Jan Baudouin de Courtenay

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Jan Baudouin de Courtenay
Born13 March 1845[1]: 70 
Radzymin, Warsaw Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died3 November 1929 (1929-11-04) (aged 84)
Warsaw, Second Polish Republic
Main interests
Phonology
Notable ideas
Theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations

Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay, also Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay (Russian: Иван Александрович Бодуэн де Куртенэ; 13 March 1845 – 3 November 1929) was a Russian and Polish[2] linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations.

For most of his life Baudouin de Courtenay worked at

St. Petersburg (1900–1918).[3] In 1919–1929 he was a professor at the re-established University of Warsaw in a once again independent Poland
.

Biography

He was born in Radzymin, in the Warsaw Governorate of Congress Poland (a state in personal union with the Russian Empire), to a family of distant French extraction.

University of Leipzig for his work on analogy and a master's degree from St. Petersburg for his Polish-language dissertation On the Old Polish Language Prior to the 14th Century.[1]
: 71 

Baudouin de Courtenay established the

Petersburg Academy of Sciences
.

Baudouin de Courtenay was the editor of the 3rd (1903–1909) and 4th (1912–1914) editions of the

Vladimir Dahl
(1801–1872).

Apart from his scientific work, Baudouin de Courtenay was also a strong supporter of the 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. In 1925, he was one of the co-founders of the Polish Linguistic Society.

In 1927 he formally withdrew from the

Protestant Reformed Cemetery in Warsaw
with the epitaph "He sought truth and justice".

Contribution to linguistics

His work had a major influence 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,

A. Dufriche-Desgenettes[6] who proposed it as a one-word equivalent for the German Sprachlaut.[7] 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.[8]

Three major schools of 20th-century

Prague school of phonology. All three schools developed different positions on the nature of Baudouin's alternational dichotomy. The Prague School was best known outside the field of Slavic linguistics. Throughout his life he published hundreds of scientific works in Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, Italian, French and German
.

Views

According to historian Norman Davies, Baudouin de Courtenay was one of the most extraordinary Polish thinkers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Davies writes:

"He was a pacifist, an advocate of the fight for environmental protection, a feminist, a fighter for progress in the field of education, and a free thinker, and he was against most of the social and intellectual conventions of his day."[9]

Baudouin de Courtenay was an atheist[10] and did not consider himself a member of the Catholic Church for most of his life. He was Chairman of the Polish Association of Freethinkers.

Baudouin de Courtenay was in favor of introducing Polish science to all Jewish schools in the Second Polish Republic, and Yiddish to all Polish schools. In his public appearances, he openly criticized anti-semitism and manifestations of organized xenophobia, for which he was repeatedly attacked.[11]

Legacy

His daughter,

Vilnius
and Warsaw. He had four other children: Zofia, a painter and sculptor; Świętosław, a lawyer and diplomat; Ewelina, a historian; and Maria, a lawyer.

He appears as a character in Joseph Skibell's 2010 novel, A Curable Romantic.

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    ISSN 2629-172X
    . Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  2. ISBN 978-83-223-1876-8
    .
  3. ISBN 978-5-85270-218-0
    .
  4. ^ Baudouin de Courtenay (1876–7), A detailed programme of lectures for the academic year 1876-77, p. 115.
  5. ^ Baudouin de Courtenay (1894), "Próba teorii alternacji fonetycznych", Część I – Ogólna RWF, 20, pp. 219–364; translated in German in Jan. 1895 as Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen [An Attempt at a Theory of Phonetic Alternations]; excerpts in English in A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics, ed. and trans. Edward Stankiewicz (Bloomington/London: Indiana UP, 1972).
  6. ^ Anon. (1873). "Sur la nature des consonnes nasales". [Summary (probably written by Louis Havet) of a paper read at 24 May meeting of the Société de Linguistique de Paris.] Revue critique d'histoire et de littérature 13, No. 23, p. 368.
  7. ^ Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings: Word and Language, Volume 2, Walter de Gruyter, 1971, p. 396.
  8. ^ E. F. K. Koerner, Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and Development of His Linguistic Thought in Western Studies of Language. A contribution to the history and theory of linguistics, Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn [Oxford & Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press], 1973.
  9. OCLC 773484001
    .
  10. ^ "Baudouin de Courtenay, Romualda | Archiwum Kobiet". archiwumkobiet.pl. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  11. ^ Grzegorz Krzywiec, Przeciw antysemityzmowi i narodowym iluzjom. Przypadki Jana Baudouina de Courtenay. 2006

References

Polish Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Russian Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  • Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak. "Jan Baudouin de Courtenay's contribution to linguistic theory", Historiographia Linguistica 25 (1998): 25–60; reprint in Towards a History of Linguistics in Poland: From the Early Beginnings to the End of the Twentieth Century, eds. E.F.K. Koerner & Aleksander Szwedek. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001, pp. 175–208.
  • Maria di Salvo. Il pensiero linguistico di J. Baudouin de Courtenay. Venice & Padua: Marsilio, 1975.
  • Frank Häusler. Das Problem Phonetik und Phonologie bei Baudouin de Courtenay und in seiner Nachfolge. Leipzig: Niemeyer, 1968 (2nd edn., Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1976).
  • Roman Jakobson. "The Kazan school of Polish linguistics and its place in the international development of phonology", Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings, vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.
  • E. F. K. Koerner. Essays in the History of Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004: ch. 7.
  • E. F. K. Koerner. "Jan Baudouin de Courtenay: His place in the history of linguistic science", Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des Slavistes 14, no. 4 (1972): 663–682 (repr. in Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays, 1978, pp. 107–126).
  • R. A. Rothstein. "The linguist as dissenter: Jan Baudouin de Courtenay", For Wiktor Weintraub: Essays in Polish Literature, Language, and History Presented on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. V. Erlich. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.
  • W. R. Schmalstieg, "Baudouin de Courtenay contribution to Lithuanian linguistics", Lituanus 41, no. 1 (1995): 5-25.
  • Edward Stankiewicz ed. & trans. A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1972.
  • Edward Stankiewicz. Baudouin de Courtenay and the Foundations of Structural Linguistics. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 1976.
  • Philipp Strazny, ed. "Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan Ignacy Niecisław", Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. 1: A–L. NY–Oxon: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005, pp. 128–130.
  • Margaret Thomas, "Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929)", Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics. London–NY: Routledge, 2011, pp. 135–140.
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