Prague Linguistic Research Articles

A Road to Aesthetic Stylistics

Being a linguistic phenomenon, poetry is marked by the defamilarization of language in a poetic discourse there is an aesthetic distortion of the normal codes, in which the aesthetic value is the most prominent function of the poetic texture . This study is a new adventure in correlating linguistics to aesthetics by and through the so-called approach Aesthetic stylistics ( As). Aesthetic stylistics is the application of the theory of beauty to the intentionally violated components in literary text. It proceeds with the hypothesis that John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn and Kabbani's Maritime Poem are disinterested poetic experiences which create ecstatic responses to the reader's awareness, therefore, the judgment of the reader's taste is aesthetic. The study aims at highlighting the stylistic-aesthetic factors which generate the judgment of taste. While drawing heavily on the aestheticism of the Prague Linguistic Circle and Halliday's Functional Linguistics (FL), or what has come to be called the Traditional European Functionalism, the study will analyze Keats' Ode and Kabbani's poem in terms of Kant's Kritik der Urteilstraft, KdU . The two circles of the linguistic description and aesthetic interpretation will be internally interlinked to create the coherence of the stylistic process. The study consists of an introduction, two parts, one in theory and the other in analysis; it is eventually rounded up with concluding remarks elicited from the semiotic quest. Keywords: Stylistics, Functionalism, Aesthetics

ИСТОРИЯ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ИНФОРМАЦИОННОЙ СТРУКТУРЫ ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИЯ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ МОНГОЛЬСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

The article summarizes results achieved by scholars representing different generations and linguistic traditions in studies of Mongolian sentence information structure. The notion of information structure was introduced by M. A. K. Halliday on the grounds of V. Mathesius’s theory of “the actual division of the sentence” (or “thematic-rhematic articulation of the sentence”), but the former developed his own view on this issue. The principal distinction between these two theories is that M. Halliday treats such entities as givenness, focus, topic, etc. as matters of individual cognitive process, whereas V. Mathesius considers them to depend mainly on context and “consituation”. Currently, M. A. K. Halliday’s information structure theory is deemed to be more consistent and, therefore, referred to more frequently. Nevertheless, back in the 1980s when first articles on Mongolian sentence information structure started to appear the views of the Prague Linguistic Circle were more widely accepted among Soviet specialists in Mongolian studies, and the pioneer works on information structure of a Mongolian sentence were written in the mould of structuralism. The first papers written on the subject belonged to Moscow and Leningrad scholars Z. K. Kas’yanenko (1973), M. N. Orlovskaya (1984), Z. V. Shevernina (1984), and the American linguist L. B. Hammar (Indiana University Bloomington) who had presented her Ph. D. thesis under the title “Syntactic and Pragmatic Options in Mongolian: a Study of Bol and N” (1983). Those works by the afore-mentioned linguists mostly concerned word order in a Mongolian sentence from the perspective of the “actual division”, and special particles, which are viewed in modern linguistics as topic, focus, verification, and emphasis markers. A couple of decades later, Mongolian scholars attempted to describe their native language in terms of the latest trends of the world linguistics and their works – those by M. Bazarragcha, Z. Guliranz, G. Jambalsuren, B. Purev-Ochir – have become a valuable source of examples, showing various types of structures, such as thetic sentences, sentences with preposition of rheme and so on. Lately several works on intonation in the contemporary Mongolian language have been published. However, unfortunately, one can hardly find any comprehensive study of the relation between information structure and intonation in modern Mongolian. This subject is likely to be a fruitful field for further research.

