Moscow Linguistic School appeared at the end of the XIX century. It developed due to the ideas and works of the famous linguist Philip Fedorovich Fortunatov. He becomes the founder of the Moscow Linguistic School. The scientist had extensive experience in the field of knowledge and study of languages, since he worked at Moscow University for a long time.
The Moscow linguistic school became very famous thanks to Fortunatov’s research in the field of language, which radically changed the approach to the study of language rules and norms. He not only considers the language with the help of the synchronous method, he actively uses the diachronic version of the comparative historical analysis of the language.
How did the school differ from others?
The school was proudly named Fortunatovskaya in honor of its founder, but it is also customary to call it “formal”, because all the scientists of this association took into account only specific facts and not illusory theories. This is what distinguishes it from others, where a purely materialistic, unreasonable approach is used, due to which A. Schleicher or K. Becker was worth his work. The main idea of ​​the Fortunatov Moscow Linguistic School was to completely separate grammar from psychology and science.
Scientists who were part of it
Representatives of the Moscow Linguistic School became famous linguists and philologists - A. A. Shakhmatov, A. M. Peshkovsky, M. M. Pokrovsky, V. N. Nikolaevich and many other brilliant minds of that time.
All representatives are rightfully considered talented students of F.F. Fortunatov, who were able to bring to the ideal all the ideas of the scientist, thanks to which they were able to reach unprecedented heights in the knowledge of grammatical thought.
Activities
Representatives of the Moscow Linguistic School V.K. Porzhezinsky and I. Yu. Mikkola worked on the restoration of the Pre-Slavic language, and A. A. Shakhmatov and N. N. Durnovo worked on the Old Russian language.
Nicholas van Wake, by taking into account the method of relative chronology, got quite good results. He was able to learn about the main two laws of the Pre-Slavic language, which was based on the theory of increasing sonority, that is, from a deaf consonant to a voiced one or from a voiced consonant to a vowel, as well as the principle of syllable syngarmonism.
A. A. Shakhmatov and Nicholas van Wijk, S. M. Kulbakin are actively engaged in research in the field of pre-Slavic accentology. V.K. Porzhezinsky, G.K. Ulyanov and B.M. Lyapunov, after a period, were able to lay the necessary basis for the Pre-Slavic morphology. Erich Berneker became well-known for his useful discoveries in Proto-Slavic lexicology.
Later, a concrete distinction is made between letters and sounds, and research in the field of Pre-Slavic spelling and orthoepy has been crowned with success.
Russian dialectology also does not stand still, but is actively developing thanks to the leaders of the dialectological commission led by A. A. Shakhmatov.
Moscow Linguistic School is also developing in many other areas of the language.
The main merits of a linguistic school
In short, the Moscow Linguistic School was able to achieve a number of innovations in the field of language:
- identification of a number of rules of theoretical grammar, which appeared only due to real facts;
- comparative analysis by comparing all the languages ​​of the Indo-European group;
- the emergence of a new term - “morphology”, thanks to which it was possible to consider grammar from the point of view of history and the real situation in the language;
- creation of the theory of divergent convergent evolution of language;
- the emergence of the method of relative chronology.
Philip Fedorovich Fortunatov
F.F. Fortunatov and the Moscow Linguistic School helped philology develop and discover new realities. A linguist was born in 1848, he studied at the University of Moscow at the Faculty of History and Philology, where he discovered the desire to further engage in more knowledge of the language. He knew well the historical roots of the Indo-European group of languages ​​thanks to the extensive study of ancient Indian written monuments.
After graduation, he discovered new areas in the Lithuanian language with his colleague Vsevolod F. Miller.
In 1871, Fortunatov completed his magistracy and began working abroad for several years. Thanks to a trip to Europe, the philologist gets to know many scientists who also influence his subsequent activities.
After successfully defending his dissertation, Fortunatov became temporarily a professor in the department of comparative historical grammar of Indo-European languages ​​at Moscow State University. Thanks to this, the professor became not only an excellent linguist, philologist, linguist, but also a teacher. He created a special system of teaching precisely the linguistic sciences, which is becoming a reference point for many educators to this day. The system is based on teaching the student the basics of ancient Indian, Old Slavonic, Latin and Lithuanian languages.
Many teachers, not only in Russia but also abroad, were guided by the way Fortunatov conducted his lectures. In Sweden, England, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria, Romania, the method of the scientist became the leading one. Moreover, the most famous linguists and scientists in the field of language listened to Fortunatov's lectures. All this happened, since the philologist had an analytical mindset, he could easily add up facts that are not interconnected among themselves, consider the cause-effect relationships in them and put them together.
