A nice overview of the Prague School and its influence on Western linguistic theory. I am very much interested in the historical roots of the three schools of phonology that grew out of Baudouin de Courtenay's phonemic theory--Prague, Leningrad, and Moscow. Trubetzkoy and Jakobson were originally influenced by the Moscow school's approach to language as a formal system, but Baudouin was a prominent figure in the rival St. Petersburg school. So they were discouraged from studying his work.
Trubetzkoy and Jakobson made a distinction between physiophonetic and psychophonetic alternations that were relabeled 'phonological' and 'morphonological' alternations, respectively. They were attempting to reinterpret his alternational dichotomy in terms of structuralist theory, but Baudouin's approach was fundamentally psychological rather than sociological. Structuralism tends to be more about language as a social system rather than language as a psychological system. Anyway, much of their approach to phonology can be traced back to Baudouin's psychological theory of phonetic alternations, perhaps even the roots of generative markedness theory that grew out of Jakobson's work.
Trubetzkoy rejected Baudouin's psychological definition of the phoneme as the "psychological equivalent of a speech sound" on the grounds that it was circular. I think his criticism was reasonable but that he misunderstood Baudouin's somewhat complicated attempts to pin down the psychological nature of speech sounds. That is, he thought of speech sounds themselves as psychological objects--blends of auditory and articulatory properties that were a prelude to the concept of phonetic features in the Prague School. Phonemes are special types of speech sounds--ones that had a semiotic function, or role in memorizing words and morphemes. In that sense, they are equivalent to ordinary speech sounds, but specialized to a language system in the mind of a speaker. Therefore, I think that Trubetzkoy was hasty in rejecting Baudouin's psychologism.
Fascinating insight! Many thanks. Was Trubetzkoy’s rejection of Baudouin de Courtenay’s psychologism hasty or strategic? After all was he trying to carve out phonology as a distinct, autonomous discipline, separate from both phonetics and psychology? Arguably, Trubetzkoy too quick to dismiss it (see Hammarström 1971 (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED077289.pdf). Not my area of expertise but I shall certainly look into it more. Many thanks again
Thanks for your reply! And many more thanks for the link to the Hammarstrom paper, which I don't recall reading. I look forward to reading it now. I'll just say that I have no problem with calling Trubetzkoy's rejection of Baudouin's definition strategic in your sense. That definition really did come off as circular. My only defense of Baudouin on that score is that he was engaged in truly original work. (Well, except for Panini's great work, but I don't recall him ever making reference to Sanskrit linguistic traditions.) Baudouin struggled to come up with the perfect definition of his phoneme.
In my mind, linguistic theory has always been of two minds on how to approach the nature of language systems. Are they psychological systems, or are they social systems? My thinking is that they are both and that the two types of systems have very different explanatory properties. We see that in Saussure's distinction between Langue and Langage--and parole as something of a blend of the two. Saussure and Baudouin were both early advocates of synchronic linguistic theories, but Saussure tended to be more interested in linguistic systems as social phenomena. Baudouin always struck me as more interested in linguistic systems as psychological phenomena. Both men were early champions of synchronic linguistics, as opposed to diachronic linguistics, but they tended to differ on this question of social versus psychological description.
After reading Hammarstrom's defense of Baudouin, I would characterize my own position as even more supportive of Baudouin's historical significance. I'm not sure of the extent to which he and Hauser were able to read the Russian literature on the subject, and they probably had no exposure to Stankiewicz's reader, which is now available for free online from Indiana University Press. Anyway, I see Baudouin as essentially the progenitor of modern phonological theories (not counting Panini, who is perhaps more deserving of that historical role).
I have written a paper on the subject which is in process of being published in the Cambridge Handbook of Natural Linguistics--entitled "The Historical Roots of Natural Phonology". I take the position that Baudouin (and David Stampe) could have defined the phoneme more clearly by making direct reference to its role in the storage of lexical units in, and retrieval from, memory. That is, the phoneme should be defined as a mnemonic speech sound within the context of their approach to language systems. Allophonic variation could be defined as psychologically real, but non-mnemonic. For that reason, such speech sounds cannot be used to distinguish words in a language. So a glottal stop, for example, can be psychologically real to English speakers without having a mnemonic function.
At university we discussed Trubetzkoy a lot, especially ar the department of Slavic languages. I always liked structuralism because it is so "orderly". And I referred to Trubetzkoy in my PhD thesis on dialectology ("The Phonology of Neath English").
oh, and I like your example for theme and rheme: The cat sat on the mat.
My introduction to linguistics was purely from a structuralist framework. Not much else was available then in France (back in the 80s). Very few unis taught linguistics. There is something pleasant about an orderly structure, minimal pairs etc.. That attracted me to phonetics and phonology. But of course, as soon as you step away from phonetics and phonology into syntax, semantics and pragmatics.... the orderly structure falls apart
A nice overview of the Prague School and its influence on Western linguistic theory. I am very much interested in the historical roots of the three schools of phonology that grew out of Baudouin de Courtenay's phonemic theory--Prague, Leningrad, and Moscow. Trubetzkoy and Jakobson were originally influenced by the Moscow school's approach to language as a formal system, but Baudouin was a prominent figure in the rival St. Petersburg school. So they were discouraged from studying his work.
Trubetzkoy and Jakobson made a distinction between physiophonetic and psychophonetic alternations that were relabeled 'phonological' and 'morphonological' alternations, respectively. They were attempting to reinterpret his alternational dichotomy in terms of structuralist theory, but Baudouin's approach was fundamentally psychological rather than sociological. Structuralism tends to be more about language as a social system rather than language as a psychological system. Anyway, much of their approach to phonology can be traced back to Baudouin's psychological theory of phonetic alternations, perhaps even the roots of generative markedness theory that grew out of Jakobson's work.
Trubetzkoy rejected Baudouin's psychological definition of the phoneme as the "psychological equivalent of a speech sound" on the grounds that it was circular. I think his criticism was reasonable but that he misunderstood Baudouin's somewhat complicated attempts to pin down the psychological nature of speech sounds. That is, he thought of speech sounds themselves as psychological objects--blends of auditory and articulatory properties that were a prelude to the concept of phonetic features in the Prague School. Phonemes are special types of speech sounds--ones that had a semiotic function, or role in memorizing words and morphemes. In that sense, they are equivalent to ordinary speech sounds, but specialized to a language system in the mind of a speaker. Therefore, I think that Trubetzkoy was hasty in rejecting Baudouin's psychologism.
Fascinating insight! Many thanks. Was Trubetzkoy’s rejection of Baudouin de Courtenay’s psychologism hasty or strategic? After all was he trying to carve out phonology as a distinct, autonomous discipline, separate from both phonetics and psychology? Arguably, Trubetzkoy too quick to dismiss it (see Hammarström 1971 (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED077289.pdf). Not my area of expertise but I shall certainly look into it more. Many thanks again
Thanks for your reply! And many more thanks for the link to the Hammarstrom paper, which I don't recall reading. I look forward to reading it now. I'll just say that I have no problem with calling Trubetzkoy's rejection of Baudouin's definition strategic in your sense. That definition really did come off as circular. My only defense of Baudouin on that score is that he was engaged in truly original work. (Well, except for Panini's great work, but I don't recall him ever making reference to Sanskrit linguistic traditions.) Baudouin struggled to come up with the perfect definition of his phoneme.
In my mind, linguistic theory has always been of two minds on how to approach the nature of language systems. Are they psychological systems, or are they social systems? My thinking is that they are both and that the two types of systems have very different explanatory properties. We see that in Saussure's distinction between Langue and Langage--and parole as something of a blend of the two. Saussure and Baudouin were both early advocates of synchronic linguistic theories, but Saussure tended to be more interested in linguistic systems as social phenomena. Baudouin always struck me as more interested in linguistic systems as psychological phenomena. Both men were early champions of synchronic linguistics, as opposed to diachronic linguistics, but they tended to differ on this question of social versus psychological description.
After reading Hammarstrom's defense of Baudouin, I would characterize my own position as even more supportive of Baudouin's historical significance. I'm not sure of the extent to which he and Hauser were able to read the Russian literature on the subject, and they probably had no exposure to Stankiewicz's reader, which is now available for free online from Indiana University Press. Anyway, I see Baudouin as essentially the progenitor of modern phonological theories (not counting Panini, who is perhaps more deserving of that historical role).
I have written a paper on the subject which is in process of being published in the Cambridge Handbook of Natural Linguistics--entitled "The Historical Roots of Natural Phonology". I take the position that Baudouin (and David Stampe) could have defined the phoneme more clearly by making direct reference to its role in the storage of lexical units in, and retrieval from, memory. That is, the phoneme should be defined as a mnemonic speech sound within the context of their approach to language systems. Allophonic variation could be defined as psychologically real, but non-mnemonic. For that reason, such speech sounds cannot be used to distinguish words in a language. So a glottal stop, for example, can be psychologically real to English speakers without having a mnemonic function.
https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/a-baudoin-de-courtenay-anthology
Thank you
At university we discussed Trubetzkoy a lot, especially ar the department of Slavic languages. I always liked structuralism because it is so "orderly". And I referred to Trubetzkoy in my PhD thesis on dialectology ("The Phonology of Neath English").
oh, and I like your example for theme and rheme: The cat sat on the mat.
My introduction to linguistics was purely from a structuralist framework. Not much else was available then in France (back in the 80s). Very few unis taught linguistics. There is something pleasant about an orderly structure, minimal pairs etc.. That attracted me to phonetics and phonology. But of course, as soon as you step away from phonetics and phonology into syntax, semantics and pragmatics.... the orderly structure falls apart
true, but it gives you a good start into linguistics
I admit I am not learned enough in phonology or its history; that only makes this read all the better since it explains it well.
Thanks for your encouraging comments
I wrote on Phonetics and phonology on Medium (before I started using Substack). All very short 4 to 5 minute read:
- on phonetics: https://medium.com/@adecressac/phonetics-more-than-just-sounds-its-about-who-we-are-710e59c3e3aa
- on phonology: https://medium.com/@adecressac/blog-3-phonology-explained-how-languages-organise-sounds-9512d7d3c225 AND https://medium.com/@adecressac/why-phonology-matters-sound-identity-and-thought-5a0897390d7b
You also find stuff on syntax, morpohology etc...
Best regards