A Short History of the Prague Linguistic Circle and its Syntactic Followers in Czechoslovakia

Ale Svoboda

The first session of the Prague Linguistic Circle as an informal group of linguists was held on October 6, 1926, when a young German scholar, Dr. Henrik Becker (Leipzig) visited Prague and gave there a lecture entitled Der europische Sprachgeist (The European Spirit of Language). The session took place in the English seminar of Charles University and was attended by V. Mathesius (born 1882, Head of the seminar), J. Rypka (1886), B. Havrnek (1893), B. Trnka (1895) and R. Jakobson (1896). A lively discussion which followed the lecture brought many thought-provoking ideas and quite a number of suggestions aiming at a new approach to the investigation of language. The participants were delighted with the outcome of the lecture to such an extent that they decided to go on with sessions of this kind throughout the academic year. There were nine sessions in 1926-27, eleven in 1927-28, and in the following years the number of lectures gradually increased while the number of participants did not exceed ten. This enabled the members of the Circle apart from the official lectures to hold informal discussion evenings at their homes and in this way to strengthen personal bonds and mutual understanding, which are necessary prerequisites of any collective work. The Circle made its first public appearance at the First International Congress of Linguists at The Hague in 1928. It was because four of its members (Mathesius, Trubetzkoy (1890), Jakobson and Karcevskij (1887)) found out that their written and independently formulated answers to the question of the preparatory committee as to what the most appropriate method of a thorough analysis of any language might be were very close to the answers of the two representatives of the Geneva school, Ch. Bally and A. Sechehay. They arranged a meeting which resulted in joint theses announcing the programme of a new, synchronistically oriented language analysis. The theses were unanimously accepted by the plenary session of the Congress and hence represented an international success of structuralist and functionalist ideas. Encouraged by the positive reaction abroad, the Prague linguists decided to prepare a detailed conception of language analysis based on the Prague approach, which they denoted as structurally functional, for the First Congress of Slavicists (Prague 1929). The conception was a piece of collective work done prevalently by Mathesius, Jakobson, Havrnek and Mukaovsk (1891). It was fully accepted by the Congress and a ten-member international committee was elected to prepare and coordinate the analysis of Slavic languages along the lines of the Prague conception. Another decision of the Circle was to prepare a project in phonology for the Second International Congress of Linguists (Geneva 1931). In 1930, they summoned a preparatory International Phonological Conference to Prague, where they presented a proposal of the standard phonological terminology, set up the principles of phonological transcription, and prepared the foundation of the International Phonological Association with the aim to carry out the phonological description of the languages of the world. In Geneva, these proposals were unanimously accepted and the Association was established with Trubetzkoy as its President, Jakobson as its Secretary, and Mathesius as its Treasurer. In the meantime, the Prague Linguistic Circle was given the official approval by the Czechoslovak authorities and started to exist de jure. At its opening session on December

