PrinceNikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy[1](Russian:Николай Сергеевич Трубецкой,IPA:[trʊbʲɪtsˈkoj];16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was a Russianlinguistandhistorianwhose teachings formed a nucleus of thePrague Schoolofstructural linguistics.He is widely considered to be the founder ofmorphophonology.He was also associated with the RussianEurasianists.
Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy | |
|---|---|
| Николай Трубецкой | |
 | |
| Born | 16 April 1890 |
| Died | 25 June 1938(aged 48) |
Life and career
editTrubetzkoy was born into privilege. His father,Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy,came from aLithuanianGediminidprincely family.In 1908, he enrolled at theMoscow University.While spending some time at theUniversity of Leipzig,Trubetzkoy was taught byAugust Leskien,a pioneer of research intosound laws.[2]
After he graduated from the Moscow University (1913), Trubetzkoy delivered lectures there until theRussian Revolution,when he moved first to theUniversity of Rostov-on-Don,then to theUniversity of Sofia(1920–1922) and finally took the chair of Professor of Slavic Philology at theUniversity of Vienna(1922-1938). Trubetzkoy was involved with theEurasianistmovement and became one of their leading theorists and political leaders. After the emergence of "left Eurasianism" in Paris, where some of the movement's leaders became pro-Soviet, Trubetzkoy who was a staunchanti-communistheavily criticised them and eventually broke with the Eurasianist movement.[3]
He died from a heart attack attributed toNazipersecution after he had published an article that was highly critical ofHitler's theories.
Trubetzkoy's chief contributions to linguistics lie in the domain ofphonology,particularly in the analyses of the phonological systems of individual languages and in the search for general and universal phonological laws. His magnum opus,Grundzüge der Phonologie(Principles of Phonology)[4]was issued posthumously in which he defined thephonemeas the smallest distinctive unit within the structure of a given language. It was crucial in establishing phonology as a discipline separate fromphonetics.
Trubetzkoy also wrote as aliterary critic.InWritings on Literature,a brief collection of translated articles, he analyzedRussian literaturebeginning with theOld RussianepicThe Tale of Igor's Campaignand proceeding to19th-century Russian poetryandDostoevsky.[5]
It is sometimes hard to distinguish Trubetzkoy's views from those of his friendRoman Jakobson,who should be credited with spreading the Prague School views on phonology after Trubetzkoy's death.
As structuralist
editIn his biography of the mathematical collectiveNicolas Bourbaki,Amir Aczeldescribed Trubetzkoy as a pioneer instructuralism,an interdisciplinary outgrowth of structural linguistics that would be applied in mathematics by the Bourbaki group, as in the notion of amathematical structure,and in anthropology byClaude Lévi-Strauss,who sought to describe rules governing human behavior. According to Aczel, Trubetzkoy's focus inPrinciples of Phonologywas the study ofphonemesand their opposing aspects to describe rules of language, the goal of describing general underlying rules being the common goal of structuralism.[6]
See also
edit- Sprachbund,a linguistic term coined by Trubetzkoy
Notes
edit- ^AlsotransliteratedTroubetskoy,Trubetskoy,etc.
- ^Roman Jakobson,Selected Writings,Vol. VII, Walter de Gruyter, 1985, p. 266.
- ^"Николай Смирнов. Левое евразийство и постколониальная теория".syg.ma(in Russian).Retrieved2022-05-11.
- ^Trubetzkoy, Nikolai (1969).Principles of phonology.Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN0520015355.
- ^Trubetzkoy, Nikolai (1990).Writings on Literature.University of Minnesota Press.ISBN0816617937.
- ^Aczel, Amir D. (2006).The Artist and the Mathematician: the Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed.Thunder's Mouth Press. pp. 129–159.ISBN9781560259312.
References
edit- Anderson, Stephen R.(1985).Phonology in the Twentieth Century. Theories of Rules and Theories of Representations.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp 83–116.
- Intellectual Biography of Nikolai Trubetzkoyat the Gallery of Russian Thinkers (International Society for Philosophers)