Roman Laskowski In Memoriam

Professor Roman Laskowski, one of Poland's most distinguished Slavic scholars, a specialist in Polish, Czech, and the theory and methodology of linguistics, died in Krakow on June 21, 2014, after a long and severe illness. Roman Laskowski was born on February 16, 1936 at Komarno near Lwow (now Lviv, Ukraine). Shortly after the Soviet invasion of the eastern territories of Poland on the September 17, 1939, his father was arrested by the NKVD and never returned home. Roman, his mother, and two brothers were deported to the Soviet Union. Thanks to her indefatigable resolution and heroic courage, his mother managed to save her sons' lives and to get them out of the Soviet Union. In 1946 they settled in Kietrz, Silesia, where Roman Laskowski completed his secondary school education and in 1954 matriculated at the Jagiellonian University, graduating with a degree in Slavic Philology in 1959. Laskowski started his academic career as an employee of the Silesian Scientific Institute in Katowice (now the Silesian Institute, Katowice), and subsequently moved on to the Department (now Institute) of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, where he was a member of a team led by Alfred Zariba compiling the Atlas jpzykowy Slqska (Linguistic Atlas of Silesia). In the same period he was working on his doctoral dissertation on the derivation of nouns in Lach, dialects transitional to Czech. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Jagiellonian University in 1969 and his habilitation degree, also from Jagiellonian University, in 1974 with a dissertation on the morphophonology of contemporary Polish (Studia nad morfonologia wspolczesnego jezyka polskiego). By this time, Laskowski was already an employee of the Institute of the Polish Language at the Polish Academy of Sciences (IJP PAN), a research institute with which he would be closely associated for the rest of his life, although he also had spells of employment at the University of Gothenburg (1985-2000), the Jagiellonian University (2001-7), and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw (2008-12). Laskowski started his linguistic research at the IJP PAN with an analysis of Old Polish texts, in collaboration with Warlaw Twardzik (who predeceased him by just a few weeks). Laskowski appreciated working with Professor Twardzik and returned to this area many times over the years, even after he had advanced a highly precise linguistic theory of his own focusing on grammatical phenomena in modern Polish, particularly Polish morphology. Encyclopedia entries on Laskowski characterize him as a pioneer and precursor of generative phonology. His book on the morphophonology of Polish has been frequently cited in work on generative phonology. However, the concept of morphophonology that it presents goes back to the principles elaborated in the Prague Linguistic Circle, particularly by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who first used the concept of the morphophoneme in the representation of the members of an alternation. The fact that Laskowski's complete morphophonology for Polish, which he built up on this foundation, was acknowledged in the nascent field of generative phonology may be readily explained. Suffice it to recall the very substantial influence on the form of the phonological and morphophonological component in the generative model that came from Roman Jakobson. Laskowski's greatest achievement may have been the creation of an original, advanced, and coherent theory of morphology. This theory has served as the framework for the description of the morphological subsystem of Polish in the Academy's Gramatyka wspolczesnego jezyka polskiego: Morfologia, edited by R. Grzegorczykowa, R. Laskowski, and H. Wrobel. Laskowski's theory of morphology makes reference to Prague structuralism but takes its cue from the American distributionalism. This is particularly patent in his classification of lexical units, for which syntactic distribution serves as a basis. …

English Studies at Charles University and the Prague Linguistic Circle: the Contribution of English Studies to the Circle's Constitution and Linguistic Theories

English Studies at Charles University and the Prague Linguistic Circle: the Contribution of English Studies to the Circle's Constitution and Linguistic Theories

The Concept of Structure and the Work of Art in the Structuralist Art History of Hans Sedlmayr in Comparison with the Structural Aesthetics of Jan Mukařovský

Josef Vojvodík offers a detailed and highly original study of structuralism based on a comparison between the art historian Hans Sedlmayr and the Czech theorist Jan Mukařovský. Both produced theories of general aesthetics developed in a series of three phases ultimately focused on a central concept: the “explicit character” for Hans Sedlmayr and the “semantic gesture” for Jan Mukařovský. Josef Vojvodík explains the key concepts of their works, such as the importance of gestalt theory and of gestalt psychology, the key role of semantics, the Macchia colored spot theory and the process of decomposition, and the significance of noetic understanding. The author concludes his text with an interrogation of Ján Bakoš’s comparison of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the New Viennese School of art history.

Otkrytaia struktura: Iakobson—Bakhtin—Lotman—Gasparov (Open Structure: Jakobson—Bakhtin—Lotman—Gasparov) (review)

