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.
Biography
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].
Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy was born ( as the 18th generation after Demetrius I ) in Moscow in 1890. Having graduated from the Moscow University (1913), Trubetskoy delivered lectures 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). On settling in Vienna, he became a geographically distant member of the Prague Linguistic School. He died from a heart attack, attributed to Nazi persecution following his publishing an article highly critical of Hitler's theories, in 1938 in Vienna.
Main work
Trubetzkoy's chief contributions to linguistics lie in the domain of phonology, particularly 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 and translated into virtually all main European and Asian languages. 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.
Principles of Phonology
The Principles of Phonology summarized his previous phonological work and stands now as the classic statement of Prague Linguistic School: phonology, setting out an array of phonological ideas, several of which still characterize debate on phonological representations till today. Through the “Principles”, the publications which preceded it, his work at conferences and general enthusiastic networking, Trubetzkoy was crucial in the development of phonology as a discipline distinct from phonetics.
Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages. As the phonetics is a cross-language discipline, it is only fitting that Trubetzkoy is credited with the change in phonological focus from diachrony to synchrony ( i.e. the only way to massage a lot of data from various languages without time reference ). Hence, he argued that form (contrast, systemic patterning) must be studied separately from substance (acoustics, articulation), although he did not see the two as completely separate, unlike some of his collegues’ , such as Hjelmslev (Trubetzkoy 1936 ).
Phonology, he argued, should deal with the linguistic function of sounds (their ability to signal differences in word-meaning), as members of phonemic oppositions. The phoneme was his smallest phonological unit, as ‘oppositions’ existed only within a language’s system, not quite the autonomous segmental building blocks, which they later became the ‘distinctive features’ of Jakobson.
Trubetzkoy is also, and above all, the founder of morphophonology, which is a branch of linguistics that studies the phonological structure of morphemes, the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation.
In phonology, the word morphophonemic describes anything relating primarily to phonemes but secondarily to morphemes.
The morphophonology, as defined by Trubetzkoy, is generally used in discussing the way morphemes affect one another's pronunciation ( Trubetzkoy 1939 ).
Morphemes are, generally, a distinctive collocation of phonemes (as the free form pin or the bound form -s of pins) having no smaller meaningful members.
English example: The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes "un-", (negatory) a bound morpheme, "-break-" a free morpheme, and "-able". "un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are also affixes.
Trubetzkoy also investigated the neutralization of contrast, which helped reveal segmental (un-) marked-ness, as the first to consider these subsequently extremely important ideas, and introduced the notion of ‘functional load’ (later developed by Martinet).
He considered each system in its own right, but was also crucially concerned with establishing universal explanatory laws of phonological organization (such as the symmetrical patterning in vowel systems), and his work involves the discussion of hundreds of languages, including their prosody.
Furthermore, the principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of sign languages , in which it is argued that the same or a similar phonological system underlies both signed and spoken languages. ( NOTE: It is defined that signs are distinguished from gestures in that the latter are non-linguistic or supply extra meaning alongside the linguistic message.)
Trubetzkoy vs. Saussure
Trubetzkoy, being basically Saussure’s second generation follower ( albeit affected by the Prague Linguistic School whose members were always feeling to be their destiny to "remake" Saussure for real-life world ), believed, as many famous linguists ever since, that the problem with publication of the Saussure’s major work --- stemming from the recollections of the two Saussure’s students who did not added Saussure’s later ideas and concepts ---- may lie with certain “staleness” and the need of the Saussure's work to be open to major discussions and improvements.
Hence, in one of the letters to Jacobson he wrote: “…. For inspiration I have reread de Saussure, but on a second reading he impresses me much less. …There is comparatively little in the book that is of value; most of it is old rubbish. And what is valuable is awfully abstract, without details…….”( Trubetzkoy 2001)
Trubetzkoy’s “Europe and Mankind”
This is his "other", non-linguistic, serious interest that historically precedes “Principles”. As an introduction to this other Trubetzkoy “mission”, his famous credo serves a good steed there:
“….By its very nature Eurasia is historically destined to comprise a single state entity…”( Trubetzkoy 1991).