1, 1930, the seventeen founding members re-elected a four-member committee (Mathesius President, Jakobson Vice-President, Trnka Secretary, Mukaovsk Treasurer) and thus confirmed the status quo. It is worth mentioning that 1930 is also the year when J. Vachek (1909) as a student began to do secretarial work for the Circle, and in 1931, a new generation of linguists started to make their appearances. Lectures in the Circle were given by J. Vachek, . Novk (born 1908), V. Skalika (1909), A. Isaenko (1911), P. Trost (1906), J. Ruika (1916), K. Horlek (1908) and others. The number of members of the Circle, however, grew rather slowly. At its 10th anniversary in 1936 it counted slightly over 50 members. But their activity and their influence were felt everywhere. As a reaction to the extremely puristic approach to language in the Czech linguistic journal Nae e (Our Speech), the prominent members of the Circle gave a series of public radio lectures on Standard Czech and the Cultivation of Language in 1932. The lectures on Standard Czech laid a reliable theoretical basis of a more flexible practical approach to the changes in the phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic structures of language. At the same time they represented a pioneering work in the popularization of functional linguistics and its impact on the everyday use of language. The editorial activity of the Circle started in 1929. On the occasion of the First Congress of Slavicists in Prague, the first two volumes of famous Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague appeared. The first volume contained twelve studies on general linguistic topics and the French version of the Theses of the Circle, the second volume was Jakobsons monograph Remarques sur lvolution phonologique du russe compare a celle des autres langues slaves. Till 1939, eight volumes appeared, the last being dedicated to N. Trubetzkoy in memoriam. Apart from the Travaux, where the contributions were written mostly in French or German, five volumes of Studie Praskho lingvistickho krouku (Studies of the Prague Linguistic Circle) appeared between 1937 and 1950, where the contributions were mostly rendered in Czech. In 1935, the Circle started to publish Slovo a slovesnost (Word and Verbal Art), a quarterly, which became the leading linguistic periodical in the country. The Prague linguists also published their monographs and papers of the universities in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava. This is because not all the prominent members of the Circle settled permanently in Prague. Havrnek (1929-1945) and Jakobson (19331939) were Professors at Brno University, and Trubetzkoy held the post of Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the University in Vienna (1923-1938). Nevertheless, the chief juncture and the point out of which the functionally structural ideas radiated with greatest force was Prague. The circumstances immediately preceding the Second World War and the war itself had a devastating effect on the Circle. The first blow was Trubetzkoys death as an indirect consequence of the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938. Shortly before March 15, 1939, the day of the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Jakobson endangered by the racist and political persecution escaped to Denmark and later (via Norway and Sweden) to the U.S.A. In November 1939, Czech universities together with their libraries were closed, and progress in any kind of research work became more and more difficult. Despite the unfavourable circumstances, the lectures of the Circle continued, but of course outside the university. The publications were subject to severe restrictions, too. In 1939-41, two volumes of the Czech Studie Praskho lingvistickho krouku appeared, but the Travaux with French and English papers were prohibited. The collection of papers in honour Mathesius as sexagenarian were not allowed to appear either. In 1943 together with other Czech periodicals Slovo a slovesnost was stopped and next volumes appeared as late as 1947. But the greatest blow came just at the end of the war. On April 12, 1945, Mathesius died, and one famous chapter of the history of the Prague Linguistic Circle was closed.

The pre-war development of the Prague Linguistic Circle can be seen as a fair-play competition between two distinctly differentiated streams of thought: the TrubetzkoyJakobson stream, following general systemic contours with the fine sense of what is called modelling of language nowadays, and the Mathesius-Havrnek stream, analysing the subtle network of the inner systemic relations with special regard to functional specification of the means of expression within the system of a given language. Both the streams are functionally structural, with Trubetzkoy-Jakobson laying more emphasis on the structural, while Mathesius-Havrnek foregrounding the functional. No explicit mention of syntax has been made so far, but the history of any branch of structuralism is in a sense a syntactic history as well. Structuralism implies syntax. To put it in a most trivial way, syntax deals with the connection of certain units, and what structuralism aims at is finding the units and revealing the way they are interlaced. The Prague School as any other structuralist school set up the units at different levels of language and examined their interrelations. Being a functionalist school, however, it approached the units and their relations from the viewpoint of how they satisfy the communicative needs of the language user in the very act of communication. The members of the Circle were very versatile linguists. Many of them examined language phenomena at different levels, phonetic and phonological, graphical, morphological and morphonological, lexical, syntactic and even hypersyntactic, with special regard to semiology (semasiology), sociology, and what is nowadays called pragmatics. Why phonology and morphology stood in the foreground of their endeavour may be explained among other things by the fact that these two disciplines brought greatest success to the Neogrammarians, and for the Prague linguists it was a challenge to use this very battlefield to show what the new, functionally structural approach was able to offer. Trnka, for instance, started with syntax (his monograph On the syntax of the English verb from Caxton to Dryden appeared as Volume Three of the Travaux in 1930), but later on turned to phonology and morphology to explain some issues for which satisfactory answers had not been offered before. If the syntactic questions did not stand in the foreground, they were not dismissed or ignored. When the Prague linguists examined phenomena at different levels and showed how the structural lay-out at one level influenced the structure at another level, they could not disregard the problems of syntax. They took up a number of separate syntactic issues especially in their stylistic and poetic studies, but with the exception of Mathesius they did not follow the syntactic line consistently and they did not grasp the syntactic structure as a whole. Mathesius also devoted some of his papers to selected syntactic phenomena (e.g., the comparison of English and Czech predication, the nominal tendencies in English, the apposition as non-verbal predication), but he was most consistent in following one structural aspect of the sentence the functional sentence analysis , and laid foundations to what we call today Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). He gave the old terms psychological subject and psychological predicate, not only new names theme and rheme , but also a new linguistic content. He gradually elaborated his functional structure of the sentence by distinguishing the centre of theme, the centre of rheme and transitional elements. He is the only one who presented an outline of a functional system at the level of syntax, with some of its problems solved, but also with many others left open to discussion. (It is well worth mentioning that Mathesius syntactic theory of theme and rheme found a lively response in papers on poetics by Mukaovsk and other literary critics in the Circle. The literary stream of the Prague structuralism, however, would deserve a special treatment, which exceeds the scope of the present paper.) The post-war history of the Circle is comparatively short and disappointing in spite of the fact that the Prague linguists had good reasons to look forward with optimism. In Prague, the tradition was carried on by Havrnek (Czech and comparative Slavic), Trnka (English),