Nataliia Avtonomova, Otkrytaia struktura: Iakobson--Bakhtin--Lotman--Gasparov (Open Structure: Jakobson--Bakhtin--Lotman--Gasparov). 503 pp. Moscow: Rosspen, 2009. ISBN-13 978-5824312546. Russia's most lasting contribution to the study of literature and language is a tradition of thought that begins in the 1910s with the OPOIaZ group in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Linguistic Circle; continues, through the intermediacy of Roman Jakobson, in the Prague Linguistic Circle of the late 1920s and 1930s; supplies inspiration for the French structuralism of the 1950s and 1960s; and receives further development on Russian soil in the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, formed in the mid-1960s. Nataliia Avtonomova's book is a spirited and ambitious attempt to recuperate this intellectual legacy and to advocate its unfading relevance to humanistic studies. She writes as a philosopher who addresses herself primarily to philosophers in order to bring to their attention epistemological riches they have largely ignored. She admits that much of what the book has to offer is common knowledge in literary studies (6); yet to philosophers its contents are recommended as a much-needed schooling in sober rationalism after the intellectual frivolities of postmodern thought. The book combines the analytical, biographic, memoiristic, philosophical, and documentary modes in a multifaceted generic pattern. On its pages, close scrutiny of critical coexists with theoretical reflection, ethical deliberations, reminiscences, biographic sketches, and epistolary material. (1) The end result is a sizable volume that holds a manifestly rich and engaging compendium of knowledge but does not fit easily into established conventions of scholarly writing. Avtonomova brings to her project wide erudition, an impeccable research apparatus, and that rare commodity--personalized knowledge of the intellectual personages she discusses. It is a deliberate strategy on her part to treat the four main figures in the book--Jakobson, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Iurii Mikhailovich Lotman, and Gasparov--not merely as texts but as individuals whose lives have bearing upon their work. (2) Avtonomova is widely known as the translator who introduced the Russian public to the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, and her intimate acquaintance with the French intellectual tradition comes as an all-important asset in a book in which French-inspired poststructuralism figures as the main culprit. (3) In championing the cause of structuralist cognition, Avtonomova employs two distinct strategies. One aims to establish argumentatively that structures, when properly understood and elaborated, can account for the existence of the particular, the subjective, and the nonsystemic. The other strategy aims to document a great tradition of Russian philology in which thought about and the pursuit of rigorous scientific grounding for the study of literature have been kept alive to this day. Making a case and making a monument are complementary intentions within the overall conception of the book, although Avtonomova does not spell out how this tandem is supposed to function. I will comment below on how and why it functions to the author's advantage. The main text divides into five chapters, four of which treat at considerable length the four main heroes of the book (the chapter on Lotman runs to over 160 pages). As Avtonomova delves into the examination of each individual intellectual profile, the sense of an overarching trajectory becomes attenuated. For long stretches of text, the reader is left to wonder how the current discussion connects with the book's general objective. The four chapters, which draw in part upon previously published studies, retain a considerable degree of independence and never quite coalesce into a concerted ensemble. (4) Anticipating criticisms of the coherence of the volume, Avtonomova announces at the outset in a tone of mystery and metaphor: My heroes meet in an 'enchanted place'--in open structure (11). …

TRAYECTOS HIPERTEXTUALES DE LOS TEXTOS LITERARIOS

El presente trabajo se propone establecer una relación entre las Teorías de la Recepción elaboradas por la Escuela de Constanza y las Teorías del Hipertexto Literario. En particular se profundiza la teoría de la respuesta estética de Wolfgang Iser, y su concepto de lectura como proceso de construcción del texto por parte del lector. A este propósito se exponen los conceptos de “repertorio”, che Iser explica equiparándolo al concepto de “contexto extra-textual” así como fue elaborado por la lingüística de la Escuela de Praga, y de las “estrategias” que componen el repertorio, estableciendo una estrecha relación también con las Teorías de la Percepción de la Gestalt (sobre todo con respecto al nexo esquema/corrección y fondo/primer plano). A continuación el estudio presta una especial atención a las Teorías que tratan el hipertexto literario, siguendo los estudios de Ted H. Nelson, George P. Landow y Jay D. Bolter, poniendo de manifesto sus principales características dadas por la multi-secuencialidad, por la relación activa que ése establece con el lector y, además, por su estructura modular, que se reconfigura a cada acto de lectura. El ensayo examina, como modelo textual, sobre todo el texto de Pinocho, en la versión castellana e italiana, que es analizado a la luz de los conceptos de “repertorio”, de “esquema/corrección” y de “fondo/primer plano”. El estudio concluye con una construcción de la plataforma de hipertexto de Pinocho, poniendo de relieve los lazos literarios que pueden determinar no sólo con la literatura europea y de las obras estadounidenses, sino también con otras experiencias literarias, relacionadas por ejemplo con el "nacimiento" y "muerte" de la marioneta. La conclusión de la obra tiende a enfatizar cómo las teorías de la recepción textual de anticipan y confirman lo que los teóricos, después, han elaborado sobre el hipertexto: los textos literarios requieren una lectura hipertextual, porque, como el hipertexto ellos proponen una serie de aplazamientos fuera del texto, es decir, a otros textos y documentos de diversa índole, y movimientos dentro del propio texto, creando de estra manera su carácter multisecuencial y multilineal.http://dx.doi.org/10.14572/nuances.v21i22.1626

