation and (ii) to demonstrate on the example of the Prague Dependency Treebank (using a part of the texts gathered in the Czech National Corpus) that a design of such a scenario if based on a sound explicit linguistic theory is a feasible task. We present first a brief account of such a theory, viz. the Functional Generative Description (FGD, Section 2), followed by a sketch of the overall tagging scenario of the Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT, Section 3). The core of the paper is Section 4, in which the theoretical assumptions of FGD concerning the tectogrammatical (underlying) syntactic level are confronted with the properties of the tagging scheme (the tectogrammatical tree structures, TGTSs). Some conclusions are drawn in Section 5.



Eva Hajicˇová

.

Functional Generative Description

. General overview The annotation scheme on the deep structure level (TGTSs) is based on the theoretical framework of the Functional Generative Description (FGD), namely on its level of the tectogrammatical representations (for motivating discussions and for more details, see e.g. Sgall 1967 and 1992; Sgall et al. 1986; a formalization can be found in Petkevicˇ 1987 and 1995). It has been shown in which way the class of these representations can be specified on the basis of a small number of general principles accounting for the core of grammar and by specific rules for peripheral patterns. The two features of FGD distinguishing it from most of other theoretical frameworks are the dependency-based syntax and the systematic incorporation into the description of an account of information structure of the sentence (its topic–focus articulation, TFA). . Tectogrammatical level .. A general characterization of the tectogrammatical level of FGD The tectogrammatical level can be characterized as the level of linguistic (literal) meaning, i.e. as the structuring of the cognitive content proper to a particular language. On this level, the irregularities of the outer shape of sentences are absent (including synonymy and at least the prototypical cases of ambiguity) and it can thus serve as a useful interface between linguistics in the narrow sense (as the theory of language systems) on one side and, on the other, as a background for such interdisciplinary domains as that of semantic interpretation (logical analysis of language, reference assignment based on inferencing using contextual and other knowledge, further metaphorical and other figurative meanings), that of discourse analysis or text linguistics, and so on. A tectogrammatical representation (TR) of the sentence basically has the shape of a dependency tree. The edges of the tree denote the dependency relations and the nodes carry complex labels indicating their lexical and morphological values. No nonterminals and no nodes corresponding to function words (auxiliaries, prepositions, conjunctions, articles) are present in the tree. Counterparts of function words (and function morphemes) are parts of the complex symbols of the nodes. Instead of using the notion of phrase, we work with subtrees (i.e. the governor and its dependents, or all its subordinate nodes, where ‘‘subordinate’’ is the transitive closure of ‘‘dependent’’, so that ‘‘b is subordinated to c’’ means ‘‘b immediately or through mediation of other nodes depends on c’’). The left-toright order of the nodes of the dependency tree corresponds to the topic–focus articulation of the sentence.

The Prague Dependency Treebank

TRs meet the strongly restrictive condition of projectivity: a dependency tree is projective if for every three-element set of nodes a, b, c present in the tree, it holds that if a depends on c, and b is placed between a and c in the left-to-right order, then b is subordinated to c. The cases of non-projective constructions in the surface structure (which are strongly limited as for their types, though not as for their frequency) can be described by means of movement rules concerning morphemics (see Sgall 1997b; Hajicˇová 1998a and the writings quoted there). The orientation of the dependency relation (i.e. the determination of which of the pair of the nodes connected by an edge is the governor and which is the dependent) can be specified on the basis of the following operational criterion: the dependent node is that member of the pair that is syntactically omissible, if not in a lexically specified pair of words (as is the case with the endocentric syntagms), then at the level of word classes. Thus e.g. in ((very) slow) progress the syntactic potential of the heads prototypically is identical to that of the whole groups. In Jim met Sally nothing can be deleted, but we know from other cases that the verb is never deletable (without a specific context), whereas object can be absent e.g. with read, and subject (or, more precisely, its prototypical tectogrammatical counterpart, the Actor or Actor/Bearer) is absent e.g. with rain (the E. pronoun it is just a morphemic filler, having no semantic relevance, since no other option is present, and in the so-called pro-drop languages such as Czech or Latin no subject pronoun is present). As mentioned above, function words do not occupy specific positions in the syntactic structure of the sentence as represented by the TRs. This is substantiated by the fact that articles and prepositions are, as a rule, connected with nouns, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions with verbs, and they cannot be freely modified by other elements of the sentence. Thus it appears not to be appropriate to assign them the same status as to proper (autosemantic) lexical units. Their underlying counterparts thus should be differentiated from those of the autosemantic words and denoted by more economical means than separate nodes. Thus e.g. an embedded clause such as (We knew) that Jim arrived is represented by a subtree the head of which is labeled by the lemma of its verb with the functor PAT corresponding to the function of the conjunction ‘that’ in this sentence: arrive.ant(erior).indic.PAT. The labels of the nodes of the TR are complex symbols consisting of three parts: (i) a lexical part, (ii) a combination of symbols (called grammatemes) for values of grammatical categories such as number, tense, modality, etc., and (iii) symbols (called functors) denoting the kinds of syntactic dependency (the valency positions). The functors can equivalently be written as labels of edges (or, in a linear notation, as indices of parentheses). The TR of a sentence thus can be rendered by a string of complex symbols corresponding to lexical occurrences (of the autosemantic words), with every dependent included in a pair of parentheses.





Eva Hajicˇová

Along with dependency, the TRs include a specification of several further relations. One of these is the topic–focus articulation (TFA), expressed in the surface structure mainly by an interplay of word order and sentence prosody (esp. the position of intonation centre); in the TRs, TFA is represented by the left-to-right order of the nodes (denoting the so-called communicative dynamism, i.e. the underlying word order) and by an index attached to the verb to denote whether it is contextually bound or non-bound; the nodes to the left of their governor are contextually bound, those to the right are contextually nonbound (for a definition of topic and focus as based on these primitive notions, see Sgall et al. 1986). Other kinds of syntactic relations are those of coordination (conjunction, disjunction and others) and of apposition. Their interplay with dependency cannot be accounted for with full adequacy by trees if we do not want to neglect the difference between the binary dependency relations and the coordinated (and appositional) constructions, some of which may have an indefinite number of members. However, even a network with a greater number of dimensions, which in this sense can serve as the shape of a TR, can be formally described in the form of its one-to-one linearization (see Petkevicˇ 1995; Sgall 1997a), namely by a string of complex symbols with which a pair of parentheses surrounds every dependent item. The kinds of dependency relations are written as indices of parentheses (attached to the parenthesis that is placed on the side of the head). Also the kinds of coordination are indicated by such indices (on the righthand parenthesis). .. Valency as the core notion of TRs The core of syntax in FGD lies in the notion of valency, i.e. of sets of kinds of dependents (see esp. Panevová 1974 and 1980; Hajicˇová and Panevová 1984). Within the dependents, arguments or inner participants are differentiated from free modifications (circumstantials, adjuncts) on the basis of the following criteria: a. inner participants are bound to certain groups of verbs only; b. they occur at most once as dependent on a single verb token. Five types of inner participants of verbs are distinguished: Actor/Bearer (Jim runs, sits, sleeps . . ., the brook runs), Objective (to build a house; to destroy a house; to see a house; to address someone; to elect the chairman; to choose a spokesman), Addressee (to give Mary a book), Effect (to do sth. as chairman; to elect somebody the chairman; to choose him as chairman), Origin (to make a canoe out of a log). Valency is not restricted to verbs; among the inner participants of nouns there is e.g. Material (Partitive, two baskets of sth.) and Identity (the river Danube, the notion of operator). There is a rich repertoire of free modifications: mostly for verbs, there are several types of Temporal circumstantials (when, how many times, since when, till

The Prague Dependency Treebank

when, how long, for how long), Manner, Regard, Extent (he spent his money to the last penny), Norm (in accordance with), Criterion (according to), Substitution (instead of), Accompaniment (with someone), Means (Instrument), Difference (two inches taller), Benefit (for someone), Comparison (as bright as something; brighter than sth.), Locative, three types of Directional-1.from where, 2.which way, 3.where to, Condition, Cause, Aim (in order to, for the sake of), Concession (although), Result (so that); dependent mainly on nouns, there are e.g. Appurtenance (my table, Jim’s brother, Mary’s car), Restrictive (rich man), Descriptive (the Swedes, who are a Scandinavian nation). A participant or a free modification can be either obligatory or optional with a given head: participants are prototypically obligatory (e.g. Actor and Objective with the verb meet: Jim met Eve.), but they can also be optional (e.g. the Addressee with the verb to read: to read a book (to somebody)). Free modifications are prototypically optional, e.g. to be sitting (somewhere) (for a reason) (for some time), but they can also be obligatory (as e.g. Manner with the verb to behave: to behave badly, or Temporal. how_long with the verb to last: to last for a week, or Direction-to where with the verb to arrive: to arrive at Prague). To decide whether a complementation of the verb is obligatory (i.e. present in the underlying structure), although deletable in the surface structure, the so-called ‘dialogue test’ was formulated by Panevová (1974, 1980; see also Sgall et al. 1986). It is based on an assumption that the speaker is obliged to be able to add the information he deleted in his utterance (assuming that it is an information known to the hearer), if he is asked for it. Thus the dialogue in (1) is not coherent, since the speaker A should be able to answer the question posed by the hearer B. (1) A: Jerry arrives tomorrow. B: Where to? A: I don’t know. The dialogue test exemplified in (1) indicates that with the verb arrive the free modification of Direction-3.where_to (‘predictable’ for the hearer, i.e. known by the speaker and deleted in the surface shape of the sentence precisely because A believes it to be easily recoverable by B) is obligatory; on the contrary, the dialogue in (2) is coherent, which indicates that with the verb arrive the free modification of Cause is not obligatory. (2) A: Jerry arrives tomorrow. B: Why? A: I don’t know. Along with the information on the valency requirements of each lexical entry, there is also other grammatical information included in the valency frames, such as surface deletability (e.g. Directional-3 with to arrive is deletable, Objective with