Trost (general linguistics), Skalika (Ugro-Finnic, typology), and Horlek (comparative Slavic), and further developed by a new generation of pre-war graduates as M. Dokulil (born 1912, Czech), A. Jedlika (1915, Czech), and J. Krmsk (1913, English). In 1945, J. Vachek came to Brno to continue the dissemination of Prague School ideas as Professor of English in the English seminar of Brno University, and remained there till 1962 (when he responded to Havrneks call and became a member of the Institute of the Czech Language in Prague). (Another name to mention in the connection with Brno is F. Kopen (1910, Czech syntax), who also taught at Olomouc University.) The Slovaks Novk, Ruika, and E. Pauliny (1912) kept the Prague tradition in Bratislava, and Isaenko (Russian, comparative Slavic) and I. Poldauf (1915, English) at the University of Olomouc. The post-war university students wished to make up for the time lost during the war and were eager to learn. The extensive and intensive pedagogical activities of the members of the Circle made their research work recede into the background. Nevertheless, they prepared collective theses for the Sixth International Congress of Linguists (Paris 1948), and two of the founding members of the Circle were asked to deliver plenary lectures Jakobson on the relation of phonology and morphology, and Trnka on the relation of morphology and syntax. By coincidence, neither of them could attend the Congress, but their lectures were read at the plenary session. In 1948 1950, linguistics suffered under the oppression of N. J. Marrs doctrine of stadialism in the development of language. This obstacle to serious research was removed by the Soviet discussion on linguistics held in Moscow in 1950, but further accusations of non-marxist deviations within the Prague School theory made it impossible for its adherers to continue their research in a collective and conceptually clear-cut manner. In 1952, research institutions were re-organized and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was established. The Prague Linguistic Circle as an official organization ceased to exist, and in its place two linguistic societies were formed: Jazykovdn sdruen (the Linguistic Association) with its orientation on Czech, Slavic and general linguistics (President Havrnek), and Kruh modernch filolog (the Circle of Modern Philologists) with its orientation on western languages and literatures. The latter organization had the Section of Functional Linguistics (presided by Trnka). At this juncture, it might be of interest to make a small diversion and examine the statistical data concerning the type of lectures delivered in the Prague Linguistic Circle from 1926 to 1952 as offered by J. Vachek (see Bibliographical Note below). The figures are kept separate for the periods 1926 June 1936, and October 1936 autumn 1952 (the list of lectures in 1949-51 has not been preserved), to show possible shifts in orientation: 1926-1936 general theory and philosophy of language, linguistic methodology phonetics and phonology graphology morphology, syntax lexis, semantics dialectology, ling. geography 26 36 6 10 5 8 1936-1952 33 25 2 20 9 9 total 59 61 8 30 14 17

the cultivation of language, esp. its standardization poetics, literary criticism