Pranas Skardžius ir jo kalbotyriniai darbai

PRANAS SKARDŽIUS AND HIS WORKS IN LINGUISTICSSummaryMarch 26, 1999 marks the centenary of the birth of Pranas Skardžius, a famous Lithuanian linguist, an expert in Lithuanian and Baltic studies, an excellent teacher and research organizer, one of the most distin­guished normalizers and fosterers of Standard Lithuanian.The present study reviews Skardžius’ life and his road to science, points out his merits to Lithuanian and Baltic linguistics and looks into his activity and works fostering and improving the Standard Lithuanian language.Skardžius was a versatile and prolific linguist. The list of his works comprises more than 800 items. The majority of his works have entered into the academic heritage of Lithuanian linguistics.His first major study “Die slavischen Lehnwörter im Altlitauischen” (1931) surpasses Alexander Bruckner’s work “Die slavischen Fremdwörter im Litauischen” written as far back as 1877 not only in the volume of data used, but also in a critical approach to the analysis of Slavicisms. In terms of its data and propositions, the study has been and remains relevant to the present day as a handbook to all who investigate Slavicisms or foreign borrowings in general.Lithuanian accentuation was Skardžius’ lifetime interest. The largest work in this field is „Daukša’s Accentuation” (1935). Here the author reveals the archaic elements of accentuation in Daukša’s works, under­lines the relevance of Daukša’s stressed texts for further investigation into the history of Lithuanian accentua­tion. Lithuanian historical accentology, as well as practical accentuation, can gain much from Skardžius’ books “The Accentuation of Standard Lithuanian” (1936) and “The Accentuation of the Lithuanian Lan­guage”.The largest and most valuable work written by Skardžius is “The Word Formation of the Lithuanian Language” (1941, 1943) which presents the means of word formation employed by Lithuanian language users to enhance their own word stock. The said study is not only a synchronic description, but also a diachronic investigation which relates Lithuanian word formation and its peculiarities to the peculiarities of the word formation of the Baltic and other Indo-European languages and elucidates the common sources and laws in the word formation of the Indo-European languages.Skardžius’ works on onomastics arc of great value to this day. For example, his study “Lithuanian Hydronyms with -nt-. Their Formation, Origin, Meaning” rejected Raymond Schmittlein’s hypothesis, which claimed that the majority of Lithuanian hydronyms with -nt- were of Germanic origin.Skardžius has had a profound and enduring influence on speech culture. The term bendrinė kalba (the standard language) was created by Skardžius. As far back as the 1930s, he worked out his own criterion system for the codification of Standard Lithuanian (viz. usage, purposefulness and purity) akin to the criteria which emerged in the Prague Linguistic Circle in the 1940s.From 1933 to 1967, he was an active member and editor of „Gimtoji kalba“ (Native Language). In „Gimtoji kalba“, various periodicals and newspapers, as well as in the press of the American Lithuanians, he published more than 500 articles where he skilfully researched the current issues on orthography, phonetics, morphol­ogy, syntax, onomastics, terminology, word formation and gave well-grounded recommendations on usage. In the majority of his articles devoted to practical aspects of the language the scholar asserted his view that the codification of a language must be performed by linguists-professionals, but not by dilettantes.Although there has been no full estimation of Skardžius’ contribution to the improvement and development of Standard Lithuanian to date, his impact on speech culture can be firmly qualified as huge.The enormous work performed by Skardžius, a most talented linguist and fosterer of the language, marks a profound and significant stage not only in the development of Lithuanian and Baltic linguistics, but also in Lithuania’s culture; having discovered and contemplated its real value, we will be able to turn to a fresh start.

