Schwartz's dramaturgy specificity. Comic in a poetic and dramatic tale
SHERBA, LEV VLADIMIROVICH (1880–1944), Russian linguist, specialist in general linguistics, Russian, Slavic and French. Born February 20 (March 3), 1880 in St. Petersburg. In 1903 he graduated from St. Petersburg University, a student of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay. In 1916–1941 he was a professor at the Petrograd (Leningrad) University. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1943. In the last years of his life he worked in Moscow, where he died on December 26, 1944.
Shcherba entered the history of linguistics primarily as an outstanding specialist in phonetics and phonology. He developed the concept of the phoneme, which he adopted from Baudouin, and developed the original “Leningrad” phonological concept, whose adherents (M.I. Matusevich, L.R. Zinder, etc.) together with Shcherba formed the Leningrad phonological school. Her polemic with the Moscow Phonological School is a vivid episode in the history of Russian phonology. Back in the pre-revolutionary years, Shcherba founded a phonetic laboratory at St. Petersburg University, the oldest of those currently existing in Russia; it currently bears his name. Author of the books Russian vowels in qualitative and quantitative terms (1912), Eastern Lusatian dialect (1915), Phonetics of the French language (7th edition, 1963).
Shcherba's contribution to general linguistics, lexicology and lexicography, and the theory of writing is also significant. Important ideas are contained in his articles On Parts of Speech in Russian (1928), On the Trinity Aspect of Linguistic Phenomena and on Experiments in Linguistics (1931), Experience in the General Theory of Lexicography (1940), and Regular Problems of Linguistics (1946, posthumously). Shcherba proposed an original concept of language and speech, different from the concept of F. de Saussure, introducing a distinction between not two, but three sides of the object of linguistics: speech activity, language system and language material. Rejecting the psychological approach to language characteristic of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and others, Shcherba at the same time raised the question of the speaker’s speech activity, which allows him to produce statements he had never heard before; here he anticipated some ideas of linguistics of the second half of the 20th century.
Shcherba's consideration of the question of an experiment in linguistics is also connected with the formulation of this problem. A linguistic experiment, in Shcherba's understanding, is a verification of the correctness/acceptability of a linguistic expression built by a researcher on the basis of some theoretical concept. In this case, the arbitrator can be either the researcher himself (if a language well known to him is being studied), or a native speaker (informant), or a specially selected group of informants. Judgments about the incorrectness/unacceptability of the constructed expressions obtained during the experiment turn these expressions into negative language material (Shcherba's term), which is an important source of information about the language. Understood in this way, the linguistic experiment is the methodological basis of modern linguistic semantics and pragmatics, one of the most important research methods in field linguistics (the study of non-written languages), and partly in sociolinguistics; his understanding played a significant role in the formation of the theory of linguistic models in the 1960s.
Shcherba posed the problem of constructing an active grammar that goes from meanings to forms expressing these meanings (in contrast to the more traditional passive grammar that goes from forms to meanings). Being engaged in lexicology and lexicography, he clearly formulated the importance of distinguishing between the scientific and "naive" meanings of the word, proposed the first scientific typology of dictionaries in Russian linguistics. As a practicing lexicographer, he (together with M.I. Matusevich) was the author of a large Russian-French dictionary.
Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich - an outstanding Russian linguist, considered the founder of the St. Petersburg phonological school. Every philologist knows his name. This scientist was interested not only in the Russian literary language, but also in many others, as well as their relationship. His work contributed to the active development of linguistics. All this is an occasion to get to know such an outstanding scientist as Lev Shcherba. His biography is presented in this article.
Studying at the gymnasium and university
In 1898 he graduated from the Kyiv gymnasium with a gold medal, and then entered the Kiev University, the natural faculty. The following year, Lev Vladimirovich moved to St. Petersburg University, to the department of history and philology. Here he worked mainly in psychology. In his 3rd year, he attended lectures on introduction to linguistics by Professor Baudouin de Courtenay. He became interested in his approach to scientific issues and began to study under the guidance of this professor. Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich in his senior year wrote an essay awarded a gold medal. It is called "Psychic Element in Phonetics". In 1903 he completed his studies at the university, and Baudouin-de-Courtenay left Shcherba at the department of Sanskrit and comparative grammar.