23 41 155

13 39 150

36 80 305

As can be seen from the table above, syntax and morphology represent only ten per cent of the total. The ratio ten to twenty in the two separate periods does not mean any substantial increase in syntactic topics. Although it may be misleading to judge by the names of lectures, the probable syntactic ratio is six to eight in favour of the latter period. A considerable growth of interest in syntax can be clearly perceived in the latter half of 1950s, when a young generation of post-war graduates began to publish the results of their research and poured new blood into Czechoslovak linguistics. In Prague, F. Dane (born 1919) monograph Intonace a vta ve spisovn etin (Intonation and Sentence in Standard Czech, Prague 1957) re-opened Mathesius topic of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) and related it to sentence intonation. At Brno, Vacheks disciple J. Firbas (1921, English and comparative linguistics) began to publish his papers (e.g., Some Thoughts on the Function of Word Order in Old English and Modern English, Opera Universitatis Brunnensis, 1957) based on Mathesius conception of FSP, which he later developed into an intricate system of functional syntax. At the beginning of the 1960s, it was quite clear that there is small army of linguists ready to carry on and develop the functionalist and structuralist legacy of the Prague School, especially in the field of syntax. They were to give a few names, at least K. Hausenblas (Czech, discourse analysis), P. Sgall (comparative Indo-European, algebraic and general linguistics), L. Doleel (Czech stylistics), J. Nosek (English), M. Rensk (English), E. Bene (German), V. Hoej (French), O. Leka (Russian) and P. Adamec (Russian) in Prague, J. Bauer, M. Grepl, J. Balhar (all Czech syntax), M. Jelnek, J. Chloupek (both Czech stylistics), R. Veerka, D. losar (both historical Slavic and Czech), M. ejka (general linguistics), R. Mrzek and S. aa (both Russian) in Brno, J. Horeck (Slovak, general linguistics), J. Mistrk (Slovak stylistics) and J. imko (English) in Bratislava, H. Bliov-Kkov (Czech and comparative Slavic) and R. Zimek (Russian, general linguistics) in Olomouc. These scholars were not only great in number, they were also great in their joint effort to revive the Prague School of Linguistics and to fight for its best reputation both at home and abroad. The unfavourable political conditions of the 50s changed for the better, the ideological allegations of the anti-marxist character of the Prague School theory as far as linguistics was concerned lost its force, and the Prague School adherers won their first battle by getting permission to revive the Travaux series. The first volume was prepared with great care and appeared in 1964 under a slightly different title Travaux linguistiques de Prague. The atmosphere of creative cooperation was re-established and the research could be steered towards the solution of selected key problems. So the second volume (1966) was devoted to the centre and the periphery, the basic theoretical concepts of enthusiasts at the Institute of the Czech Language of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague, and it was the natural consequence of a natural selection that Dane became its Director in 1965. Other Prague linguists (not mentioned before) that made their appearances in the 60s and contributed to the upsurge of syntactic studies are L. Dukov, O. Ulin, J. V. Neustupn, Z. Hlavsa, P. Novk, P. Palek, L. Uhlov, K. Pala, most of them closely connected either with Dane Institute, or with Sgalls team (see below).

