Nikolai Trubetzkoy

Prince Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy (Russian: Николай Сергеевич Трубецкой (or Nikolai Trubetzkoy) (Moscow, April 15, 1890 - Vienna, June 25, 1938) was a Russian linguist whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morphophonology.

Trubetskoy was born into an extremely refined environment. His father was a first-rank philosopher whose lineage ascended to the medieval rulers of Lithuania.

Trubetzkoy Family

Pogoń Litewska Coat of Arms

Trubetskoy (English), Трубецкой (Russian), Troubetzkoy (French), Trubetzkoy (German), Trubetsky (Ruthenian), Trubecki (Polish), or Trubiacki (Belarusian), is a typical Ruthenian Gedyminid gentry family of Black Ruthenian stock, like many other princely houses of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, later prominent in Russian history, science, and arts.

They are descended from Olgierd's son Demetrius I Starshiy (1327 – 12 May 1399 Battle of the Vorskla River). They used the Pogoń Litewska Coat of Arms and the Troubetzkoy Coat of Arms [1].

Princes Troubetzkoy descend from Demetrius I Starshiy, one of Algirdas sons, who ruled the towns of Bryansk and Starodub. He was killed together with his elder sons in the unfortunate Battle of the Vorskla River (1399). Demetrius' descendants continued to rule the town of Trubchevsk until the 1530s, when they had to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave their patrimony and settle in Moscow. They chose the latter, and were accepted with great ceremony at the court of Vasily III of Russia.

By 1660s, however, the only Troubetzkoy left, Prince Yuriy Trubetskoy, returned to Moscow and was given a boyar title by Tsar Alexis I of Russia. All the branches of the family descend from his marriage to Princess Irina Galitzine.

Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy was born in the 18th generation after Demetrius I Starshiy.

Having graduated from the Moscow University (1913), Trubetskoy delivered lectuAres there until the revolution. Thereafter he moved first to the university of Rostov-na-Donu, then to the university of Sofia (1920-22), and finally took the chair of Professor of Slavic Philology at the University of Vienna (1922-1938). He died from a heart attack attributed to Nazi persecution following his publishing an article highly critical of Hitler's theories.

Trubetskoy's chief contributions to linguistics lie in the domain of phonology, in particular in analyses of the phonological systems of individual languages and in search for general and universal phonological laws. His magnum opus, Grundzüge der Phonologie (Principles of Phonology), was issued posthumously. In this book he famously defined phoneme as a smallest distinctive unit within the structure of a given language. This work was crucial in establishing phonology as a discipline separate from phonetics.

It is sometimes hard to distinguish Trubetskoy's views from those of his friend Roman Jakobson, who should be credited with spreading the Prague School views on phonology after Trubetskoy's premature death.

External links

Johan G. Hakman, "The first Freemasons in Estonia"

"Lindisfarne Books"

Valerian Obolensky, "Russians in Exile", 1

Valerian Obolensky, "Russians in Exile", 2

Dennis Stocks, "History of Russian Freemasonry"

Dennis Stocks, "Russian Freemasonry"

"The Development of Russian Freemasonry in the 18th and Early 19th Century"

XVIII century literature

James A. Garfield, "Memorials to Great Men Who Were Masons"

"Parisian School of "Orthodoxy" - a Laboratory of False Doctrines and Heresies"

Nikolai Berdyaev, "In Memory of Prince G. N. Trubetskoy"

Coat of arms of Troubetzkoy

Coat of arms of Troubetzkoy

Genealogy of the house of Troubetzkoy

Scylla Trubecka

Troubetzkoy

Trubecki

Trubetskoy

Trubetsky

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