Business trips abroad
St. Petersburg University in 1906 sent Lev Vladimirovich abroad. He spent a year in Northern Italy, learning Tuscan dialects on his own. Then, in 1907, Shcherba moved to Paris. He got acquainted with the equipment in the laboratory of experimental phonetics, studied French and the phonetic method and worked independently on experimental material.
Learning the Lusatian Dialect
In Germany, Lev Vladimirovich spent 1907 and 1908. He studied the dialect in the vicinity of Muskau. Baudouin de Courtenay aroused interest in this Slavic language of the peasants in him. Studying it was necessary to develop a theory of mixing languages. Lev Vladimirovich settled in the vicinity of the city of Muskau, in the countryside, not understanding a single word in the dialect being studied. Shcherba learned the language while living with an adoptive family, participating in field work with her, sharing Sunday entertainment. Lev Vladimirovich designed the collected materials into a book, which was submitted by Shcherba for a doctoral degree. In Prague, he spent the end of his business trip abroad, learning the Czech language.
Cabinet of experimental phonetics
Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich, having returned to St. Petersburg, began to work in the experimental phonetics room, which was founded in 1899 at the university, but was in a neglected state for a long time. This office is Shcherba's favorite brainchild. Having achieved subsidies, he ordered and built special equipment, constantly replenished the library. For more than 30 years, under his leadership, research has been continuously conducted here on the phonological systems and phonetics of the languages of various peoples of the Soviet Union. For the first time in Russia, in his laboratory, Lev Shcherba organized training in the pronunciation of the languages of Western Europe. Lev Vladimirovich in the early 1920s created a project for the Linguistic Institute with the involvement of various specialists. For him, the connections of phonetics with many other disciplines, such as physics, psychology, physiology, neurology, psychiatry, etc., were always clear.
Lectures, presentations
Beginning in 1910, Lev Shcherba lectured on an introduction to such a subject as at the Psychoneurological Institute, and also taught phonetics classes at special courses designed for teachers of the deaf and dumb. In 1929, a seminar on experimental phonetics was organized in the laboratory for a group of speech therapists and doctors.
Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich made several presentations at the Society of Otolaryngologists. His connections with voice and diction specialists, with singing theorists and with the artistic world were no less lively. In the early 1920s, the Soviet linguist Shcherba worked at the Living Word Institute. In 1930 he gave lectures on the Russian language and phonetics at the Russian Theater Society, and also read a report at the Leningrad State Conservatory, at the vocal department.
Laboratory development
In the years 1920-1930, his laboratory became a first-class research institution. New equipment was installed in it, the composition of its employees gradually increased, and the range of its work expanded. Researchers from all over the country began to come here, mainly from the national republics.
Period from 1909 to 1916
From 1909 to 1916 - a very fruitful period in the life of Shcherba in scientific terms. He wrote 2 books during these 6 years and defended them, becoming first a master and then a doctor. In addition, Lev Vladimirovich led seminars on linguistics, Old Church Slavonic and Russian, on experimental phonetics. He conducted classes in comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages, each year building his course on the material of the new language.
Dr. Lev Shcherba since 1914 led a student circle in which the living Russian language was studied. Its active participants were: S. G. Barkhudarov, S. A. Eremin, S. M. Bondi, Yu. N. Tynyanov.
At the same time, Lev Vladimirovich began to perform administrative duties in several educational institutions. Shcherba was looking for opportunities to change the organization of teaching, to raise it to the level of the latest achievements of science. Lev Vladimirovich steadily struggled with routine and formalism in his pedagogical activity, and never compromised his ideals. For example, in 1913, he left the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute, because now the main thing for the teacher in it was not the communication of knowledge, but the implementation of bureaucratic rules that supplanted science and prevented the initiative of students.