Rudolf Růžička In Memoriam

Rudolf Růžička In Memoriam Uwe Junghanns Rudolf Růžička died in Berlin on February 9, 2011, at the age of 90. When the news spread that he had died, a Russian linguist wrote: "An entire era in the history of Slavic linguistics has ended." For many, Rudolf Růžička epitomized an era. His work must be set against the background of the time in which he lived. Rudolf Růžička's academic and personal accomplishments exemplify the life of a dedicated scholar. He was born on December 20, 1920, in Löbau, a town in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, Germany. He went to school there and in 1940 began studying Russian and English at the Institute for Interpreters, a unit of the Commercial College of Leipzig. Růžička always remembered a scene from that time (1995: 4): 1 "In the spring of 1940, none other than Reinhold Trautmann tried to attract young people around the university to Slavic studies by acquainting them with startling etymologies of Slavic words." In October 1940 Růžička was drafted into the Germany army. For several months in 1945 he was held as prisoner of war by the Soviets. Between 1945 and 1947 he worked as an interpreter. In 1947, he took up Slavic studies at the University of Leipzig. He also studied English and philosophy. Among his academic teachers were Reinhold Trautmann, Theodor Frings, and Werner Krauss. He received a diploma from Humboldt University of Berlin in 1951. As he later recalled (1995: 6): "A special two-semester course was established in the years of 1950 and 1951 for aspiring young scholars in the field of Slavic studies. The aim was to educate a sufficient number of specially selected individuals considered suitable as lecturers. [...] Apart from Hans Holm Bielfeldt, it was primarily Wolfgang Steinitz, a specialist in the field of Finno-Ugric studies, who ran the linguistics program at Humboldt University." Steinitz impressed Růžička deeply (1995: 6): "On returning from fieldwork among the Khanty, the former emigrant narrowly escaped the Stalinist purges. In exile in Stockholm he hosted Roman Jakobson and helped him emigrate to the United States. The inspiring lectures [End Page 13] delivered by Steinitz acquainted us with his conception of cosmopolitan, liberal-minded science, a sense of curiosity, and a striving for innovation. He drew an authentic picture of structuralist approaches as pursued in Moscow and Prague, thereby giving us profound knowledge of theories and methods philologists throughout Germany had little knowledge of and certainly did not pay much attention to." Having gained his diploma, Rudolf Růžička was offered a position at the University of Jena, where he stayed for two years (1951-53). However, in 1953, after Reinhold Olesch had left Leipzig, Růžička was asked to take charge of the linguistics program at the Leipzig University Slavic Department. In 1955, he submitted his doctoral thesis on verbal aspect in the Old Russian text of Nestor's chronicle (1957). Early in 1960 he became acting director and, starting in 1962, director of the Leipzig University Department of Linguistics. In 1961, he submitted his habilitation thesis on the syntactic system of Old Slavic participles in comparison with Greek (1963). Also in 1961 he was made lecturer, and in 1963, professor "with the appointment to teach Slavic and General Linguistics" at the University of Leipzig. Both in research and teaching, he applied the findings of modern formal grammar. In 1963, he founded the Leipzig Linguistic Circle and became its chairman (for publications by circle members see, e.g., Růžička 1968 as well as issues of Linguistische Arbeitsberichte). The circle was modeled after similar groups of linguists, all of which had been organized with the participation of Roman Jakobson—the Moscow Linguistic Circle (founded around 1915/16), the Prague Linguistic Circle (founded in the late 1920's), and the Linguistic Circle of New York (formed in 1943; its journal Word was established in 1945). Like August Leskien, the Neogrammarian who studied Slavic languages in the context of the most advanced linguistic theories of his time, Růžička strove to introduce the latest grammatical theories into Slavic linguistics. From 1964...

Notes of a Translator on Bogatyrev's Monograph <em>Magical Acts, Rites, and Beliefs in Subcarpathian Rus'

Petr Grigorevich Bogatyrev was without question one of the most significant Russian folldorists of the twentieth centwy. His participation in the organization and activity of the Moscow Linguistic Circle which, along with the Petrograd Society for the Study of Poetic Language, gave birth to the Russian Formalist School, and his subsequent work with the Prague Linguistic Circle nurtured his own pioneering interests and activities in the field of ethnography. His life in Stalinist Russia was, naturally, not without tragedy. He suffered immensely as a result of his work abroad as a translator for the Soviet embassy in Prague between 1922-1939, as well as for his association with foreign folldorists, among them his compatriot Roman Jakobson who chose to immigrate to the United States on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia while Bogatyrev returned home to Russia. Amidst the valuable pieces of scholarship he left behind are his studies of Rusyn folldore from the Carpathian MOlmmln~, which he researched in a series offield expeditions dming the 1920s and 1930s. Of these, the greatest gem is his monograph entitled Magical Acts. Rites. and Beliefs in SubcaJ:pathian Rus'. published initially in a French translation by the Institute of Slavic Studies (lnstitut d'etudes slaves) in Paris in 1929 lActes Ma~ques. rites et crovances en Russ;e subcm:pathique). Here, he succeeded in describing what in the 1920s was still, as he stated in his diary, one of the most archaic of Slavic peasant cultures. The relative isolation of the region with its scattered mountain villages allowed for the smvival of traditional folklore and for the perpetuation of ritual and magical practices which elsewhere were fading or already extinct. Bogatyrev's monograph offers a full and systemic description of the ritual-mythological aspect of Rusyn peasant life. After a lengthy introduction in which he discusses his use of the synchronic method in his research illustrated with numerous examples from Rusyn folklore practices and beliefs he moves through the feasts of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic liturgical year descnDing in intricate detail various folk rites and beliefs connected with each of them. Finally, he scrutinizes significant moments in the peasants' lives birth and baptism, weddings, and funerals, as well as their experience of the world of apparitions and supernatural beings and, here again. describes intriguing folk rituals related to these. In 1998, the first English translation ofBogatyrev's monograph under the title Vampires in the Car.pathians: Magical Acts. Rites. and Beliefs in SubcaJ:pathian Rus'. was published by Columbia