At Charles University, P. Sgall set up a team of excellent linguists (E. Hajiov, E. Beneov-Burov, J. Panevov, P. Piha and others), who took up the latest achievements of the generative and transformational grammar, combined them with the Prague School results, and developed them into a functionally structural system of their own. The team greatly contributed to the application and popularization of mathematical linguistics, to the development of the theory of FSP and its typological consequences, and to the elaboration of the computer analysis of natural languages. At Brno University, the Slavicists started a series of International Syntactic Conferences on the problems of Slavic syntax and general linguistics. The First Conference took place in 1961, the Second in 1965. The proceedings were published in a newly founded series Otzky slovansk syntaxe (The Questions of Slavic Syntax), which became representative collections of papers on syntax and comparative linguistics. In the English Department of Brno University, Firbas brought up a number of disciples (E. Dvokov-Golkov, A. Svoboda, E. Horov, J. Zeman, L. Urbanov and others), who created what is sometimes called the Brno School of FSP. Their point of departure is Firbas conception of FSP, based on the idea (in broad outlines suggested already by Mathesius) of functional pluripartition of the sentence (with several thematic, transitional and rhematic units) seen as the outcome of the interplay of the four factors of FSP context, semantics, linearity, and in spoken language intonation. In mid 60s, J. Vachek published two books on the Prague School theory and practice A Prague School Reader in Linguistics (Bloomington 1964) and The Linguistic School of Prague (Bloomington and London 1966). In 1968, the third volume of the new Travaux appeared, and in 1969, Sgall et al. made themselves known with A Functional Approach to Syntax in Generative Description of Language (New York). In 1970, Dane Institute of the Czech Language organized the First International Conference on FSP at Marinsk Lzn. In many respects the spirit of the conference was very close to the spirit of the pre-war Circle. Dane paper on thematic progressions meant a further step towards hypersyntax and text linguistics. The conference resulted in accepting a joint declaration, and everyone was convinced that it was a promising start to further FSP studies and their radiation abroad. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops in 1968, the political situation gradually changed for the worse. The fourth volume of the Travaux linguistiques de Prague appeared with a years delay (1971) and no further volume has been published as yet, the proceedings of the FSP conference (under the title Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, ed. F. Dane, Prague) appeared with some difficulties as late as 1974, and Vacheks Prolegomena k djinm prask koly jazykovdn (Prolegomena to the History of the Prague School of Linguistics) were not given a chance to appear at all. The Third International Syntactic Conference in Brno took place in 1971 and the Fourth (and for the time being the last) was held in 1976, with the proceedings Otzky slovansk syntaxe IV being published in two volumes (IV/1, IV/2) as late as 1979 and 1980, respectively. (This did not happen because of a long waiting list in the printers office or because there were too many papers in one volume, but because many petty and less petty skirmishes and fights with political administrators had to be won before one of the papers delivered by a scholar who took an active part in the process of democratization in 1968 (M. Jelnek) was given permission to be published (in the postponed volume IV/2, of course). It honours the editors, who refused to publish the volume without the incriminated paper, but it also shows that lot of effort and energy had to be spent on non-linguistic matters. For the less initiated, it should be added that this was no exceptional case. The contrary was true.) Although there was no direct attack on the Prague School linguistic theory, great political and administrative care was taken to prevent any manifestation of the Prague School ideas on a large scale. Individual papers or monographs were published as before, lectures

