PERSONALIA

Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay (13 March 1845 – 3 November 1929) was a Polish linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations.

For most of his life Baudouin de Courtenay worked at Imperial Russian universities: Kazan (1874–1883), Dorpat (as Tartu, Estonia was then known) (1883–1893), Kraków (1893–1899) in Austria-Hungary, and St. Petersburg (1900–1918), where he was known as Иван Александрович Бодуэн де Куртенэ (Ivan Aleksandrovich Boduen de Kurtene), and in Russia he is recognized as a Russian scientist. In 1919-1929 he was a professor at the re-established University of Warsaw in a once again independent Poland.

One of his ancestors had been a French aristocrat who migrated to Poland during the reign of Polish King August II the Strong. In 1862 Baudouin de Courtenay entered the "Main School," a predecessor of the University of Warsaw. In 1866 he graduated from its historical and philological faculty and won a scholarship of the Russian Imperial Ministry of Education. Having left 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 Polish-language dissertation On the Old Polish Language Prior to the 14th Century.

Baudouin de Courtenay established the Kazan school of linguistics in the mid-1870s and served as professor at the local university from 1875. Later he was chosen as the head of linguistics faculty at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) (1883–1893). Between 1894 and 1898 he occupied 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 independence in 1918, he returned to Warsaw, where he formed the core of the linguistics faculty of the University of Warsaw. From 1887 he held a permanent seat in the Polish Academy of Skills and from 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 work had a major impact on 20th-century linguistic theory, and it served as a foundation for several schools of phonology. He was an early champion of synchronic linguistics, the study of contemporary spoken languages, which he developed contemporaneously with the structuralist linguistic theory of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Among the most notable of his achievements is the distinction between statics and dynamics of languages and between a language (an abstract group of elements) and speech (its implementation by individuals) – compare Saussure's concepts of langue and parole. Together with his students, Mikołaj Kruszewski and Lev Shcherba, Baudouin de Courtenay also shaped the modern usage of the term phoneme (Baudouin de Courtenay 1876–77 and Baudouin de Courtenay 1894),] which had been coined in 1873 by the French linguist A. Dufriche-Desgenette swho proposed it as a one-word equivalent for the German Sprachlaut. His work on the theory of phonetic alternations may have had an influence on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure according to E. F. K. Koerner. 

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 [daɪ'kɔtəmɪ].

Apart from his scientific work, Baudouin de Courtenay was also a strong supporter of national revival of various national minority and ethnic groups. In 1915 he was arrested by the Okhrana, the Russian secret service, for publishing a brochure on the 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. He was also an active Esperantist and president of the Polish Esperanto Association.

Baudouin de Courtenay was the editor of the 3rd (1903–1909) and 4th (1912–1914) editions of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language compiled by Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dahl (1801–1872).

He died in Warsaw. He is buried at the Protestant Reformed Cemetery in Warsaw with the epitaph “He sought truth and justice".

Saussure uses a chess metaphor. We could study the game diachronically (how the rules change through time) or synchronically (the actual rules). Saussure notes that a person joining the audience of a game already in progress requires no more information than the present layout of pieces on the board and who the next player is. There would be no additional benefit in knowing how the pieces had come to be arranged in this way.

    The main and central function of Language is Communicative.

     And there are Six Key Language (Sub)Functions

1. referential (: contextual information)
2. aesthetic/poetic (: auto-reflection)
3. emotive (: self-expression)
4. conative (: vocative or imperative addressing of receiver)
5. phatic (: checking channel working)
6. metalingual (: checking code working)

This is where Rask's interest in Old Norse and Icelandic language and literature was awakened. His teacher, Jochum E. Suhr, loaned him a copy of Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, and the rector, Ludvig Heiberg, gave him a new translation as a prize for his diligence. By comparing the original work and the translation, he was able to make an Icelandic vocabulary, cross-referencing the Icelandic words with cognates in Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch and English. In addition to Danish and Latin, Rask studied Greek, Hebrew, French and German at Odense. An interest in orthography also led Rask to develop his own spelling system for Danish that more closely resembled its pronunciation, and it was at this time that he changed the spelling of his last name from "Rasch" to "Rask".