LINGÜÍSTICA, SEMIOLOGIA E LITERATURA

A chronological tracing of the contribution of linguistics to literary theory, in particular to its terminology and methods: in Russian Formalism, in the Prague Linguistic Circle, in the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, and in Structuralism. The contributions of anthropology and of psychoanalysis are noted, stressing the interdisciplinary aspect of literary theory. The study sees the theory of language as a product of the human mind, starting as well as end point of both linguistics and literary theory.

Old Linguists Never Die, They Only Get Obligatorily Deleted

Martin Kay, in his speech delivered in 2005 on receipt of his ACL Lifetime Achievement Award, specified computational linguistics as follows: “Computational linguistics is trying to do what linguists do in a computational manner” (Kay 2005, page 429). I believe it is a legitimate question for a computational linguist to ask what linguists do. Coming from Prague, it is then quite a natural question for me to look back and to recollect what the “old” linguists (who never die but get obligatorily deleted on the visible surface) with the background of the world-famous Prague Linguistic School (PLS) contributed to linguistic studies and perhaps to suggest what aspects of their heritage are even today fruitful for computational linguistics. First, to place the PLS in the course of the development of linguistic studies, it should be recalled that the Prague Linguistic Circle belongs to the first bodies that took part in the transition of the older diachronic paradigm of linguistics to a synchronic theory of language. Soon after its first session (taking place in 1926 in the office of the chairman of the Circle till his death in 1945), the Circle entered the international scene first of all with its systematically elaborated phonological theory. Starting with the Hague Linguistic Congress (see Actes 1928), Praguian phonology became the pilot discipline of structural linguistics. This approach was far from unified, but the strength of the Circle was in its spirit of dialogue, which kept the Circle receptive to new ideas, rather than in any set of postulates commonly professed. In my talk I will concentrate on three fundamental Prague School tenets, which I believe to have their validity also in the modern context of linguistic theory and computational linguistics. What I have in mind here is the Circle’s structural and functional orientation, as well as the attention it has paid to the opposition of the center and the periphery of language structure, based on the concept of markedness.

The Prague Linguistic Circle's Contribution to Art History

The Prague Linguistic Circle's Contribution to Art History

In Memoriam, Eugenius Marius Uhlenbeck, 1913-2003

Eugenius Marius Uhlenbeck, Bob as he was affectionately known to his friends, died at home on May 27, 2003, two months before his 90th birthday. He was a distinguished scholar, an indefatigable organizer and academic initiator, a gifted and inspiring teacher, a loyal friend and, despite his many activities, a family man with a sense of tradition handed down to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Professor of Javanese Language and Literature (1950-83) and in addition also Professor of General Linguistics (1958-79) at Leiden University, Bob was a pivotal figure in both fields, bestowed with numerous honors and awards, both nationally and internationally. In the Netherlands he was member and subsequently vice president of the Dutch Council for Science Policy (1967-76); member of the advisory board of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (1967-82), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (from 1967), and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (from 1970); and honorary member of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (from 1983), after having been a member of its board and subsequently president (1950-65). In 1969 he received a knighthood in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. In 1983 the Netherlands Institute for Avanced Studies inaugurated an annual series of Uhlenbeck lectures to honor its founding president (1970-83), the first being Bob's statement on the autonomy of linguistics (Uhlenbeck 1983b). Under his editorship (1950-84), Lingua became one of the leading journals in the field of general linguistics. International acclaim soon followed. After having been visiting professor at the Linguistic Institute in Bloomington, Indiana (1953), and at the University of California at San Diego (1965), associate editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics (from 1959), and research fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California (1965-66), Bob was elected honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America (1972). He received honoris causa doctorates from the Catholic University of Louvain (1975) and Charles University in Prague (1991), where he was also elected honorary member of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1991) and the Association of Alumni and Friends of Charles University (1993). After having been president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (1972), he was elected member of the Academia Europaea (1991). In 1994 a corresponding fellowship of the British Academy was conferred upon him. Pacific acclaim materialized in the form of a professorial fellowship at the Australian National University (1973), followed by a research fellowship at the same university (1985). In 1991 he was invited to give the opening keynote address at the 6th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics in Honolulu, Hawai'i; it was published the year after as the lead article of Oceanic Linguistics (Uhlenbeck 1992a), the journal that claimed him as a member of its Editorial Advisory Board from its inception in 1962. Last but definitely not least, Bob was elected secretary general of the Permanent International Committee of Linguists at the 12th International Congress of Linguists in Vienna (1977) and would remain in office until the 15th in Quebec (1992). 1. Indonesian years (1939-48). Bob was born in The Hague on August 9, 1913. He was named after his father, who had served as an officer in the Dutch East Indian army, but returned to the Netherlands to ensure a good education for his children. His eldest brother, the famous physicist George Eugene Uhlenbeck (1900-1988), was born in Batavia (now Jakarta), and Bob seems to have been destined for a career in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He received his secondary education at the renowned Gymnasium Haganum in The Hague (1925-32), before taking up the study of Indology at the University of Leiden (1932-37) and Indonesian Law (Indisch Recht) at the University of Utrecht (1933-38). …