Eva Hajicˇová

to meet is not: We met there is a case of reciprocity, rather than of deletion), markers denoting an optional or an obligatory controller (e.g. Actor is an obligatory controller with to try, an optional one with to decide; Addressee is an optional controller with to advise, to forbid), and the dependent’s ability to occupy certain syntactic positions (e.g. of Subject with Passivization, of a wh-element) or to constitute barriers for movement, and subcategorization conditions. .. Topic–Focus articulation in TRs TFA is characterized on the basis of two concepts (discussed in detail in Sgall et al. 1986; Hajicˇová 1993; Hajicˇová, Partee and Sgall 1998; and the writings quoted there): a.

Contextual boundness: Contextually bound (cb) items are the primary grammatical counterparts of expressions carrying so-called given information, and contextually non-bound (nb) items refer in prototypical cases to ‘‘new’’ information; primarily, nb items belong to the focus of the sentence and cb items constitute the topic of the sentence. b. Communicative dynamism (CD): In prototypical cases the scale of CD corresponds to the surface word order, but there are secondary cases, e.g. with the most dynamic item (focus proper, which carries the intonation center of the sentence, often a falling stress) occurring elsewhere than at the end of the sentence, or the verb occupying the second position in the uppermost subtree according to language specific rules (which are more or less obligatory in German, optional in Czech). It should be emphasized that for a proper interpetation of the given occurrence of the sentence in a given discourse it is necessary to take into consideration the sentence prosody and other specific aspects. In the TR’s, CD is indicated by the left-to-right order of the nodes of the tree, in which every cb dependent is placed to the left of its head and every nb item is placed to the right of its head. The values f, t, c of the grammateme TFA indicate whether the given item is nb (in the focus), or cb (in the topic), or a contrastive topic, respectively, as indicated in the examples (3) through (5) below; the questions in brackets indicate the context for that reading of the sentence which is considered in these examples. (3) Father came home. (What about your father?) (3¹) father.t come.t home.f (4) (It is) father (who) came home. (Who came home?) (4¹) home.t come.t father.f

The Prague Dependency Treebank

(5) Mary went home and Fred stayed at school. (What about Mary and Fred?) (5¹) Mary.c went.f home.f and Fred.c stayed.f at school.f

.

The scenario of the Prague Dependency Treebank

The annotation scheme of the PDT consists of the following three layers of tagging: 1. The morphemic layer, arrived at by an automatic procedure of POS tagging and by disambiguation of the rich inflectional system of Czech, contains disambiguated values of morphemic categories (see Hajicˇ and Hladká 1997, 1998; problems of this step are not discussed in the present paper). 2. Syntactic tags on the analytic layer (analytic tree structures, ATSs), encoding functions of individual word forms (including also e.g. punctuation marks) as they are rendered in the surface shape of the sentence (see Hajicˇ 1998; a manual has been prepared for the human annotators, see Bémová et al. 1997, and translated into English); at the present time, about 100 000 sentences from CNC are tagged on this layer. The layer of analytic syntax does not immediately correspond to a level substantiated by linguistic theory, although in some aspects it may be viewed as coming close to the level of ‘surface syntax’ as present in the earlier stages of FGD (see Sgall 1992 as for reasons to abandon this level). The main difference between ‘surface’ and the analytic layer is that every function word and punctuation mark gets a node of its own in the syntactic network. We have been led to the inclusion of the analytic layer into the tagging procedure by two reasons: (a) it makes it possible to work with a relatively large set of syntactically tagged sentences without much delay, (b) it is a useful intermediate step in the transduction of the surface shape of the sentence (as a string of words) into its underlying structure (as a dependency tree structure), and (c) it allows for a comparison of the results with the outputs of several tagging and parsing procedures which have been implemented for other languages in different research centres. 3. Syntactic tags on the tectogrammatical layer (TGTSs) capture the deep (underlying, tectogrammatical) structure of the given sentence, i.e. its dependency based syntactic structure proper (see Hajicˇová 2000). A significant part of the annotation procedure of both 2. and 3. is carried out automatically. The annotators involved in the intellectual part of the procedure have a software tool at their disposal that enables them to work with the graphic representation of the trees on both these layers, modifying the trees in several



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Eva Hajicˇová

respects, esp. in what concerns adding or changing the complex labels of the nodes, or adding and suppressing nodes.

. Tagging on the Tectogrammatical layer . Tectogrammatical tree structures (TGTSs) A node of the TGTS represents an occurrence of an autosemantic (lexical, meaningful) word; the contribution of the synsemantic (auxiliary, functional) words to the tectogrammatical structure of the sentence is reflected in the indices to the autosemantic words to which the function words ‘‘belong’’ (i.e. auxiliary verbs and subordinating conjunctions to the verbs, prepositions to nouns, etc.); coordinating conjunctions remain as nodes of their own (similarly as in the ATSs). In cases of deletions in the surface shapes of sentences nodes for the deleted autosemantic words are added to the tree structure. Not only the direction of the dependency relation (dependent from the right — dependent from the left), but also the ordering of the sister nodes is specified in the TGTSs (in accordance with CD, see Section 2.3.3.(b) above). Each TGTS has thus the form of a projective dependency tree with the verb of the main clause as its root (to be more precise, the root of the TGTS is a special node identifying the sentence of which the given structure is the TGTS, and the node of the main verb is the only node incident to this identifier). In case of nominal ‘sentences’ (i.e. of constructions without a finite verb), three possibilities obtain: (i) the governing verb is added (in case of surface deletions, which is relatively rare), or (ii) a symbol for ‘empty verb’ (‘EV’) is added as the governor (e.g. Od našeho washingtonského zpravodaje ‘From our correspondent from Washington’, with the node for ‘correspondent’ depending on ‘EV’), or (iii) the governing nominal node acts as the governor (e.g. with author names).

. Characterization of the labels of the TGTS nodes Each label of a node in a TGTS consists in the following parts: 1. the lexical value proper of the word (represented in a preliminary way just with the usual graphemic form of the word, the ‘lemma’); 2. the values of the morphological grammatemes (corresponding primarily to the values of morphological categories such as modality, tense, aspect with verbs, gender and number with nouns, degree of comparison with adjectives); 3. the values of the attribute ‘functor’, corresponding to (underlying) syntactic

The Prague Dependency Treebank

functions (Actor, Objective, Means, Locative, etc.; in our examples, we write the values of functors in upper case letters); as a matter of fact, in case of doubts, the annotators have the possibility to indicate two different values for every functor; 4. the values of the attribute ‘syntactic grammateme’, corresponding to secondary aspects of syntactic functions and combined with some of the functors, leading thus to a more subtle (semantic) subcategorization of these syntactic relations that is rendered on the surface first of all by prepositions and cases of nouns; this concerns the functors with the meaning of location LOC, DIR-1, DIR-2 and DIR-3 (corresponding to the questions ‘where?’, ‘from where?’, ‘through which place?’ and ‘where to?’, respectively); thus e.g. LOC (expressed in Czech by several prepositions combined either with the locative (Loc) or with the instrumental (Instr) case of the noun) is subcategorized into na+Loc (‘on’: na stole ‘on the table’), v+Loc (‘in’), u+Loc (‘by’), nad+Instr (‘above’), pod+Instr (‘under’), prˇed+Instr (‘in front of ’), za+Instr (‘behind’), mezi+Instr (‘among’), mezi+Instr (‘between’), etc.; as for functors having a temporal meaning, a similar subcategorization is established with the functor TWHEN (with the grammatemes AFT ‘after’, BEF ‘before’, ON ‘on Monday’, ‘next year’); a positive or negative grammateme is attached to ACMP (‘with’ vs. ‘without’), REG (‘with regard’ vs. ‘without regard’) and BEN (‘for’ vs. ‘against’), etc.; 5. the values of a special grammateme capture the basic information about the topic–focus articulation (TFA) of the sentence. At the present stage, the tentative and preliminary inventory of the tectogrammatical labels for Czech comprises 10 attributes for morphological grammatemes (e.g. number, tense, aspect, degrees of comparison) and 47 values for the attributes of ‘functor’ and ‘syntactic grammateme’ (functor: Actor, Patient, Addressee, Locative, Means, etc.; syntactic grammateme: see point 4. above). In addition, there are specific attributes for the relations of coordination, apposition, for marking ‘restored nodes’ (i.e. such nodes that have been deleted in the surface shape of the sentence and restored in its tectogrammatical structure), and three attributes to account for the basic features of coreference (both intra- and intersententential). . An illustration The (preferred) ATS of sentence (6) is given in Fig. 1, its TGTS (on the reading ‘(I tell you about) Mary (that she) is carrying books to the library’) in Fig. 2 (with many simplifications): (6) Marie nese knihy do knihovny Mary is-carrying books to (a) library

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 Eva Hajicˇová

o

nést.sim.proc.indic

o

o kniha.pl.Obj

Marie.Subj

o do.AuxP o knihovna.sg.Adv

Figure 1.