• Vejledning til det Islandske eller gamle Nordiske Sprog (Introduction to the Icelandic or Old Norse Language), 1811; English translation published 1843
• Angelsaksisk sproglaere tilligemed en kort laesebog (Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue: With a Praxis), 1817; English translation published 1830
• Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse (Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language), 1818 (prize essay)
• "Singalelisk Skriftlære" (Sinhalese Orthography), 1821
• Spansk Sproglære (Spanish Grammar), 1824
• Frisisk Sproglære (Frisian Grammar), 1825
• Dansk Retskrivingslære (Danish Orthography), 1826
• Om Zendsprogets og Zendavestas Ælde og Ægthed (On the Age and Authenticity of the Zend language and the Zend Avesta), 1826
• Italiænsk Formlære (Italian Grammar), 1827
• Den gamle Ægyptiske Tidsregning (Ancient Egyptian Chronology), 1827
• Vejledning til Akra-Sproget på Kysten Ginea (Introduction to the Accra language on the Guinea Coast), 1828
• Den ældste hebraiske Tidsregning indtil Moses efter Kilderne på ny bearbejdet og forsynet med et Kart over Paradis (Ancient Jewish Chronology previous to Moses according to the Sources newly reworked and accompanied by a Map of Paradise), 1828
• A Grammar of the Danish language for the use of Englishmen, 1830
• Ræsonneret lappisk Sproglære (Reasoned Sami Grammar), 1832
• Engelsk Formlære (English Grammar), 1832

The discovery of many ‘scientific’ laws (Lautgesetze), which had already begun with the Danish Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and Jacob Grimm, became the hallmark of the so-called Neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), who dominated the second part of the 19th century. The final point of this evolution maybe represented by the famous statement by Antoine Meillet, one of the most prominent heirs of the Neogrammarians in the 20th century:

"Historical linguistics is the only useful and valid linguistic classification" (Meillet 1975[1914]).

The studies by Friedrich and even more by August Wilhelm Schlegel led to a first typological division of languages.

In his 'Observations sur la langue et la littйrature provenзales' (1818), A.W. Schlegel says that all languages can be divided into three classes: 

(a) languages without any grammatical structure, like Chinese;

(b) languages with agglutinated affixes, like Turkish;

(c) languages with inflections,

to be distinguished in their turn as (c′) synthetic and (c″) analytic languages.

As examples of (c′), Schlegel quotes Latin and Ancient Greek, whereas to (c″) belong languages such as French which, contrary to the classical languages, make use of articles, personal pronouns before the verb, auxiliaries, and prepositions.

The Germanic languages are located between (c′) and (c″).

Schlegel notes that this basic tripartition had been developed by his brother Friedrich ten years earlier (Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier [‘On the Language and Knowledge of the Indians’, 1808], with the significant subtitle "Ein Beitrag zur Begruendung der Alterthumskunde - ‘A Contribution to the Founding of the Science of Antiquity’).

It possi\bly was  first inspired by Adam Smith's Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages and the Different Genius of Originaland Compounded Languages (1759). Actually, Smith had divided languages into two types: 

(a) primitive, simple, original, and uncompounded languages; (b) compounded languages.

«Über das Konjugationsystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griech.-lat., pers. und german. Sprache» (Frankfurt am MainFrankfurt am Main, 1816). 

(On the Conjugation System of Sanskrit in comparison with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic).

In 1827, he published his Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der Sanskritsprache (Detailed System of the Sanskrit Language).

«Über das Konjugationsystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griech.-lat., pers. und german. Sprache» (Франкф.-на-M., 1816),«Über das Konjugationsystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griech.-lat., pers. und german. Sprache» (Франкф.-на-M., 1816)"Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Send, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gotischen und Deutschen" (Berlin, 1833).

In his Comparative Grammar Bopp set himself a threefold task:

1. to give a description of the original grammatical structure of the languages as deduced from their inter-comparison.
2. to trace their phonetic laws.
3. to investigate the origin of their grammatical forms.

«Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Send, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gotischen und Deutschen» (Берлин, 1833)«Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Send, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gotischen und Deutschen» (Берлин, 1833)

Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα "tongue, language" and χρóνος "time") is the part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages.