X Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2018

Jan Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay (also in the Russian literature known as Ivan Alexandrovich) was a Polish linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations. For most of his life he worked at Imperial Russian universities: Kazan (1874-1883), Yuryev (as Tartu, Estonia was then known) (1883-1893), Kraków (1893-1899) and St. Petersburg (1900-1918). In 1919-1929, he was a professor at the re-established Warsaw University in a once again independent Poland. Baudouin de Courtenay's view of language as structural entities anticipated later interest in the connection between structure and meaning, as well as directly influencing the structuralist theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. He was also fascinated by the relationship between language and nationality, advocating the peaceful co-existence and cooperation of all ethnic groups and nationalities, without the dominance or cultural assimilation of any group by another.

Biography

Jan Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay was born March 13, 1845, in Radzymin, near Warsaw, Poland to a family of distant French extraction. One of his ancestors had been a French aristocrat who immigrated to Poland during the reign of Polish King August II the Strong.

In 1862, Baudouin entered the "Main School," a predecessor of Warsaw University. In 1866, he graduated in history and philology and won a scholarship from the Russian Imperial Ministry of Education. Leaving Poland, he studied at various foreign universities, including those of Prague, Jena, and Berlin. In 1870, he received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig for his Russian language dissertation On the Old Polish Language Prior to the 14th Century.

Baudouin established the Kazan School of Linguistics in the mid-1870s and served as the professor at the Kazan University from 1875. The basic principles of the Kazan Linguistic School include: a strict distinction of sound and letters; demarcation of phonetic and morphological conjugation of a word; prevention of mixing processes occurring in the language at a given stage of its existence, and processes that have been going on for a long time; first-priority attention to the living language and its dialects, and not to the ancient literary monuments; upholding the full equality of all languages ​​as objects of scientific research; the desire for generalizations; psychology with individual elements of sociology.

He was the head of linguistics faculty at the University of Yuryev (now Tartu, Estonia) (1883-1893). Between 1894 and 1898, he served in the same post at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków only to be appointed to St. Petersburg, where he continued to refine his theory of phonetic alternations.

After Poland regained her independence in 1918, he returned to Warsaw, where he formed the core of the linguistics faculty of the Warsaw University. Since 1887, he had a permanent seat in the Polish Academy of Skills and since 1897 he was a member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1925 he was one of the co-founders of the Polish Linguistic Society.

His daughter, Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay Ehrenkreutz Jędrzejewiczowa was one of the founders of the Polish school of ethnology and anthropology as well as a professor at the universities of Wilno and Warsaw.

Outside of his scientific work, Baudouin de Courtenay was also a strong supporter of revival of various national minorities and ethnic groups. In 1915, he was arrested by the Okhranka, Russian secret service, for publishing a brochure on autonomy of peoples under Russian rule. He spent three months in prison, but was released. In 1922, without his knowledge, he was proposed by the national minorities of Poland as a presidential candidate, but was defeated in the third round of voting in the Polish parliament and eventually Gabriel Narutowicz was chosen.

Baudouin de Courtenay died in Warsaw on November 3, 1929, and was buried at the Reformed Evangelical cemetery.

Work

Throughout his life, Baudouin de Courtenay published hundreds of scientific works in Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, Italian, French, and German.

His work had a major impact on twentieth century linguistic theory, and it served as a foundation for several schools of phonology. Three major schools of 20th-century phonology arose directly from his distinction between physiophonetic (phonological) and psychophonetic (morphophonological) alternations: the Leningrad school of phonology, the Moscow school of phonology, and the Prague school of phonology. All three schools developed different positions on the nature of Baudouin's alternational dichotomy. The Prague School was best known outside the field of Slavic linguistics. Throughout his life he published hundreds of scientific works in Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, Italian, French and German.

Together with his student, Mikołaj Kruszewski, de Courtenay coined the term phoneme in the modern understanding, combining in general the notion of morpheme as the minimal significant unit of the language of the concept of the root and affix. Thus, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay developed in general terms the doctrine of the phoneme in four plans:

The establishment of a purely abstracted functional unit common to the phonetic system of related languages ​​(genetophone).

The establishment of a functional unit within a single language, in which there is a variation of morphs within a single morpheme (paradigmophoneme or morphophoneme).

The establishment of a figurative unit within the phonetic version of the spoken word in the language of the individual, in which there are unique relations between the phoneme (image) and the sound (the prototype) that implements the phoneme in speech.

The establishment of a joint complex unit within the phonetic variant of the word in the language of the individual in which there are identification relations between the existing model in the consciousness (typically, sound representation, psychophoneme) and entered into the listening phase of the auditory analyzer by a symbol that, for purposes of recognition, is broken up into typical features, and in the phase of speaking is saturated with typical features that have received in phonology the name of distinctive features. In this case, the phoneme is understood as a complex of distinctive features (a bundle of RP, in the terminology of RO Jakobson).

In general, the science of the sound structure of the language IA. Baudouin de Courtenay subdivides into anthropophonics, studying the acoustic and physiological properties of speech sounds; psychophonetics, otherwise the etymological phonetics, which studies "functional representations, i.e. phonetic-acoustic representations both in themselves and in connection with other concepts, not only in the exact sense of language, that is, morphological, but also extralinguistic, i.e. "Semasiological", and historical phonetics. The terms "phonetics" and "phonology", apparently, Baudouin used as synonyms. The second aspect of phonetics is "psychophonetics," singled out by I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, was the prototype of modern phonology. One of the first to refuse to consider linguistics as a historical science and studied modern languages. He studied the causes of language changes, studied sociolinguistics, writing theory, participated in the development of the reform of Russian spelling, carried out in 1917-1918. Edited and supplemented the dictionary of VI Dal. He polemised with a logical approach to language, a young grammatical concept of sound laws, the use of the metaphor of the "organism" in the science of language.

Baudouin de Courtenay in linguistics, one should at least very briefly describe the general development of linguistic thought in the second half of the 19th century, i.е. the years of the formation of his linguistic worldview. The middle of the 19th century. are the years of the emergence of a new direction in comparative-historical linguistics, called the Young grammatism (Junggrammatism). During this period I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay listened to the lectures of A. Schleicher, the head of the preceding Young grammatism direction, wrote in his journal and was a contemporary of Karl Bruggmann, Berthold Delbruck, Hermann Ostgoff, August Leskina. He met many many times and was personally acquainted [11: 28-36]. By the nature of the linguistic methods of describing IA. Baudouin de Courtenay is considered one of the founders of Younggrammatism. However, already in his early works he outgrew this current and became one of the founders of modern structuralism.

He was an early champion of synchronic linguistics, the study of contemporary spoken languages, and he had a strong impact on the structuralist linguistic theory of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, among whose notable achievements is the distinction between statics and dynamics of languages and between a language, that is an abstract group of elements) and speech (its implementation by individuals). Also I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay was interested in children's speech, questions of pathology

Quantitative linguistics

The origin and development of modern quantitative linguistics is associated with the structuralist revolution of the first decades of the twentieth century, and particularly with the work of Baudouin de Courtenay. While he did not apply mathematical methods himself, he did, while conducting field studies, realize the virtues of a quantitative description of language. His phonetic research, the methodology of which was radically different from everything that existed in this area before it, Baudouin laid the foundation stone for future experimental phonetics, which produced particularly significant results in the mid-20th century. He foresaw the advent of rigorous investigations into the laws of language, and articulated them in his 1927 Quantity as a Dimension of Thought about Language.

Baudouin de Courtenay's concept principally involved the semantic, syntactic, and morphologic representations of the number, dimensions, and intensities of the attributes. Thus he did not touch upon the concept of statistical linguistics operating with frequencies or other expressly numerical features of the language elements. Nonetheless, he perceived analogies between the physical domain, defined by precise and formalized laws, and language. He realized that the contemporary level of linguistic and mathematical knowledge was inadequate for the formulation of exact linguistic laws:

“I, personally, having considered the rigor and functional dependency of the laws of the world of physics and chemistry, would hesitate to call that a ‘law’ which I consider merely an exceptionally skillful generalization applied to phenomena at large” (de Courtenay 1927 p.547).

However, he anticipated such laws also being formulated for linguistic relationships in the future:

“the time for genuine laws in the psycho-social realm in general, and first and foremost in the linguistic realm, is approaching: laws which can stand proudly beside those of the exact sciences, laws expressed in formulae of the absolute dependency of one quantity on another” (de Courtenay 1927 p. 560).

Relationship between language and nationality

Jan Baudouin de Courtenay devoted much of his attention to the mutual relationships and affinities between East Slavonic languages and the specific characteristic features of each of them (Great Russian, Belarusian, and Little Russian or Ukrainian).

He observed that in small villages along the Polish-Belarusian border areas, people were using both languages. Polish more often in some, while in others Belarusian dominated. In any case, Belarusian seemed to prevail in these regions. In spite of this, the gentry tended to consider itself Polish, and not only on account of religion, for they were almost all Catholic, but also because of the traditions of Polish gentry. The Polish language used there was quite standard, though the local population were also speaking quite good "peasant" language, namely Belarusian.

Taking into account the above observations, he wrote:

“Although the local villagers and parishioners tend to identify "Polishness” with "Catholicism,” "Germanness” with "Protestantism” and "Russianness” with "Greek Orthodoxy” ... it does not require much effort, even on the part of the narrow minded and quite unenlightened, to understand that even a non-Catholic could be Polish, while Catholicism is not totally located within the confines of the Polish village” (De Courtenay 1983).

Baudouin treated religion and creed as a personal and exceedingly intimate matter:

“What right has any ruffian from the street to rummage in my soul and to paw around for my religious affiliation? Hands off! And that goes also for my beliefs, for what I hold holy, for what I cherish in the depths of my spirit! [...] I personally treat any question about my religious affiliation as a personal insult, as humiliation, as an offence against human dignity” (De Courtenay 1923).