A simplified ATS of sentence (1), where ‘nést’ is the infinitive of ‘nese’, AuxP is the syntactic label for a preposition, and the other abbreviations correspond to morphological values (tense: simultaneous, aspect:processual, etc.) and to types of dependency on the level of ‘analytic’ syntax. o nést.sim.proc.indic.F o Marie.ACT.T

o kniha.pl.PAT.F

o knihovna.sg.DIR-3.F

Figure 2.

A simplified TGTS of sentence (1), with abbreviated symbols corresponding to the values of grammatemes and functors. The indices T and F stand for the values of the TFA attribute, namely ‘contextually bound’ and ‘non-bound’, respectively, . Confrontation of TR’s and TGTS’s .. Motivation of differences As has been stated above, TGTSs are based on the theoretical conception of TRs; this does not mean that the resulting tagged structures are ‘deteriorated’ by being biased to a specific theoretical framework. On the contrary: TGTSs have a theoretically sound and empirically tested basis with a perspicuous structure and other properties favourable for the possibility of comparison with other frameworks; this might be taken as an advantage, since it makes it possible to specify the properties of TGTSs in a precise and explicit way. Thus these structures will be a useful source of information also for those who work in other frameworks. However, there are some points in which TGTSs differ from the TRs; the differences have been motivated by an effort, first, to encode peripheral relations (other than pure dependency) in a straightforward way (see below 4.4.2) and, second, to preserve also those pieces of information from the surface shape of the sentence that might be of interest for future (mostly linguistic) research (Section 4.4.3).

The Prague Dependency Treebank

.. Coordination and apposition To specify TGTSs as two-dimensional trees, coordination and apposition are treated in a way that differs from their treatment in FGD: although coordinating conjuntions belong to function words, they retain their status as nodes (labeled as CONJ, DISJ, etc., with the lexical value of the conjunction) in the TGTSs; the same holds for the expressions denoting an apposition. In addition, the nodes for the words standing in the coordination (apposition) relation get a special index. Compare the bracketted shapes of the TGTSs (disregarding other than structural relations) for (7): in (7a), the interpretation is ‘(old men) and (women)’), while (7b) stands for the interpretation ‘(old men) and (old women)’, with an added node (marked by ELID) corresponding to the restrictive adjunct ‘old’, which has been deleted in the surface shape of the sentence. (7) starˇí muži a ženy old men and women a. (CONJ.a (starý) (muž.CO) (žena.CO)) b. (CONJ.a ((starý) muž.CO) ((starý.ELID) žena.CO)) This exception makes it technically possible to work with rooted trees, rather than with networks of more dimensions. .. Further specific differences New attributes for the existing nodes are being established, carrying information that might be interesting for the use of the tagged corpus for further research, be it a research aiming at an enrichment of the tectogrammatical description, as e.g. in 1., or a research of how language is used in communication, as in 2. The following issues belong here: 1. In order to capture lexical collocations as wholes the component parts of a collocation get a positive value of a newly introduced attribute PHRi, where i is the serial number of this collocation (a ‘phraseme’ or idiom) in the sentence. 2. Special attributes COREF, CORNUM and CORSNT are introduced (for the time being, only to nouns and pronouns) to capture at least some basic aspects of (esp. textual) coreferential relations. The values of these attributes can be characterized as follows: in COREF, the lemma of the antecedent is inserted; the attribute CORNUM contains the serial number of the antecedent if it occurs in the same sentence, or else, the value is NA (non-applicable); the attribute CORSNT obtains one of the following two values: PREV (if the antecedent occurs in the previous sentences), or else NA. In cases of grammatical coreference (such as with the ‘subjects’ of infinitives as complements of the so-called verbs of control), the attribute COREF of the ‘restored’ subject gets the lemma of the ‘controller’ as its value; the attribute



 Eva Hajicˇová

CORNUM then gets the serial number of the controller as its value and CORSNT gets the value NA, cf. (8): (8) Rodicˇe radili Jirkovi nechodit tam parents adviced George not-to-go there In the TGTS of (8), there will be a node added as an Actor of the verb nechodit, with Cor as its lexical value, and with Jirka in its COREF, 3 in its CORNUM and NA in its CORSTN. 3. With ‘restored’ nodes standing for elements deleted in the surface structure of the sentence but present in its underlying structure the attribute DEL gets the value ELID, if the ‘restored’ element stands alone, cf. e.g. the TGTS (7b) above, or else ELEX (‘expounded’ deletion), see the TGTS (9’) for (9), if the interpretation is ‘(very old men) and (very old women)’, i.e. with a single added node for the deleted restrictive adjunct ‘old’ marked as ELEX rather than adding also the node(s) dependent on it. (9) velmi starˇí muži a ženy very old men and women (9¹) (CONJ.a (((velmi) starý) muž.CO) ((starý.ELEX) žena.CO). 4. Parenthetical items in the sentence without a specific syntactic relation to one of its elements get the functor PAR ( see (10)), while a parenthetical item which exhibits a dependency relation to some element of the sentence obtains a regular functor (see (11), where CRIT stands for the functor of Criterion and ‘já’ is the lemma for ‘I’). (10) Jirka myslím.PAR prˇijde pozdeˇ George I-think will-come late (11) Jirka (podle mne) je talentovaný pianista George according to-me is talented pianist (11¹) (Jirka.ACT) (já.CRIT) být ((talentovaný.RSTR) pianista.PAT) 5. A special functor PREC is introduced to denote the syntactic function of those elements of the sentence (with the analytic function of a particle) that as a rule stand at the beginning of the sentence, have a more or less discoursive function of cohesion but do not connect clauses into complex sentences; there belong the particles tedy, tudíž ‘thus’, tj. ‘i.e.’, totiž ‘as a matter of fact’, etc. (e.g. He was ill. Thus he couldn’t come there.) 6. Direct speech is distinguished by an index DSP (‘direct speech’) attached to the root of the TGTS of the sentence enclosed in quotation marks; if more than a single sentence is in quotation marks, an index DSPP (‘part of direct speech’) is

The Prague Dependency Treebank 

attached to the root of the TGTS of the first and of the last sentence of such a direct speech. 7. Quoted word(s), if occurring in quotation marks (be they single or double) in the surface shape of the sentence, get the index QUOT, unless they constitute a sentence of its own; e.g. while the noun pleasure in They call it ‘‘pleasure’’ gets ‘QUOT’, the verb come in He told her: ‘‘Come back soon’’ gets the index DSP indicating direct speech.

.

Concluding remarks

. Issues for further discussion A complete tectogrammatical tagging of a large corpus is, of course, a very demanding task and it is no wonder then that the specifications we are now working with cannot cover all subtle oppositions that should be distinguished in the representation of the meaning of the sentence. However, we have found our task very stimulating and leading to new insights concerning issues some of which either (i) are technically complex and could not yet been entirely integrated into our apparatus (as e.g. a fully automatic handling of PP attachment and other cases of morpho-syntactic ambiguity), or (ii) have not yet been analyzed in any existing grammar or monograph of Czech. Let us briefly mention here some of the open questions that are still waiting for a monographic inquiry; some of them concern the theoretical framework, some are connected only with the decisions concerning tagging and its ambiguities. .. Issues concerning types of valency slots The issues concerning valency belong to the crucial ones when completing the tagging scenario. This is true both of the determination of valency frames for verbs as well as those of nouns. Some of the functors seem to cover more than one type of syntactic relations and thus might be more subtly differentiated; this concerns e.g. the Locative (cf. the difference between zranil se v lese ‘he injured himself in the forest’ and zranil se na ruce ‘he injured himself on his hand’, the latter being in some sense closer to an inner participant (argument). However, the question remains of how to classify the Locatives v kuchyni ‘in the kitchen’, jednání uvnitrˇ koalice ‘discussions within the coalition’. Similar problems concern the modification of Means (cf. the difference between psát rukou ‘to write with hand’, na stroji ‘on the typewriter’, tužkou ‘with a pencil’ and pohnout rukou ‘to move one’s hand’). Another such question concerns the relation between the functor Dir-3 and the so-called Intent (e.g. šla nakoupit ‘she went shopping’). A further question of