Moscow and St. Petersburg linguistic schools were similar to each other, as they set themselves similar goals. F.F. Fortunatov was a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg; therefore, he influenced the development of local theories in a peculiar way.
Moscow Linguistic School and lectures for students are the legacy that the linguist left behind. A concrete work that would generalize all his theories has not been created.
Views of Fortunatov
The main ideas that relate to the definition of language and its constituent parts are its work “Comparative Linguistics”. Fortunatov’s Moscow Linguistic School was developing ideas that would broadly reveal the concept of language and its categories, and it also worked on revealing the meaning of the concept of a complex of speech sounds.
According to Fortunatov, language is considered a strict, concrete system where everything is interconnected. It can be considered only in its entirety, taking into account both the current situation and historical facts.
Innovations of F.F. Fortunatov
The scientist raised a serious problem in his writings, which relates to the relationship between language and thinking. He believed that language is due to the fact that there is thinking, because without the latter there would be no reason to build oral or written speech.
The scientist considered it illogical to separate the language and the life of society, since there is an unbreakable connection between them. Based on this view, he deduced a convergent-divergent theory, which suggests that the process of change, disintegration of human unions is similar to the process of building words, sentences. Language is formed in exactly the same way as human society.
He also well understood that the Indo-European proto-language could be divided into dialects, therefore he criticized the work of A. Schleicher, which established that the proto-language has internal unity, therefore it could not be divided into dialects.
F.F. Fortunatov, with the help of his Moscow linguistic school, was able to derive two variations of stress in the language - ascending and descending. Almost simultaneously with the scientist de Saussure deduced a similar theory, therefore the theory is called the "law of Fortunatov de Saussure."
The philologist also developed his own classification of languages ​​of the whole world, which is called morphological. There are only five types of languages:
- Agglutinative languages, which are distinguished by the fact that their base and affix exist independently of each other, that is, in unity they become “glued together”.
- Inflective-agglutinative - the presence of internal inflection in the word stems is assumed, and the connection between the stem and the affix is ​​the same as agglutinative.
- Inflective - have foundations that are associated with affixes and inflections.
- Root languages ​​- all words fully correspond to the root, but there are no foundations with endings.
- Polysynthetic languages ​​- certain forms of words are formed agglutinatively.
Area of ​​activity
The general characteristic of the Moscow Linguistic School shows that its main area of ​​activity is the grammar of the language. An understanding was sought of the basic laws and rules that control the grammatical processes of a language. The priority was to compare all the languages ​​of the Indo-European group in order to comprehensively track all the connections and better understand the main points.
That is why today in many universities they consider language from the point of view of comparative linguistics.
Alexey Alexandrovich Shakhmatov
One of the members of the Moscow Linguistic School was A. A. Shakhmatov, who, while still a high school student, revered Fortunatov’s activities, tried to help him in every possible way by participating in his research work. Back at the university, the scientist developed a Ph.D. essay, "A Study on the Language of Novgorod Letters."
Chess, with his passion for language, resembled Fortunatov himself; he could put concrete facts into stunning hypotheses. Thanks to this skill, he was able to tell people the story of the creation of the great “Tale of Bygone Years”.
An additional hobby for Shakhmatov was syntax. He released the book “Syntax of the Russian language”, in which he sets the goal of solving the problem of syntax, based on the relationship between language and human thinking. The main difference from Fortunatov is the belief that the main unit of this department of grammar is not a phrase, but a sentence.
The scientist’s syntactic theory was based on the doctrine of communication, which is also directly related to the thought process.
Alexander Matveevich Peshkovsky
A. M. Peshkovsky at the Moscow Linguistic School is actively working, studying processes in the language. Initially, he studies at the natural department of Moscow University. He was later expelled due to the fact that he participated in revolutionary actions.
After this incident, Peshkovsky is actively engaged in philology. He becomes a good teacher, because he has been teaching at Moscow gymnasiums for a long period. That is why many of the scientist's works look not only as a conversation with scientists, but also with students, whom he wants to teach everything that he knows.
Peshkovsky's works
Peshkovsky's most famous and successful work is Russian Syntax in Scientific Lighting. The book was received very positively, as it radically changed the views of many school teachers and students. The previous grammar of F. I. Buslaev was not so perfect, since it did not distinguish between oral and written speech. Moreover, many of the points in his grammar were not fully understood, as a result of which they were simplified and changed. Peshkovsky is trying to create something that will be clear to everyone, and that’s what goes well with him.