Prague School of Linguistics

8/13/2019 Prague School of Linguistics

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School of Linguistics It pertains to the people who have

invented particular theories of linguistics andthose who have followed them.

For example, the traditional grammarschool, the European structuralist school,the American structuralist school, the

transformational-generative school, thePrague school, the London school, theGeneva school, the Moscow school, themodern functional school, and many others.



PRAGUE SCHOOL OF

LINGUISTICS /PRAGUE

LINGUISTIC CIRCLE Although most of the scholars whom

one thinks of as members of the schoolworked in Prague or at least inCzechoslovakia, the tem is used also to

cover certain scholars elsewhere whoconsciously adhered to Prague Style.



1915: Thefoundation of the

MoscowLinguistic Circle.

1917: Membersfleeing Moscowdue to October

Revolution.

1926 :Thefoundation of the

Prague SchoolLinguistic Circle.

1929: Presenting the

PragueManifesto at the

firstInternationalCongress of

Linguistics atHague.

1952: The circle

was disbanded.

1989 : After thepolitical

changes, the

Circle's activitywas slowlyrenewed.

CHRONICLE OF THE

PRAGUE SCHOOL



IMPORTANT MEMBERS OF THE

PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE VILÉM MATHESIUSHe was the co-founder andpresident of thePrague LinguisticCircle. (President of

PLC until his death in1945).



RENÉ WELLEK Early member of theCircle helped spreadtheir way of linguisticsto America. He wasa Czech-

American comparativeliterary critic.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Czech_Republic

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/United_States

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/United_States

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Czech_Republic



ROMAN

OSIPOVICHJAKOBSON

Russian thinkerwho helped form

the MoscowLinguistic Circlebefore moving

to Prague. Thevice president ofPrague Linguistic

Circle.



PRINCENIKOLAY

SERGEYEVICHTRUBETZKOY -

A Russian linguist

and historianwhose teachingsformed a nucleus

of the PragueSchool ofstructural

linguistics.



JAN MUKAŘOVSKÝ -

He is well known forhis association withearly structuralism as

well as with the PragueLinguistic Circle , andfor his development ofthe ideas of Russianformalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Linguistic_Circle


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_formalism






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism



MAIN THEORY AND TASK FUNCTIONAL PHONOLOGY The phonological theory predominantly

associated with the Russian, NikolajSergeyevich Trubetzkoy (1890 –1938).This theory is also known as PragueSchool phonology.



Functions that can be served

by phonological opposition

1. The representative function, wherebyspeakers inform listeners of whatever extralinguistic facts or states they are talking about.

2. The indexical or expressive function wherebyinformation is revealed to the listener aboutvarious aspects of the speaker.

3. The appellative or conative function whichserves to provoke well-definable impressions orfeelings in the listener.



4. The distinctive function. It is thefunction by virtue of which linguisticforms are opposed to, or differentiatedfrom, each other. The minimal

linguistic form that is meaningful, orthe minimal significant unit, is knownas a moneme, which consists in the

association between a signifier (vocalexpression) and a signified (semanticcontent).



5. The contrastive function whichenables the listener to analyse aspoken chain into a series of

significant units like monemes,words, phrases, etc.

6. The demarcative or

delimitative function, which isfulfilled in such a way that theboundary between significant

units is indicated.



7. The expressive function,whereby speakers convey to

listeners their state of mind (realor feigned) without resorting tothe use of an additional moneme

or monemes.



PHONEMIC CONTRAST Privative oppositions, in which two phonemes

are identical except that one contains a phonetic ‘mark’ which the other lacks e.g. /f/ and v/, themark in this case being voice.

Gradual oppositions in which the members

differ in possessing different degrees of somegradient property e.g. /I/, /e/ and /ae/ withrespect to the property of vowel aperture.

Equipollent oppositions in which eachmemberhas a distinguishing mak lacking in theothers e.g. /p/, /t/ and /k/.



FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE

PERSPECTIVE FSP) Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is a theory of linguistic analysiswhich refers to an analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of theinformation they contain. The principle is that the role of eachutterance part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole.Some important concepts in this view include:

Theme – the point of departure of a sentence, which is equallypresent to the speaker and hearer;

Rheme -- the goal of discourse which presents the very informationthat is to be imparted to the hearer;

Known/ given information -- information that is not new to the readeror hearer;

New information -- what is to be transmitted to the reader or hearer.

Therefore the subject-predicate distinction is not always the same astheme-rheme distinction.



A.

Sally

SujectTheme

standson thetable

PredicateRheme

B.

On thetablestands

PredicateRheme

Sally

SujectTheme



FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

-refers to the study of the form of language in reference

to their social function in communication. It considers theindividual as a social being and investigates the way inwhich she/he acquires language and uses it in order tocommunicate with others in her or his social

environment. The Prague linguistics looked at languagesas one might look at a motor, seeking to understandwhat jobs the various components were doing and howthe nature of one component determined the nature ofothers. They used the notion of ‘phoneme and

morpheme’, for instance; but they tried to go beyonddescriptions to explanation, saying not just whatlanguages were like but why they were the way theywere.



STRUCTURALISM IN

LITERATURE In literary studies as in linguistics the term

‘structuralism’ was invented during the early1930s by Jakobson, Mukarovsky, and theircolleagues of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Theapproach to literature which they advocatedrested on the simple proposition that the

individual work should be treated as a ‘structure’.By which they meant the sum of the interrelationsof its parts, and that the significance of thesedifferent parts could not be considered outside

their relationship with the whole.



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Prague School of Linguistics