 Eva Hajicˇová

this kind is that of the difference between e.g. pojmenovat neˇjak ‘to give some name’ and pojmenovat po kom ‘to name (something, somebody) after somebody’; the latter example certainly is not just an instance of the functor Manner. In the valency frames of nouns, we work with the modifications of Restrictive (adjunct) and Identity. It is then an open question how to distinguish among such examples as pan N. ‘Mister N.’, poslanec N. ‘the deputy N.’, termín sloveso ‘the term verb’. The following criterion might be applied: with two adjacent (congruent, or non-declined) nouns the second noun functions as an Identity modifier if (a) it is non-declined (e.g. parníkem [Instr.] Hradcˇany [Nom.] ‘with the steamer Hradcˇany’) or (b) it can be put (without a change of meaning) into a genitive case (e.g. pojem subjekt/u ‘the notion (of) subject-Nom./Gen.’). In all other cases the first noun would then be classified as a Restrictive adjunct. However, even with this rule some intermediate cases remain: e.g. in the combinations of first name — family name, the family name may also be in genitive (esp. if the first name has a shape of a nickname: Jan Novák, but Honzík Novák/Nom.Sg. or Nováku˚/Gen.Pl.). .. Topic–Focus articulation One of the ‘burning issues’ in the TFA annotation is to make more precise the notion of contrastive topic. It is also necessary to make sure whether for a given language a distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive (parts of) focus is grammatically determined, and to pay much more attention to the study of the systemic ordering of kinds of dependents (‘canonical order’). The boundary line between the syntactic function of focus sensitive particles (rhematisers, focalizers) and those of other subclasses of Attitude adverbials has to be systematically studied; up to now we distinguish between RHEM (rhematizer), ETHD (ethical dative), INTF (intensifier), and ATT (attitudinal adjunct). The primary (prototypical) and secondary (marked) positions of overt focalizers (for a most recent treatment, see Hajicˇová, Partee and Sgall 1998) should be taken into account. It also should be considered whether some of these functors should not be reclassified as grammatemes (in accordance with an older proposal by P. Sgall). .. Coordination constructions and deletions It should be further investigated under which conditions a coordination construction is to be understood as a coordination of sentences (clauses) or of their parts (up to now we handle such examples as Sedlák a Bureš objevili virus L. ‘S. and B. discovered the virus L’ as a narrow coordination, although such a sentence does not exclude that each of the persons discovered the virus separately). Also other cases of deletions are still open for discussion. Up to now, we do not generally restore the governing verb of a whole sentence the deletion of which is registered in the analytic trees by means of an extra node labeled as ExD. In those cases where perhaps also some of the dependents of the restored node

The Prague Dependency Treebank

should be restored, we are not yet capable to specify under which conditions this restoration should take place (to avoid repeating what does not belong to the deleted position). .. Issues of the lexicon and word formation The present tagging scenario does not work with a composition of lexical meaning (degrees of hyponyms, etc.) from its parts or features, and we are aware that lexical semantics is a domain to be investigated. In the subdomain of word formation, up to now we have only worked with some of the most productive affixes and their roles (the verbal prefix of negation, some postverbal nouns and adjectives, postadjectival adverbs, possessive adjectives and pronouns). The boundary lines of some of these groups (and of many other) have not been drawn with full adequacy. For instance, the intransitive verbs derived by the ‘reflexive’ particle se, such as šírˇit se ‘expand’ are treated as specific lexical units; their relationship to the base forms is only to be found in the analytic trees; however, it is necessary to look for criteria distinguishing the set of such verbs. .. Coreference in discourse It has been mentioned above that only the elementary cases of textual anaphora are recorded. It will be necessary to look for a more complete application of the considerations of our previous research (Hajicˇová 1993), i.e. to work more systematically especially with the degrees of salience of the items contained in the stock of information shared by the speaker and (according to the speaker’s assumptions) the hearer(s). .. Graphic symbols Our treatment of dashes, quotes and quoted words, direct speech, and so on, as well as of the difference between a full stop and a semicolon as marking sentence boundaries of different strengths, or of the boundaries between paragraphs, is only preliminary. It has to be studied to which degree and in which ways the corresponding graphic symbols (or the prosodic phenomena they represent) contribute to the underlying structure of sentences (which also characterizes some aspects of the sentence as occupying certain positions in the discourse pattern).

. Conclusion If compared to the prevailing present-day trends in parsing and annotation, the present scenario of PDT is promising in going deeper in the sense of including much of semantically relevant phenomena. The aim of tagging under this approach is not only to check the grammatical structure of sentences (and their well-



 Eva Hajicˇová

formedness), making choice of the reading to be preferred, but also to provide an adequate input for the semantico-pragmatic interpretation of sentences and of their specification in what concerns their embedding in context. It will of course take some time before the part of PDT equipped with tectogrammatical tags is large enough to be of actual relevance either for practical applications or for further studies. The expected application of statistically based methods should lead to a more general and efficient shape of the procedure, but even then the tagging will contain many errors of most different kinds. However, we believe that the resource offered by the Prague Dependency Treebank will be soon useful for authors of future monographic inquiries into Czech grammatical and textual phenomena and their relationships to those of other languages: the rich empirical material gathered and analyzed in PDT, certainly makes a more systematic insight into the studied issues possible, and the related studies will in turn help us to remove the individual errors and to amend the procedures. In this way a means for a principled way of testing the descriptive framework of FGD can be gained. We are aware that many questions remain open, and some of them have been sketched above. These and many other puzzles are i.a. connected with the freedom of language (the speakers being free to decide for any deviation of the norm they only can think of) and make it necessary to look for descriptive methods adequate to account not only for the norm, but also for most different deviations (cf. Sgall, this volume).

Notes The research reported on in this paper (a preliminary form of which with the title ‘‘Dependency-Based Underlying-Structure Tagging of a Very Large Czech Corpus’’, was published in T. A. L. 2000) has been carried out within the project supported by the Czech Grant Agency 405–96-K214 and by the Czech Ministry of Education LN 00A 063.

References Bémová, A., Buránˇová, E., Hajicˇ, J., Kárník, J., Pajas, P., Panevová, J., Šteˇpánek, J. and Urešová, Z. 1997. Anotace na analytické rovineˇ: návod pro anotátory [Annotations on the analytic level: instructions for the annotators]. Technical Report ÚFAL TR-1997–03. Prague: Charles University. Translated into English and available on the web site http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz Hajicˇ, J. 1998. ‘‘Building a syntactically annotated corpus: The Prague Dependency Treebank’’. In Issues of Valency and Meaning. Studies in Honour of Jarmila Panevová E. Hajicˇová (ed), 106–32. Prague: Karolinum.

The Prague Dependency Treebank 

Hajicˇ, J. and Hladká, B. 1997. ‘‘Probabilistic and rule-based tagger of an inflective language — a comparison’’. In Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, 111–18. Washington, D. C. Hajicˇ, J. and Hladká, B. 1998. ‘‘Czech language processing — POS tagging’’. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation. Granada, Spain. Hajicˇová, E. 1993. Issues of Sentence Structure and Discourse Patterns. Prague: Charles University. Hajicˇová, E. 1998. ‘‘Movement Rules Revisited’’. In Procesing of Dependency-Based Grammars, Proceedings from the Workshop, COLING/ACL, S. Kahane and A. Polguere (eds), 49–57. Montreal. Hajicˇová, E. 2000. ‘‘Dependency-Based Underlying-Structure Tagging of a Very Large Czech Corpus’’. Les grammaires de dépendance. Traitement Automatique des Langues 41(2000):57–8 Hajicˇová, E. and Panevová, J. 1984. ‘‘Valency (case) frames of verbs’’. In Sgall 1984: 147–88. Hajicˇová, E., Partee, B. and Sgall, P. 1998. Topic–Focus articulation, tripartite structures, and semantic content. Amsterdam:Kluwer Panevová, J. 1974. ‘‘On verbal frames in Functional Generative Description’’. Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics 22:3–40; 23(1975):17–52. Panevová, J. 1980. Formy a funkce ve stavbeˇ cˇeské veˇty. [Forms and Functions in the Structure of the Czech Sentence]. Prague: Academia. Petkevicˇ, V. 1987. ‘‘A New Dependency Based Specification of Underlying Representations of Sentences’’. Theoretical Linguistics 14:143–72. Petkevicˇ, V. 1995. ‘‘A New Formal Specification of Underlying Representations’’. Theoretical Linguistics 21:7–61. Sgall, P. 1967. Generativní popis jazyka a cˇeská deklinace. [Generative Description of Czech and Czech Declension.] Prague: Academia. Sgall, P. (ed) 1984. Contributions to Functional Syntax, Semantics and Language Comprehension. Amsterdam: Benjamins and Prague: Academia. Sgall, P. 1992. ‘‘Underlying Structure of Sentences and Its Relations to Semantics’’. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderband 33, T. Reuther (ed), 273–82. Wien: Gesellschaft zur Förderung slawistischer Studien. Sgall, P. 1997a. ‘‘Valency and Underlying Structure. An Alternative View on Dependency’’. In Recent Trends in Meaning-Text Theory, L. Wanner (ed), 149–66. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Sgall, P. 1997b. ‘‘On the Usefulness of Movement Rules’’. In Actes du 16e Congr s International des Linguistes (Paris 20–5 juillet 1997), B. Caron (ed). Oxford: Elsevier Sciences. Sgall, P. (this volume). The Freedom of Language. Sgall, P., Hajicˇová, E. and Panevová, J. 1986. The Meaning of the Sentence in Its Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects. J. L. Mey (ed). Dordrecht: Reidel — Prague: Academia.