Prague Linguistic Circle Papers. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague, new series. Vol. 3 (review)

Reviewed by: Prague Linguistic Circle papers ed. by Eva Hajičová et al. Zdenek Salzmann Prague Linguistic Circle papers. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague, new series. Vol. 3. Ed. by Eva Hajičová, Tomáš Hoskovec, Oldřich Leška, Petr Sgall, and Zdena Skoumalová. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999. Pp. x, 310. As in the first two volumes of TCLP (see Language 74:194–5), the list of the 23 contributors to this third one is international: Eleven are from the Czech Republic, twelve are from seven foreign countries, including three from the United States. The contents of the volume is also diversified: It is subdivided into sections that deal with the history of ideas, phonology, morphology, sentence structure, language in society, and ‘resounding of ideas’. Most of the papers are versions of lectures delivered in Prague in March 1996 to mark the 70th anniversary of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the centennial of Roman Jakobson’s birth. Jakobson’s wide-ranging effect on scholarship related to language and its use is evident throughout the book. In one paper, for example, Linda R. Waugh traces Jakobson’s intellectual influence in America by listing subjects he considered that others went on to pursue: shifters and deixis, the contribution of Charles Sanders Peirce, a multifunctional perspective on communication, the concept of implicational laws, a dynamic view of synchrony, and the [End Page 181] pioneering study of language acquisition by children as seen from a universal viewpoint—to mention only a few of the many topics. And because Jakobson explored the relationship of language to literature, semiotics, anthropology, folklore, and other fields, his interdisciplinary contributions were far-reaching. As if all this were not enough, Helmut Schnelle reminds us that research on brain structure and linguistic processing was also stimulated by Jakobson. All but 3 of the 21 papers are in English (2 are in French, 1 in German), and three-fourths of them are of a general nature. To sample some of the topics: The late Oldřich Leška, one of the coeditors of the volume, writes about the early history of the Prague Linguistic Circle; according to him, the PLC was characterized by flexibility and openness—‘unity in diversity’. By using examples from English, Libuše Dušková shows that in most instances grammatical word order and functional sentence perspective are in basic agreement and points out the devices English has to resort to when the two major word order principles are in conflict. Petr Sgall contributes a typologically oriented discussion of language types and probabilistic implication laws. In his view, full-scale typologies constitute a challenge for language theory and should not be sacrificed to ‘partial typologies’ that have been gaining attention in recent years. Cornelis H. van Schooneveld speculates whether the ordering of phonological distinctive features is structural fact or merely metaphor. Edward Stankiewicz tries to show how the nominal and verbal patterns differ in Slavic, Semitic, and Bantu languages but also points out that the underlying principle of the noun/verb opposition is everywhere the same. And Jiří V. Neustupný attempts to show that ‘the sociolinguistic legacy of the [prewar] Circle was extensive, varied and built on rigorous foundations’ (275). In the opinion of this writer, sociolinguistic aspects of the early circle were only subtle and implicit. The volume is topically very rich and should appeal to a wide readership. The papers are short and to the point, and the volume is attractive and well-edited. Zdenek Salzmann Northern Arizona University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Czech and Tartu-Moscow semiotics: The cultural semiotics of Vladimir Macura (1945-1999)

Among the national scientific groups, it was the Prague Linguistic Circle that had the most decisive affinity to the work of the Moscow-Tartu school. This paper examines the work of one of the most tireless contemporary Czech interpreters of the Lutman school, Vladimir Macura (1945-1999), whose work on Czech literary and historical texts are outstanding examples of the reverberation of Lotmanian semiotics of culture in the Czech Republic. This is particularly the case in Macura's reevaluations of the texts of the Czech National Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in two books, Znamení zrodu (Signs of Birth) (1995) and Český sen (The Czech Dream) (1998). In these works Macura looked at this critical period in Czech national history as a multi-layered semiotic text in both the verbal and visual spheres. The present paper is an attempt at an exploration of Macura's treatment in this manner of the following: the Czech language, the city of Prague, the question of Czech national self-identification in general and as part of a larger category, the world of the Slavs. An important aspect of this project is an examination of Macura's exploration of the value functions of symbolic animals and plants in Czech Revival culture, and its relation to the axiology of Czech (Slavic) cultural identity. The paper is dedicated to Macura's memory.