were delivered as before, academic discussions were held as before, but the absence of the official support and lack of institutional background represented a serious obstacle to quicker and more coordinated development. It was quite an achievement of F. Dane, D. Viehweger (Berlin) and their collaborators to start an uninterrupted series of biannual monothematic conferences (organized by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the (East) German Academy of Sciences) on various topics of general linguistics, text linguistics, pragmalinguistics and even on interdisciplinary issues with special regard to syntax. The participation was not restricted to members of the host organizations, so many other linguists from outside have been frequently invited. Attractive topics, interesting papers and thoughtprovoking discussions have become characteristic features of these sessions. As an internal print, the Institute of the Czech Language launched the series of Linguistica (17 volumes have appeared so far), where the proceedings of the biannual conferences, joint CzechGerman papers, monographs by members of the Institute, and collections of their papers are published. All the members of P. Sgalls team are well-initiated researchers and prolific writers. Among several monographs and many papers published in Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics, in other linguistic journals both in Czechoslovakia and abroad, and in their internal Bulletin, let us mention at least three books that had considerable impact on the development of functional and structural syntactic thinking: Sgall et al., Topic, Focus and Generative Semantics (Kronberg 1973), E. Hajiov, Negace a presupozice ve vznamov stavb vty (Negation and Presupposition in the Semantic Structure of the Sentence, Prague 1975), and Aktuln lenn vty v etin (The Functional Sentence Perspective in Czech, Prague 1980), which was the first monograph investigating the system of FSP in Czech in its entirety. In Brno, Firbas himself has written over 60 papers on FSP, published in various linguistic journals and books all over the world, but his key papers as well as those written by his collaborators can be found in the series Brno Studies in English (started by Vachek in 1959). In the 60s, the contributions were mostly devoted to the examination of traditional sentence members from the viewpoint of FSP (Firbas Subject, Verb, Object; DvokovGolkov Adverbial; Svoboda Attributive Constructions), in the 70s, they focussed on the integration of FSP into the system of language (Firbas the FSP analysis of questions and a fundamental study, A Functional View of Ordo Naturalis (1979); Svoboda, Materna, Pala An Ordered-Triple Theory of Language (1976)), and in the 80s, they offered a further refinement of the FSP theory (Firbas FSP and Intonation, Svoboda Thematic Elements, and Functional Perspective of the Noun Phrase). Although Slovo a slovesnost, the leading Czech linguistic journal, did not celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mathesius birthday to the extent the founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle would have deserved, the publishing house Odeon made up for it by publishing two prominent and voluminous books of selected papers J. Mukaovsk: Studie z poetiky (Studies in Poetics, ed. H. Mukaovsk et al., 1982): and V. Mathesius: Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost (Language, Culture, and Verbal Art, ed. J. Vachek, 1982). Since the beginning of the 80s, text linguistics has become an ever-increasing attraction for the linguists. In the Prague Institute of the Czech Language, a very active team, consisting of J. Koensk, J. Hoffmannov, O. Mllerov, I. Nebesk, and J. Nekvapil, offers a number of sophisticated papers that are more than food for thought. Further syntacticians to be mentioned in this connection are P. Karlk (Brno), J. Trnyikov (Olomouc) and M. Bzlik (Bratislava). Two books that appeared in the 80s should not remain unnoticed as they are samples of the functional and the structural approach of the pre-war Circle enriched with the present contributions of linguistics F. Dane: Vta a text (Sentence and Text, Prague

1985), and F. Dane Z. Hlavsa: Vtn vzorce v etin (Sentence Patterns in Czech, Prague 1981). An outstanding piece of work, done by leading Czech grammarians in the 80s, is the academic Grammar of Czech in three volumes. The third volume (Mluvnice etiny 3, Prague 1987) is devoted to syntax and was prepared under the supervision of F. Dane. It is a collective work of syntacticians from Prague, Brno and Olomouc, and represents the latest exploits of syntactic research applied to the structure of Czech. An extensive chapter on FSP was written by L. Uhlov from the Prague Institute, but her treatment of this issue is based mainly on the Brno conception of FSP. (At present, Uhlov together with Bliov is preoccupied with the project of a syntactic comparison of all the Slavic languages.) The abrupt and fundamental change of the political climate in Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989 opened the possibility of restructuring both the educational and the research institutions in accordance with their ultimate goals, and strengthened the hope that scholars and researchers will be free to develop their work according to their own ideas and beliefs. As to the prospect of reviving the Prague School tradition in pre-war dimensions, there are two different opinions: Some linguists are convinced that the enthusiasm of the Prague Linguistic Circle cannot be re-evoked and the achievements cannot be repeated because they were the outcome of a specific situation in linguistics at the specific time and under specific circumstances supported by the presence of certain scholars in Prague. Other present-day linguists, however, hold the view that the ideas of the Circle have not been exhausted yet, that they still have their full force to conquer new, unknown horizons, and given a sufficient institutional support they will shake the world anew. Which of the two groups of Prague School successors are right in assessing the future developments remains to be seen in not too distant future because on February 15, 1990, the Prague Linguistic Circle was reestablished, with J. Vachek as its life-long President. May 1990 Ale Svoboda

Bibliographical note: The information on the pre-war Prague Linguistic Circle and the statistical data concerning the lectures were drawn on J. Vacheks Prolegomena k djinm prask koly jazykovdn (written 1971, published H&H, Jinoany, 1999). Further details of the history of the Circle may be found in V. Mathesius paper Deset let Praskho lingvistickho krouku (Slovo a slovesnost 2, 1936-37, pp. 137-145, reprinted in Mathesius Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost, Odeon, Prague, pp. 439-448) and in J. Vacheks The Linguistic School of Prague, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, 1966), which was also the source of some personal data cited above.