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different?

Yishai Tobin Be’er Sheva ‘‘Every language provides a means to coin out its own substance.’’ (Bolinger 1971: xi)

.

Introduction

In this chapter I will present a functional, sign-oriented analysis of the conditionals if/whether in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents im/lu/ilu/lule/ilule (all translated as ‘if ’). The analysis is based on the monosemic concepts of invariance, markedness, and distinctive feature theory. I will show that despite the fact that all these forms share the same FUNCTION, their MEANINGS are quite different and therefore it would be difficult to view them as being equivalent. However the iconic relationship between the FORMS and their meanings in each language system does seem to be similar: the more complex the form, the more specifically marked the meaning. The theoretical and methodological question to be asked therefore is: What are the bridges and interfaces of form, meaning, and function in and across human languages? The answers I will provide are based on aspects of the semiotic view of language developed by the Prague and PostPraguian sign-oriented functional schools of linguistics discussed in Andrews and Tobin (1995); Contini-Morava and Goldberg (1995); Contini-Morava and Tobin (2000); Klein-Andreu 1983; Reid and Otheguy (1998); Tobin (1988, 1989); and Waugh and Rudy (1991). Most typological studies are based on the methodological tenets of sentenceoriented linguistics and their accompanying sets of traditional and neotraditional syntactic categories which are usually compared and contrasted crosslinguistically based on their ‘‘equivalence’’ and ‘‘translatability’’ (Garcia et al. 1987). Certain semiotic or sign-oriented linguistic theories however question or reject many of these traditional categories in favor of the linguistic sign and its fundamental component of invariant meaning as the basis of their analyses of linguistic systems within and across languages (Andersen 1991; Klein 1976; Lattey 1980, 1989). In

 Yishai Tobin

this paper I will show how the sign-oriented principles of invariance, markedness, and distinctive feature theory can provide an alternative way of analyzing supposedly universal categories within and across languages to show how different they actually may be (Tobin 1992a,b; 1994; 1997b). Most typological studies of universal categories usually choose the most frequently used, prototypical token of that category to represent that category in a language (as may seen Traugott et al. 1986 and van der Auwera 1997). For example, if is the universal conditional discussed for English, si for Latin, and im would be their so-called equivalent in Hebrew. One must remember, however, that if is in opposition to at least one other (at least partially) synonymous conditional: whether in English (Tobin 1990a: ch. 6) and im is in opposition to at least four other conditionals: lu, ilu, lule, ilule in Hebrew (all of which are also translated as ‘if ’) (Tobin 1994: ch. 3). In this paper we will show that although these forms may share a similar semantic domain: THE PRESENTATION OF POSSIBILITIES; they are marked for very different semantic features and, therefore, may be less equivalent and translatable across languages than was previously considered. The semantic analyses of these conditionals in English and Hebrew will be based on the following sign-oriented hypotheses: a. the conditionals in English and Hebrew differ in their monosemic, core, invariant meanings, or signifié’s (e.g. Bolinger 1977; Saussure 1913/1959; Tobin 1990a, 1993); b. this difference in meaning is expressed by a marked distinctive semantic feature in the sense originally postulated by Roman Jakobson (1957) of the Prague School; c. this marked distinctive feature (Semantic Integrality) (Tobin 1990a, 1992c, 1994) is based on the perception of entities in continuous versus discontinuous space, time, or existence in the sense originally associated with the school of the Psychomechanics of Language (Guillaume 1945, 1971; Hirtle 1982, 1995); d. according to this analysis: if is unmarked in English and indicates a possibility or possibilities viewed either in continuous or discontinuous space, time, or existence, while whether is marked for Semantic Integrality and therefore indicates possibilities which can be potentially perceived individually in discontinuous space but must now be viewed collectively: i.e., as part of a set viewed in continuous space, time or existence; e. the Hebrew system, on the other hand, distinguishes between factive and non-factive versus contrary-to-fact negative (Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971) possibilities which are part of a relative hierarchy of possibility of occurrence or nonoccurrence; f. both the English and the Hebrew conditionals form semantic systems in the

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different?

sense of the Columbia School (Contini-Morava 1989; Garcia 1975; Huffman 1996; Kirsner 1979; Reid 1991).

.

The English System

Both if and whether share certain syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic qualities and functions which have made most grammars and dictionaries label them as synonyms based on the false assumption that function equals meaning. They both are labelled as conjunctions used in conditional clauses, reported yes-no questions, and utterances expressing wishes, stipulations, conditions and suppositions which are often referred to as direct and indirect questions or interrogatives (inverted or otherwise). They both have a strong tendency to collocate with verb forms or tenses (e.g., unreal past, conditional, future, historical subjunctive, etc.) and verbs (want, wonder, doubt, decide, think, see, know, and the modals shall/should, will/would, etc.) which may be considered appropriate for the kinds of speech acts mentioned above. Very often when both forms are interchangeable in the same utterance, the choice of if versus whether is deemed to be a stylistic one: if, the shorter and more usual form, is generally considered to be the more colloquial, informal, or less literary of the two. This stylistic explanation for the choice of one form over another is certainly open to question particularly since both forms can and do appear simultaneously in the same sentence, paragraph, or passage within the same written or spoken discourse and neither serves as a style marker in the sense of Enkvist (1973). It is also pointed out that whether has a stronger tendency to introduce alternative conditions or possibilities particularly to what I have referred to as whether or not and whether X or Y kinds of possibilities (Tobin 1990a: ch. 6). This preference for more binary or dichotic alternatives for whether is further strengthened by the diachronic fact that the etymons of whether (Old High German hwedar, Old English hwaeder, Middle English hwether) meant: ‘which one of (the) two things’. The semantic feature relevant to the present analysis of English conditionals, Semantic Integrality, has been previously postulated as a semiotic feature of human cognition and perception. The marked feature Semantic Integrality is based on the assumption that there are two alternative ways of perceiving a plurality of entities in space, time, or existence either as discrete entities (a+b=a+b) or as potentially discrete entities perceived as part of a continuous set (a+b=[ab]) as illustrated in Figure 1. Semantic Integrality may be viewed as a marked distinctive feature that can be used to explain linguistic concepts both in the grammar and the lexicon in a unified and systematic way that reflects the human perception of entities in space, time, and existence. Indeed, there may very well be a universal semantic develop-



 Yishai Tobin

Alternate ways of perceiving entities in a spatio–temporal–existential cline a+b=a+b (discontinuous space, time, or existence] or a+b=[ab] (continuous space, time, or existence] SEMANTIC INTEGRALITY: THE PERCEPTION OF POTENTIALLY DISCONTINUOUS ENTITIES VIEWED IN A CONTINUOUS SET

Figure 1. Semantic Integrality

ment of linguistic forms on a spatio-temporal-existential cline going from the most concrete spatial messages to the more abstract temporal, to the most abstract existential kinds of messages: (a) existence in space or in a place (e.g., in the room), (b) existence in time (e.g., in the morning), (c) abstract existence (e.g., to be in trouble, to be in the in-group) (Tobin 1990a: ch. 3). This spatio-temporal-existential cline has been considered a cognitive universal (Givon 1979; Traugott 1978; Wierzbicka 1972, 1980). It has been applied to the historical development of language in general and in the development of pidgins and creoles in particular (Traugott 1975); various word classes such as copulas, prepositions, and particles (Aphek and Tobin 1988, 1989; Garcia, van Putte and Tobin 1987; Traugott 1975, 1978); first language acquisition (Traugott 1974; Clark 1973); the origin and development of idioms in general (Pike 1976) and the development of phrasal verb idioms in particular (Makkai 1972). These studies provide additional evidence for Kronasser’s Law (Kronasser 1952; Kovacs 1961) which claims that semantic change tends overwhelmingly to move from the concrete to the abstract. The distinctive feature of Semantic Integrality may provide a means to better understand the connection between human cognition and perception and language and how this connection may be realized differently in various language systems. Semantic Integrality has served as the basis for analyzing the following linguistic phenomena: systems of grammatical number in general and so-called ‘‘irregular’’ plurals, mass/count nouns, agreement in English; the dual number in Hebrew; the quantifiers many vs. much; each vs. every; and some vs. any in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents rav/merube/harbe/mirba; kol; and exad, axadim/eize; the adverbs of comparison like vs. as in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents kemo/ke-; the connectives also vs. too in English and their socalled Hebrew equivalents gam,/gam-ken/af; the restrictives only vs. just in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents aval/ax/ela, rak/levad, ax-ve-rak; the deletives without vs. -less in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents beli/lelo; the synthetic vs. analytic systems of comparatives and superlatives (the) more/ most X/-er/-est X in English and their so-called Hebrew equivalents yoter X/X yoter/ha-X be-yoter, ha-xi X, od X; the diminishers few vs. less in English and their

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different?

so-called Hebrew equivalents me’at/ketsat; possessive constructions in English and Hebrew; and contracted vs. non-contracted forms in English and Hebrew in Tobin (1990a, 1994, 1998a). All of the abovementioned analyses were based on the Jakobsonian notion of markedness as it is used to distinguish between opposed members of a lexical or grammatical system (Andrews 1990; Battistella 1990, 1996 (the last reviewed in Tobin 1998b)). The asymmetric value relationship of the concept of binary markedness developed by the Jakobsonian-van Schooneveldian School of linguistics may be summarized as follows for the distinctive feature of Semantic Integrality: a.

The unmarked (U) member of an opposition is neutral. It makes no claim with regard to Semantic Integrality and is less complex cognitively. It means: PERCEIVE ENTITIES IN CONTINUOUS OR DISCONTINUOUS SPACE, TIME, OR EXISTENCE. b. The marked (M) member of the opposition makes a specific claim regarding Semantic Integrality. It is more complex cognitively. It means: PERCEIVE POTENTIALLY DISCONTINUOUS ENTITIES IN CONTINUOUS SPACE, TIME, OR EXISTENCE. The unmarked member of an opposition which makes no specific claim concerning the absence or the presence of a distinctive semantic feature is usually more flexible and open-ended than the marked member of an opposition. The unmarked member of an opposition allows for any and all possibilities and is very often the first to be acquired and the one more frequently used although this does not have to be an absolute rule and depends on linguistic and situational contexts. The marked member of an opposition which does make a specific claim for the presence of a distinctive semantic feature is less flexible and usually more limited in its distribution because of its greater precision in meaning. It is often acquired later and generally may be used less frequently than the unmarked member of an opposition although this, too, is not necessarily an absolute rule and depends on linguistic and situational contexts. Therefore it should always be remembered that neither order of acquisition nor the rate of frequency is the sole criterion for choosing the markedness value. However the asymmetric markedness relationship implies that the marked members usually may be replaced by the unmarked members while the opposite is not necessarily true. The feature of Semantic Integrality which makes a claim for the perception of potentially discrete entities as a single continuous set has been chosen as the marked feature for the following reasons: (i) The process of first perceiving concrete or abstract entities as they appear discretely in discontinuous space, time, or existence is the fundamental perception of identification. The later perception of these potentially discrete entities as



 Yishai Tobin

forming part of an integral set occupying continuous space, time, or existence is a more complex cognitive task. This greater cognitive complexity underlies and justifies the choice of Semantic Integrality as being the marked feature synergetically. (ii) If the notion of isomorphism is taken seriously, it becomes evident that the notion of integrality or fusion functions on all the levels of language as well. (iii) In phonology there is an opposition between vowels and diphthongs, nongeminated and geminated consonant phonemes, and stops/fricatives and affricates forming an obstruent consonant class. In all of these cases the second or marked member of the opposition represents a more complex unit or sound nucleus composed of the merger, fusion, or integration of two vowels or consonants and may be marked for Integrality (Tobin 1997a). (iv) In morphology or syntax there are also simple, analytic, independent units versus more synthetic, agglutinative, or compound units composed of the fusion, merger, or integration of different bound or unbound morphemes or clause types, etc., both in word formation and in clause and sentence formation. In all of these cases, the fused, merged, or integrated units are perceived as being more complex or marked as opposed to the simple or more neutral counterparts. (v) There is usually some sort of iconic connection between the signals themselves and their markedness values (Tobin 1990a, 1994). The signs marked for the more complex or specific meanings are usually larger or more complex in their signal or form while the signs which are unmarked and are simpler and less complex in their meanings are usually simpler in their signals and forms as well. The English system of if/whether is marked for the semantic feature Semantic Integrality. This feature is connected to aspects of human cognition and perception. The marked distinctive feature of Semantic Integrality is based on the assumption that there are two alternative ways of viewing entities in space, time and existence either as discrete entities: (a+b=a+b) or as potentially discrete entities perceived as part of a continuous set: (a+b=[ab]). In the present analysis the form whether is marked for the feature Semantic Integrality and the form if is unmarked for this feature. In other words, whether presents possibilities as an integral set (perceived in continuous space, time, existence) from which one (or more) possibility (or possibilities) is chosen while if makes no claim as to whether a possibility (or possibilities) appears as part of a set or not. (1) I don’t know whether you have brothers and sisters. If you do, I should like very much to have their addresses. (Vonnegut 1963: 10) (2) Tell me whether you’re coming or not, and if so (*whether so), whether I should prepare a big meal or just order in.

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different?

(3) Tell me whether you’re a virgin (pregnant, alive/dead), and if you are, I promise not to laugh. (4) We’ll make a nursery if and when (*whether and when) it’s necessary. (5) Talk to me as if (*as whether) you loved me! (6) If (*whether) I get any bigger I won’t fit through the door. In all of the above examples there is an inherent choice between or among possibilities which is always conveyed by the marked form whether which does not have to appear in either the single. or potentially multiple possibilities signaled by the unmarked form if. In other words, ‘‘it always takes two to tango’’ if you used the marked form whether.

.

The Hebrew system

Hebrew appears to have a system which is quite different from the English system both in form and in meaning although they share a similar function of presenting alternative perceptions of possibilities. Hebrew distinguishes between factive and non-factive positive possibilities versus contrary-to-fact negative possibilities both of which are part of a relative hierarchy of possibility of occurrence or non-occurrence. Thus, while the English system classifies the alternative perception of possibilities as being either discrete or part of an integral set of possibilities, the Hebrew system classifies possibilities as either being factive/non-factive and positive or contrary-to-fact and negative in a hierarchical order of possibility of occurrence or non-occurrence. The Hebrew system is composed of: (a) two simple independent (morphologically positive or affirmative) morphemes (im/lu) which indicate high and low degrees of factive or non-factive possibilities of occurrence or non-occurrence respectively and (b) three complex independent and bound (morphologically) negative morphemes (i-/–le (lo) = ‘no’) which are added to lu (LOW POSSIBILITY) to convey a hierarchy of contrary-to-fact occurrences or non-occurrences. Not surprisingly, the more complex five-member Hebrew system is iconic and economic to make it mnemonically more efficient to acquire and remember. The small, independent, morphologically positive signs denote the widest range of possibilities (factive and non-factive) on a two member hierarchical system im (HIGH) and lu (LOW): a. im = HIGH (MORPHOLOGICAL) POSITIVE FACTIVE/NON-FACTIVE (7) im ata ba, tavi li sefer. (present) if you come you-will-bring to-me book. ‘If you are coming, bring me a book.’



 Yishai Tobin

(8) im ata tavo, tavi li sefer. (future) if you-will-come you-will-bring to-me book ‘If you will be coming, bring me a book.’ (9) im kvar bata, lama lo heveta li sefer. (past) if already came-you, why no brought-you to-me book ‘If you came already, why didn’t you bring me a book?’ (10) im hayita ba, hayita mevi li sefer. (compound) if you-were come, you-were bring to-me book ‘If you would come, you’d bring me a book.’ b. lu = LOW MORPHOLOGICAL POSITIVE FACTIVE/NON-FACTIVE (11) lu yehi . . . (future) if it-will-be ‘If it will be . . .’ (12) lu bata/hayita ba, hayita mevi li sefer. if came-you/were-you come, were-you bring to-me book ‘If you came, you would have brought me a book.

(past compound)

The larger, morphologically negative signs composed of various dependent and independent morphemes denote more specific semantically and pragmatically complex contrary-to-fact possibilities, on a three member hierarchical system. These iconically more complex signs are transparent: they are composed of the (morphologically) positive or affirmative sign lu–(LOW POSSIBILITY) plus one or both negative morphemes: the prefix i- ‘negative’ (e.g. efshar ‘possible’ i-efshar ‘impossible’), and/or the suffix le which is written (lamed-aleph) just like the independent negative morpheme lo–‘no, not’ in an iconic tripartite hierarchical order — (i-lu-LOW, lu-le-MID, i-lu-le-HIGH — the more complex the form and the more negative markers it has, the higher it is on the negative, contrary-to-fact three member hierarchy. c. ilu= LOW MORPHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE CONTRARY TO FACT (13) ilu bata/hayita ba, hayita mevi li sefer. (past/ if came-you/were-you come, were-you bring to-me book compound) ‘If you had/would have come, you would have brought me a book. d. lule = MID MORPHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE CONTRARY TO FACT (14) lule bata/hayita ba, hayita mevi li sefer. (past/ (not)-if came-you/were-you come, were-you bring to-me book comp.) ‘If you hadn’t/wouldn’t have come, you would have brought me a book.