Prolegomena k dějinám Pražské školy jazykovědné [Prolegomena to the history of the Prague Linguistic School] By Josef Vachek (review)

BOOK NOTICES 471 agreement prefixes. These are all useful, but are largely repeated verbatim from lists presented in various chapters earlier. A comprehensive glossary would have been much more useful than the fragmented word lists, and a subject index would have allowed reference to appropriate chapters without repeating so much material. Appendices aside, there is still too much repetition: the same word is sometimes used to illustrate more than one letter, and in these cases the entire definition including associated cultural commentary and stories is repeated, sometimes several times. Teachings 5, 10, and 15 are quizzes; 4, 9, and 14 are review lessons. Each of the other nine teachings contains a section on pronouncing some group of letters; vocabulary, usually some grammatical drill; and copious explanations of Lakota philosophy. The pronunciation sections are to be practiced with a teacher or with the cassette tapes which can be ordered to accompany the book. (I have not heard the tapes, so they are not included in this review.) Vocabulary generally consists of a small group of semantically related words such as numbers, colors, or question words. Grammar explanations briefly cover conjugation of different types of verbs, male and female sentence endings, and similar topics, with examples and a few matching or fill-in-the-blank exercises. Most of the explanations are admirably clear, but I would have liked to see them supplemented with reading selections, dialogues, and many more (and more interesting) exercises. Most of each chapter is devoted to cultural commentary . Some ofthis comes in the form of extended definitions of the words presented for pronunciation practice; some in stories from the author's life. Some comments seem irrelevant; for instance, W objects repeatedly to the English term 'Black Hills' because 'they aren't hills, they are mountains' (82, 198). Some are downright bizarre; for instance, the definition of maku 'chest,' repeated on pp. 42, 192, and 203, includes an extended story of a police officer misunderstanding an injured man's reference to his chest (maku ki 'the chest') as 'my cookies.' Explanation is frequently directed toward pointing out slang meanings of words 'so if people laugh or grin when this word is used you will know why' (194) or toward clarifying the original meaning of words which have taken on undesirable connotations, often having to do with alcohol. For example, otehi 'hard times' refers in 'reservation language' to 'a hangover and no resources for another drink' (21, 216). Much of this material is fascinating, and it is all charmingly presented . W's wry wit is sure to appeal to his intended audience (reservation youth, not linguists) but it is not clear to me how these stories will teach anyone to actually speak or write Lakota. The orthography used in this book, a recently developed one, uses an array ofdiacritics to show aspiration and glottalization of stops and Greek eta for nasal vowels. Aside from its typographical complexity and overdifferentiation (two different diacritics used for velar and laryngeal aspiration, which are nonphonemic) this is not abad alphabet. But it unfortunately adds yet another contender to the already crowded field of competing Siouan orthographies. One of the best features of the book is Appendix B, a comparison chart of all the commonly used Lakota spelling systems. Reading this book one gains considerable insight into the society in which W grew up—and a little knowledge of the Lakota language as well. In spite ofits flaws Reading and writing the Lakota language is a welcome addition to the few resources available for teaching Siouan languages. [Catherine Rudin, Wayne State College.] Prolegomena k dejinám Prazské skoly jazykovëdné [Prolegomena to the history of the Prague Linguistic School]. By Josef Vachek. Jinocany, Czech Republic : H & H, 1999. Pp. 137. Prolegomena was completed by Vachek soon after the appearance ofhis memoirs in 1994 (see my book notice in Language 70:847) but was not published until 1999, three years after his death. Although the author stated in the introduction that this work was only a very modest contribution to the history of linguistic studies stimulated by the Prague School, V was active in it almost from its beginning in 1926 (his first lecture was in February...

Letters and Other Materials from the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles, 1912-1945

Letters and Other Materials from the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles, 1912-1945

Toman, J. (ed.): Letters and Other Materials from the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles, 1912-1945

Toman, J. (ed.): Letters and Other Materials from the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles, 1912-1945

The Magic of a Common Language: Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy and the Prague Linguistic Circle

The Magic of a Common Language: Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy and the Prague Linguistic Circle