There, Trubetzkoy apparently denies any meaningful political substance to the relations between European states. For him, they form a single political entity, however subdivided culturally, driven by Pan-European chauvinism constituted through a combination of self-interest and European civilizing mission.
The Trubetzkoy’s position is often couched as cosmopolitanism although some critics say that, in essence, it is only another facet of chauvinism. They feel that the only viable alternative to both ‘Europe’ and (Eurocentric) ‘mankind’ would be an intermediate entity, similar to Europe in its intrinsic cultural diversity, but different in what makes it hang together politically. And therein lies a problem.
Whereas conventional Western middle-grounds are usually sought on the terrain of international law and customary diplomatic practices, Trubetzkoy’s alternative, Pan-Eurasian nationalism, is rooted in two different levels, territorial and metaphysical, deliberately bypassing any legalistic structures. Trubetzkoy’s history and pledge is, however, profoundly Western in its logical structure. Logically, its Turanian myth is identical with the Athenian myth that circulated in Germany, for example, at least since the times of the Jena Romantics and certainly since Nietzsche.
Basically, Trubetzkoy’s feelings did not differ from those of other political émigrés in the history of the civilization. He was, however, unique in his belief that he can make a difference via his Pan-Eurasian publications and speeches.
Hence, characteristically, Trubetzkoy wrote in a letter to Savitskii in 1925:
“…..I am plainly terrified by what is happening to us. I feel that we have got ourselves into a swamp that, with every new step of ours, consumes us deeper and deeper. What are we writing about to each other? What are we talking about? What are we thinking about? - Only politics. We have to call things by their real name - we are politicking, living under the sign of the primacy of politics. This is death. Let us recall what We are. We - is a peculiar way of perceiving the world. And out of this peculiar perception a peculiar way of contemplating the world may grow. And from this mode of contemplation, incidentally, some political statements may be derived. But only incidentally!.....” ( Trubetzkoy 1991 ).
Legacy
Trubetzkoy was crucial in the development of phonology as a discipline distinct from phonetics, and the change in phonological focus from diachrony to synchrony. He is, and above all, the founder of morphophonology which is a branch of linguistics that studies the phonological structure of morphemes, the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation.
He was a true internationalist, and had contact with most of the other well known thinkers in phonology of the period, including Sapir, Hjemslev, Jones and Firth. He corresponded widely and was a serious organizer, aiming to work with those who agreed with him that a truly ‘phonological’ approach was necessary. He worked to set up an ‘International Phonology Association’.
He was, indeed, internationalist in more ways than one. His Euroasian ideas and sociologic treatises published all through the 20s and 30s in Russian and German ( some are collected and translated in Trubetzkoy 1991 ) had preceded the very similar ideas and themes --- seriously studied and pursued by European Union now --- by 80 years.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Jakobson, Roman (1939). ‘Nécrologie Nikolaj Sergejevic Trubetzkoy’. Acta
Linguistica 1. Reprinted in Thomas Sebeok (ed.). Portraits of Linguists. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966, pp. 526-542.
- Jakobson, Roman et al. (eds.) N.S. Trubetzkoy’s Letters and Notes, Mouton, The Hague 1975
- Trubetzkoy, N. Essai d’une théorie des oppositions phonologiques. Journal de Psychologie 33, pp. 5-18, 1936
- Trubetzkoy, N., Grundzuege der Phonologie. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 7, 1939, 272 p.
- Trubetzkoy, N., Grundzüge der Phonologie, Göttingen, 1958, 1977
- Trubetzkoy, N., Principles of Phonology ( trans. By Ch. Baltaxe), University of California Press, Berkeley 1969
- Trubetzkoy, N., Principes de phonologie. Translated by J. Cantineau, Klincksieck, Paris 1949, 1964, 1986
- Trubetzkoy N. S., “Europe and Mankind”, in: The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays on Russia's Identity ( ed., and with a postscript by A. Liberman), Michigan Slavic Publication, Ann Arbor 1991. S. 1-64.
- Trubetzkoy, N. ,Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure. Edited with an introduction by Anatoly Liberman. Translated by Marvin Taylor and Anatoly Liberman, Duke University Press, Durham 2001, p. 255
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