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different? 

e. ilule = HIGH MORPHOLOGICAL NEGATIVE CONTRARY TO FACT (15) ilule bata/hayita ba, hayita mevi li sefer. (past/ (not)-if came-you/were-you come, were-you bring to-me book comp.) ‘If you hadn’t/wouldn’t have come, you would have brought me a book. The reader will note that all of these forms are translated as if and the subtle semantic distinctions between them may be lost in the Hebrew-English translation. By the same token, the semantic distinction between if and whether in English may not necessarily be transferable into Hebrew as well. Therefore it should be clear that there may not necessarily be true equivalence in these systems of conditionals.

. Summary and conclusions One of the most fundamental problems in linguistics in general and in the study of linguistic typology and language universals in particular is the distinction between what is extralinguistic versus what is linguistic, or, in other words: which universals are part of language per se and which are reflections of universal principles of cognition, perception, or communication reflected in diverse ways in different languages. Indeed, this question of language universals is one of the key issues dividing traditional and neotraditional sentence-oriented and Saussurian, semiotic, or sign-oriented approaches to language. One might expect Hebrew to have a similar system for such a basic and fundamental universal linguistic category as conditionals. Like the English system, the Hebrew system of conditionals revolves around a similar semantic domain: exhaustively classifying alternative perceptions of possibilities. However, unlike the English system, the Hebrew system classifies these alternative perceptions according to a totally different set of semantic criteria. The Hebrew system classifies the shared semantic domain of alternative ways of presenting possibilities according to a different set of cognitive and perceptual extralinguistic criteria. It should be remembered that all of these criteria for classifying conditionals are based on extralinguistic factors which are not always encoded in the same way in all languages. As in the case of English and Hebrew, different extralinguistic criteria for categorizing conditionals may or may not have explicit linguistic signs that signal them in these languages. Therefore languages differ in terms of which extralinguistic criteria are formally incorporated in their sign systems and which extralinguistic factors are left to human inference and knowledge of the world. The Hebrew system is unlike the English system in other ways as well. Although the English conditionals (if/whether) have a strong tendency to collocate

 Yishai Tobin

with the same verb tenses (e.g. unreal past, conditional, future, historical subjunctive), this is not the case for the Hebrew system: im freely occurs with all tenses (past, present, future, compound) and strongly favors the future and has even been inaccurately called the ‘‘future conditional’’ (Bahat and Ron 1976, 1984); lu prefers the past, can appear in the compound and the present, and usually avoids the future; ilu/lule/ilule appear exclusively in the past and compound tenses. Not surprisingly, the unmarked form if appears much more frequently than the marked form whether in spoken and written texts of various styles and registers (Tobin 1990a: ch. 6). In Hebrew, im is the most frequently used form; followed by ilu; lu and lule have a similar frequency of occurrence; and the most iconically complex form ilule has the lowest frequency of occurrence. This nonrandom distribution and collocation of conditionals and tenses and their relative frequencies (culled from a corpus of twelve texts of diverse styles and registers) is not arbitrary and has been discussed elsewhere (Tobin 1990b: 486–9, 1994: 114). No matter how we look at these systems, we cannot escape from the fact that the same categorical label of conditionals is divided quite differently in English and Hebrew in the number and type of signals, the semantic features underlying the meanings of the signs comprising these language specific systems, and in their distribution and collocation. From the semiotic view of language, it is difficult to view both systems as being equivalent even though all the Hebrew forms can be translated as if, and both systems perform the same communicative function of presenting alternative ways of perceiving possibilities. If, as Saussure has taught us, everything in language is in a system of oppositions, then we should take these unique language specific oppositions into account before we make universal typological claims about crosslinguistic language categories. Or as Anthony Fox (1990: 5) in his book The Structure of German (reviewed by Christopher Beedham 1992) summarizes the basic tenets of European or Saussurian structuralism very accurately when he claims: . . . a language is seen as a self-contained formal system, where each part derives significance from its relation to the other parts and to the whole; hence all the parts are mutually defining. From this it follows that each language must be described in its own terms and not in terms of an earlier stage of its history or in terms of categories derived from another language. (Beedham 1992: 638)

The very idea of comparing and contrasting languages is as difficult as it is intriguing. English is generally assumed to be richer in its lexicon and more impoverished in its morphology and syntax than Hebrew. Yet, both languages are efficient and self-contained systems of communication serving their respective speech communities. The communication needs of human beings and the semantic or pragmatic domains they deal with are extralinguistic phenomena. How these extralinguistic phenomena are encoded in language and languages is

‘‘Conditionals’’ in Hebrew and English: same or different? 

multivaried and diverse. In some instances the English system seems more complex, and in other cases, such as conditionals, the Hebrew provides a wider variety of forms and constructions. A system in one language may rely on lexical items while bound morphology or syntagmatic signals are used in the other, or, possibly a mixture of all the above can be found in either language. Semantic or pragmatic domains may overlap in the traditional and neotraditional categories assigned to the same language or across languages. Sometimes the Hebrew systems may be more transparent or iconic because the signals share the same consonantal roots while the connections between the members of a system may be less transparent in English. The larger number of lexical items in English may appear to present more subtle semantic distinctions than Hebrew which may make more finely-grained distinctions through morphological and syntactic means. However, it may be said that the speakers of each language have chosen alternative means of expression within the basic synergetic principle inherent in all languages: to achieve maximum communication with minimal effort. Each language community solves this problem and reaches a compromise between the communication and human factors in a unique way. One can only laud these crosslinguistic diversities and declare Vive la différence!

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Lattey, E. 1980. ‘‘Grammatical systems across languages: A study of participation in English, German and Spanish’’. City University of New York Ph.D. dissertation. Lattey, E. 1989. ‘‘On the Role of Form in Going from Sign to Text and from Text to Understanding. In: Tobin 1989, 45–59. Makkai. A. 1972. Idiom Structure in English. The Hague: Mouton. Pike, K. 1967. Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. The Hague: Mouton. Reid, W. 1991. Verb Number in English: A Functional Explanation. London and New York: Longman. Reid, W. and Otheguy, R. (eds) In press. Signal, Meaning and Message: Perspectives on SignOriented Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Saussure, F. de. 1913/1959. A Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. Tobin, Y. 1990a. Semiotics and Linguistics. London and New York: Longman. Tobin, Y. 1990b. ‘‘The Future Tense in Modern Hebrew: From Sign to Text. Folia Linguistica 24(3/4): 1–56. Tobin, Y. 1992a. ‘‘Translatability: An Index of Cross System Linguistic, Textual and Historical Compatibility.’’ In Geschichte, System, Literarische Ubersetzung, H. Kittel (ed.), 307–22. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Tobin, Y. 1992b. ‘‘Contrastive Linguistics: A Sign-Oriented Approach.’’ In New Departures in Contrastive Linguistics, M. Markus and Ch. Mair (eds), 311–35. Innsbruck: Institut fur Anglistik der Universitat Innsbruck. Tobin, Y. 1992c. ‘‘Semantic Integrality: A Universal Semiotic Feature of Language and Perception’’. In M. Kefer and J. van der Auwera (eds). Meaning and Grammar: Crosslinguistic Perspectives, 347–66. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Tobin, Y. 1993. Aspect in the English verb: Process and Result in Language. London and New York: Longman. Tobin, Y. 1994. Invariance, Markedness and Distinctive Feature Analysis: A Contrastive Study of Sign Systems in English and Hebrew. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tobin, Y. 1997a. Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Tobin, Y. 1997b. ‘‘Same vs. Different Crosslinguistically: The Articles in English, Spanish and Hebrew’’. In: R. Hickey and S. Puppel (eds). Language History and Linguistic Modelling. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Tobin, Y. 1998b. ‘‘Review: The Logic of Markedness by Edwin Battistella’’. Language 74(4), 832–934. Tobin, Y. 2000. ‘‘The Dual Number in Hebrew: Grammar or Lexicon, or Both?.’’ In Contini-Morava and Tobin (2000), 87–129. Traugott, E. C. 1974. ‘‘Explorations in Linguistic Elaboration: Language Change, Language Acquisition, and the Genesis of Spatio-Temporal Terms. In: J. Andersen and C. Jones (eds). Historical linguistics I, 263–314. Amsterdam: North Holland. Traugott, E. C. 1975. ‘‘Spatial Expressions of Tense and Temporal Sequencing: A Contribution to the Study of Semantic Fields. Semiotica 15(3): 205–30.

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Sur la paradigmatisation du verbe indo-européen (Deuxième partie)*

Tomáš Hoskovec Prague et Brno La première partie du présent mémoire a paru dans le 3e volume de cette nouvelle série des TCLP. Nous étudions le verbe indo-européen non comme des transformations successives d’un système primitif unique, mais comme des constructions particulières, entreprises, de façon individuelle et mutuellement indépendante, à partir d’un inventaire commun de matériaux morphologiques et morphosyntaxiques, formes et fonctions. Dans diverses langues, les matériaux primitifs i.–e.s ont été arrangés selon divers principes et hiérarchies en divers systèmes, ce qui donne l’individualité des langues i.–e.nes anciennes. Dans la deuxième partie, nous décrivons la constitution des paradigmes verbaux latin et grec (chapitre 7), balte et slave (chapitre 8).

7. L’opposition d’aspect et la processualité: le cas du grec et du latin Le cadre théorique de nos réflexions, donné au chapitre 3, présume deux stades consécutifs de l’indo-européen, le premier à flexion dérivationnelle (f-d), le second à flexion paradigmatique (f-p). Au chapitre 4, nous avons conjecturé, pour le stade à f-d, deux classes lexico-sémantiques du verbe, celles d’extraverti et d’introverti, sur lesquelles, au chapitre 5, nous avons bâti, à l’aide de l’opposition d’actualité, les premières catégories paradigmatiques. Au chapitre 6, nous avons présenté un dérivé morphologique particulier: le verbe thématique. Primitivement, il restait en dehors des catégories d’actualité. Dans certaines langues, le verbe thématique s’est soumis aux catégories paradigmatisées d’actualité jusqu’à s’y incorporer (voie par laquelle a disparu le subjonctif védique), mais nous allons voir dans ce chapitre 7 que dans d’autres langues, il a supplanté lesdites catégories en donnant naissance à des paradigmes neufs. . En dernière conjecture utilisée dans le présent mémoire, nous présumons avec Mme Kurzová (1993: 118), quoiqu’en terminologie différente, qu’à l’intérieur de

 Tomáš Hoskovec

chacune des deux classes lexico-sémantiques du verbe indo-européen commun, à savoir à l’extraverti et à l’introverti, a existé une sous-division, également d’ordre lexico-sémantique. L’extraverti aurait distingué un complexe d’un évolutif, l’introverti, un dynamique d’un statique. Dans les deux cas, les sous-classes en résultant étaient de nature aspectuelle sensu latiore; elles précisaient sous quel aspect se présentait le procès du verbe, tout en influençant le choix de contextes syntaxiques dans lesquels le verbe pouvait apparaître. Nous les présumons disjonctives et non nécessairement couvrant l’ensemble de leurs classes respectives. Illustration: Intuitivement, les deux sous-divisions peuvent être illustrées de la façon suivante: à supposer que les verbes français ‘parvenir’ et ‘marcher’ soient extravertis (procès du verbe s’accomplissant à partir du sujet et hors de lui, cf. 4.4), le premier est complexe vu sa sémantique lexicale (procès global, déterminé, présenté dans sa totalité), le deuxième évolutif (procès non-global, nondéterminé, présenté dans son développement); à supposer que les verbes français ‘tourner’ et ‘savoir’ soient introvertis (procès du verbe s’accomplissant dans le sujet et/ou en l’entourant), le premier désigne un procès dynamique, le deuxième, statique. Chose importante, une pareille intuition se manifeste dans le choix des contextes sémantico-syntaxiques où les verbes en question sont employés, technique de vérification que nous empruntons à M. Jan Šabršula (1962/65, 1999). Aussi peut-on dire, en parlant d’un déplacement vers un but, d’une part, les alpinistes sont parvenus au refuge de quoi il s’ensuit que les alpinistes ont atteint leur but, et d’autre part, les alpinistes ont marché vers le (mais non *au) refuge ce qui n’implique point qu’ils aient atteint leur but, cf. les alpinistes ont marché vers le refuge sans y parvenir. De même, on peut dire il a (ou bien il s’est) tourné brusquement, subitement, soudainement, mais non *il a su brusquement, subitement, à moins de modifier la valeur lexicale de ‘savoir’ dans le sens de ‘venir à savoir’, de sorte que ces syntagmes équivalent à dire il a appris subitement que . . . ; il s’est soudainement rendu compte de . . . ; il a compris brusquement ce qui se passait. Digression méthodologique: L’appareil notionnel des classes et des sousclasses lexico-sémantiques du verbe i.–e. tel que nous venons de le présenter est une hypothèse. Nous recommandons au lecteur de prendre ce mot au sens étymologique grec: ßB`h,F4l ‘ce que l’on met dessous pour bâtir là-dessus’. Notre tâche ne se résumera pas à vérifier l’hypothèse adoptée; il n’y a aucun moyen d’aller chercher un indo-européen primitif en vue de le comparer à notre appareil notionnel. Nous sommes, certes, tenu de justifier le choix de l’hypothèse: il ne faut pas qu’elle contredise ce qui est connu des langues anciennes. Or, le travail propre du linguiste consiste à construire une compréhension de la langue . . . et à le faire en pleine conscience des bases sur lesquelles il bâtit. .. La coexistence du dynamique et du statique au sein de l’introverti n’aurait été possible que grâce à la grande neutralité des deux classes principales d’extra-

Sur la paradigmatisation du verbe indo-européen 

verti et d’introverti vis-à-vis du rapport entre le sujet syntaxique et l’agent sémantique, cf. 4.1 et 4.4. Tandis que les classes lexico-sémantiques d’extraverti et d’introverti furent distinguées morphologiquement par deux séries différentes de désinences, leurs sous-classes respectives, telles que nous les supposons, ne le furent pas; le complexe et l’évolutif se servaient des mêmes désinences extraverties, le dynamique et le statique, des introverties. Cette hypothèse s’appuie sur l’origine commune, bien visible en grec et en indo-iranien, des désinences de l’aoriste et du présent (qui à la voix active résultent du complexe et de l’évolutif respectivement) d’un côté, et des désinences du moyen et du parfait actif (qui résultent respectivement du dynamique et du statique) de l’autre. .. Les termes complexe et évolutif soulignent le caractère différentiel, nonoppositionnel desdites sous-classes de l’extraverti du stade à f-d. Cette différence pouvait revêtir, au stade à f-p, le caractère oppositionnel de perfectif (remplaçant le complexe) et de non-perfectif (remplaçant l’évolutif). De même, les termes dynamique et statique relèvent du caractère différentiel, non-oppositionnel des deux sous-classes de l’introverti au stade à f-d, tandis qu’au stade suivant à f-p, elles pouvaient se changer en sous-classes oppositionnelles de nonprogressif (à base du statique) et de progressif (à base du dynamique). Les classes différentielles d’extraverti et d’introverti changent elles aussi, au stade à f-p, en donnant naissance aux classes oppositionnelles d’actif (à base de l’extraverti) et d’inactif (à base de l’introverti). Or, toutes les différences d’ordre lexico-sémantique n’ont pas été érigées en oppositions morphologiques, toutes les oppositions morphologiques n’ont pas atteint le même niveau parmi les nouvelles catégories paradigmatiques. C’est précisément ce en quoi consiste l’individualité du procès de paradigmatisation, ce qui fait la différence entre les langues i.–e.nes individuelles et ce que nous allons observer, à ce chapitre, au sujet des langues latine et grecque. .. Il est caractéristique des systèmes paradigmatiques latin et grec de morphologie verbale qu’ils «complètent» le verbe en tant qu’unité lexicale. Cela veut dire qu’ils pourvoient un verbe issu de la sous-classe lexico-sémantique d’extraverti évolutif (paradigmatisé en non-perfectif) d’un homologue extraverti complexe (en guise de perfectif), voire d’un introverti dynamique ou statique (paradigmatisés respectivement en inactif progressif ou non-progressif). La même chose arrive mutatis mutandis aux verbes issus des autres sous-classes. Il ne sera point notre objectif de reconstruire ici les sous-classes d’origine des verbes latins et grecs, mais de mettre en lumière le procès de paradigmatisation en latin et en grec. Exemples: Au sein d’une unité lexicale, il est logique de prendre pour primitif le thème qui est morphologiquement le moins chargé. Considérons le grec §-$0-< à côté de $"-\-", rexi — ê-D,>". Originellement, l’élargissement -s- fut un moyen dérivationnel spécifique de certains verbes extravertis, et en effet, la dérivation grecque s’est arrêtée là, les verbes FJX(T — §FJ,>", 8X(T — §8,>", ÏDX(T — êD,>" n’ayant jamais développé de parfait (inactif non-progressif). L’ancien extraverti évolutif (→ actif non-perfectif) fero — nXDT ‘je porte’ n’a même pas fait dériver de perfectif, le latin ayant recours à tuli, le grec à ³