Prague school:

Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
Sergeievich, Prince
(1890–1938)
THEORY OF PHONOLOGY
• Nikolai Sergeiievich Trubetzkoy, a Russian
philologist, was born in Moscow in 1890
of a noble family. His father, Prince Sergei
Trubetzkoy, was a professor of philosophy
and rector of the University of Moscow.
• After graduating from Moscow University,
where he read Sanskrit and philology,
Nikolai Trubetzkoy pursued his Ph.D. in
Sanskrit and historical linguistics at
Leipzig University.
• His teachers were Neogrammarians, and he
came to meet other fellow students, such as
L. Bloomfield and L Tesnie`re. Subsequently,
he taught at Moscow University (1915–1917),
Rostov (1918–1919), and Sofia, Bulgaria
(1920–1922).
• He was forced to flee Russia at the time of
the October Revolution. From 1923 on, he
was a professor of Slavic philology at the
University of Vienna. He died in Vienna in
1938.
• In 1928, Professor V. Mathesius
invited Trubetzkoy to become a
member of the Prague Linguistic
Circle (founded in 1926), where he
met R. Jakobson (1896– 1982) again.
• R. Jakobson regarded Troubetzkoy as
his mentor, and they became good
friends. Jakobson spoke about this
many times.
• Trubetzkoy became an active member
of the Prague Linguistic Circle, along
with V. Mathesius, R. Jakobson, S.
Karchevskii, and Jan Murarˇosvky´,
among others.
• The correspondence between
Trubetzkoy and Jabokson (Jakobson,
1975) offers a personal perspective of
their interactions during this period.
• Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy is
regarded by many as the creator of
the science of phonology.
• He elaborated his observations on
the linguistic function of speech
sounds, the role of oppositions, and
markedness, influenced by his
rejection of neogrammarian
principles and his extension of
Saussearean insights.
• In his most important work on
phonology, Grundzüge der
Phonologie (1939; Principles of
Phonology), he famously
defined phoneme as the
smallest distinctive unit within
the structure of a given
language.
• This work was crucial in
establishing phonology as a
discipline separate from
phonetics.
• Trubetzkoy decided on a
functional definition of the term
"phoneme" by distinguishing it
from the "phone".
• His 1936 essay concentrated on the
theory of phonological oppositions.
• The phoneme was established as the
basic unit of this subsystem, the
decisive criterion being that an
opposition between sounds is
linguistically relevant only if it serves
to distinguish between semantically
different words or other morphemes.
• The posthumous publication of his Grundzu¨
ge der Phonology in 1939 (translated into
English in 1969; it contains his
autobiographical notes and a bibliography) is
considered to be an account of the main
beliefs of the Prague Linguistic Circle.
• It was not completed during his lifetime.
Trubetzkoy put forward the idea that
phonemes or phonological units are abstract:
Any sound, e.g., ‘p,’ may have many varieties
in a speech community, yet is perceived and
treated as the same sound.
• If the change of the sound produces a
contrast or opposition (r/m in ‘rat’ and
‘mat’), a different word with different
meaning results, and the phoneme has a
contrastive function.
• Trubetzkoy produced a classification
system for all phonemes, describing their
features by comparing some 200
phonological systems in his search for a
system of relationships and universals.
• This is usually regarded as the basis
for the subsequent refinement of
the concept of distinctive features
later developed by R. Jakobson.
• In this work, Trubetzkoy also
considered the possibility of the
creation of a phonetic system for
an artificial language.
• Trubetzkoy wrote and lectured on other
aspects of language and literature. He
used the term ‘morphophonology’ in his
treatment of morphology and
grammatical categories and functions of
language.
• His influence in structural linguistics as
developed in the 20th century is a
relevant component in the history of
ideas in linguistics and literary studies.
• In Europe, the impact of the school
continued to be felt.
• Although scientific and personal contacts
between the different parts of the
continent were difficult, linguists such as
J. Kuryłowicz, A. A. Reformatskij, R. I.
Avanesov, P. S. Kuznecov, E. M.
Uhlenbeck, M. A. K. Halliday, K. Heger, Y.
Tobin, and others in different countries
contributed substantially to the school’s
work and impact.
• Schools of functionalist linguistics that came
into existence in different parts of the world,
as well as approaches of several Slovak and
Czech linguists working abroad, such as A. V.
Isacˇenko, L’. Dˇ urovicˇ, J. Neustupny´, and J.
Toman, differ from each other.
• Nevertheless, the related works reflect
Praguian views and methods to a higher or
lower degree, and have substantially enriched
Praguian traditions, which have found regular
and broad reception in most Slavonic
countries.