Baudouin de Courtenay, who strongly condemned the official imperial Russian policy of Russification of Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians, could also not accept attempts to Polonize Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania:

Panpolonism or ultra-Polishness have set before themselves the task of forcing all non-Poles who live among Poles or in, so called, ‘Polish’ lands, to recognize themselves as Poles or to retreat (De Courtenay 1923).

He saw that view as treating Lithuanians and others are merely "ethnographic material" who may be granted the privilege of cultural assimilation into "Polishness."

In consequence, Baudouin distinguished two types of patriotism:

"The patriotism of hoodlums and international expropriators, that is nationalistic patriotism, with its slogan of ‘national egoism’, slogan of mutual extermination of bipeds differing in creed, language, traditions, convictions, a patriotism which transforms ‘fatherland’ into a prison for convicts, a cage for different species of wild beasts, into hell populated by madmen obsessed with nationalism." (De Courtenay 1911)

"Territorial patriotism, under the banner of equal rights for all citizens, a common fatherland for all people of different creeds, different languages, different convictions, under the slogan of solidarity in the name of common work for the benefit of common fatherland, work in the sphere of material possessions and all the things which could be attained here on earth." (De Courtenay 1911).

Legacy

Jan Baudouin de Courtenay made a lasting contribution to phonology and foreshadowed the development of mathematical linguistics. He pioneered the scientific approach to contrastive and applied linguistics, inspired new theoretical and cognitive trends in lexicology, semantics, onomastics and anthroponymy, as well as in dialectology, sociolinguistics, and logopedics.

Baudouin de Courtenay’s role in the struggle for a civic and open society, both in imperial Russia and later in the Republic of Poland, which had regained its independence, could be hardly overdramatized. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay as a thinker, social activist, and journalist was engaged both in the central dilemmas of his time and in the mundane problems of everyday life. He strongly objected to any form of national exclusiveness and earned himself the reputation of a staunch spokesman for peaceful and brotherly coexistence, cooperation and development of all ethnic groups, nations and nationalities, and in particular Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Germans, and Jews. Recognition of this role was evidenced in 1922, when representatives of national minorities in the Polish parliament, after consultation each other, proposed him as their candidate for President of Poland.

After living a long, scientific life and creative life, Baudouin de Courtenay made an invaluable contribution to the science of language. He overtook his time, but many of these ideas began to deepen in linguistics only decades later.

Major works

de Courtenay, J. N. B. 1895. Vessuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen; ein Kapital aus der Psychophonetic, Truebner, Strassburg.

de Courtenay, J. B. N. 1902. Sravnitel'naja grammatika slavjanskix jazykov v svjazi z drugimi indoevropejskimi jazykami, Saint-Petersburg

de Courtenay J. N. B. 1911. W sprawie «antysemityzmu postepowego» [On so called „progressive antisemitism”]. Sklad Glówny w Ksiegarni G. Gebethnera i Spólki [The Main Warehouse of G. Gebethnerс and Company Bookstore], Kraków p. 43.

de Courtenay J. B.N. 1923. Tolerancja. Równouprawnienie. Wolnomyslicielstwo. Wyznanie paszportowe, Biblioteka Stowarzyszenia Wolnomyslicieli Polskich [Tolerance. Equal rights. Freethinking. Passport creed, Library of the Association of Polish Freethinkers], no. 1, Warszawa p. 18.

de Courtenay, J. N. B. 1927. "Quantity as a dimension of thought about language" in Symbolae gramaticae in honor J. Rozwadowski, Vol.I, Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagielloñskiego, Kraków pp. 3-18.

de Courtenay, J. B. N. 1972 A Baudouin de Courtenay anthology: The beginnings of structural linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press

References

Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak. “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay's contribution to linguistic theory”, Historiographia Linguistica 25 (1998): 25–60; reprint in Towards a History of Linguistics in Poland: From the Early Beginnings to the End of the Twentieth Century, eds. E.F.K. Koerner & Aleksander Szwedek. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001, pp. 175–208.

Maria di Salvo. Il pensiero linguistico di J. Baudouin de Courtenay. Venice & Padua: Marsilio, 1975.

Frank Häusler. Das Problem Phonetik und Phonologie bei Baudouin de Courtenay und in seiner Nachfolge. Leipzig: Niemeyer, 1968 (2nd edn., Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1976).

Roman Jakobson. “The Kazan school of Polish linguistics and its place in the international development of phonology”, Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings, vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.

E. F. K. Koerner. Essays in the History of Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004: ch. 7.

E. F. K. Koerner. “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay: His place in the history of linguistic science”, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des Slavistes 14, no. 4 (1972): 663–682 (repr. in Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays, 1978, pp. 107-126).

R. A. Rothstein. “The linguist as dissenter: Jan Baudouin de Courtenay”, For Wiktor Weintraub: Essays in Polish Literature, Language, and History Presented on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. V. Erlich. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.

W. R. Schmalstieg, “Baudouin de Courtenay contribution to Lithuanian linguistics”, Lituanus 41, no. 1 (1995): 5-25.

Edward Stankiewicz ed. & trans. A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1972.

Edward Stankiewicz. Baudouin de Courtenay and the Foundations of Structural Linguistics. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 1976.

Код для цитирования: Скопировать