1920s
In the 1920s, his most important achievement was the development of the phonetic method of teaching a foreign language, as well as the spread of this method. Shcherba paid special attention to the correctness and purity of pronunciation. At the same time, all the phonetic phenomena of the language had scientific coverage and were assimilated by students consciously. An important place in Shcherba's teaching activities is played by listening to records with foreign texts. All training, ideally, should be built on this method, as Shcherba believed. It is necessary to select plates in a certain system. It is no coincidence that Lev Vladimirovich paid so much attention to the sound side of the language. He believed that a complete understanding of speech in a foreign language is closely related to the correct reproduction of the sound form, up to intonations. This idea is part of the general linguistic concept of Shcherba, who believed that the oral form of language is the most essential for him as a means of communication.
Lev Vladimirovich in 1924 was elected to the All-Union Academy of Sciences as its corresponding member. Then he began work in the Dictionary Commission. Its task was to publish a dictionary of the Russian language, an attempt to create which was made by A. A. Shakhmatov. As a result of this work, Lev Vladimirovich had his own ideas in the field of lexicography. He carried out work on compiling a dictionary in the second half of the 1920s, trying to apply theoretical constructions in practice.
French language aids
Lev Shcherba in 1930 also began to compile a Russian-French dictionary. He created the theory of differential lexicography, which was summarized in the preface to the 2nd edition of the book, which was the result of Shcherba's work over a period of ten years. This is not only one of the best French textbooks from the Soviet Union. The system and principles of this book were the basis for the work on such dictionaries.
However, Lev Vladimirovich did not stop there. In the mid-1930s, he published another manual on the French language - "French Phonetics". This is the result of his twenty years of teaching and research work on pronunciation. The book is built on a comparison with the Russian pronunciation of French.
Reorganization of the teaching of foreign languages
Lev Vladimirovich in 1937 headed the general university department of foreign languages. Shcherba reorganized their teaching, introducing his own method of reading and understanding texts in other languages. To this end, Shcherba led a special methodological seminar for teachers, demonstrating his techniques on Latin material. The brochure, which reflected his ideas, is called "How to learn foreign languages." Lev Vladimirovich for 2 years in charge of the department has significantly raised the level of their knowledge of students.
Shcherba was also interested in the Russian literary language. Lev Vladimirovich participated in the work that was widely developed at that time to regulate and standardize the spelling and grammar of the Russian language. He became a member of the board that edited Barkhudarov's school textbook.
last years of life
Lev Vladimirovich in October 1941 was evacuated to the Kirov region, in the city of Molotovsk. He moved to Moscow in the summer of 1943, where he returned to his usual way of life, immersing himself in pedagogical, scientific and organizational activities. From August 1944, Shcherba was seriously ill, and on December 26, 1944, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba died.
The contribution to the Russian language of this man was enormous, and his works are relevant to this day. They are considered classics. Russian linguistics, phonology, lexicography, psycholinguistics are still based on his works.
Outstanding Russian linguist Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba (1880-1944)
“Gloka kuzdra shteko boked bokra and curls bokra”- this artificial phrase, in which all root morphemes are replaced by meaningless combinations of sounds, was invented in 1928 to illustrate the fact that many of the semantic features of a word can be understood from its morphology. Its author, an outstanding Russian linguist, founder of the St. Petersburg Phonological School, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba was born 130 years ago.
Below we present an abbreviated version of the article by Dmitry Lvovich Shcherba, son of L. V. Shcherba, from the collection In memory of Academician Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba.
Photo from the collection In memory of Academician Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, publishing house of Leningrad State University, 1951
In 1898, Lev Vladimirovich graduated from the Kyiv gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the natural faculty of Kyiv University. The following year, he moved to the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, where he studied mainly psychology. In the third year, listening to the lectures of Prof. I. A. Baudouin-de-Courtenay for an introduction to linguistics, he is fond of him as a person, his original approach to scientific issues and begins to study under his guidance. In his senior year, Lev Vladimirovich writes an essay Psychic element in phonetics, awarded the gold medal. In 1903 he graduated from the university, and prof. Baudouin de Courtenay leaves him at the department of comparative grammar and Sanskrit.
In 1906, St. Petersburg University sent Lev Vladimirovich abroad. He spends a year in northern Italy, learning on his own the living Tuscan dialects; in 1907 he moved to Paris. Here, in the laboratory of experimental phonetics, J.-P. Rousselot at the College de France, he gets acquainted with the equipment, studies English and French pronunciation using the phonetic method and works independently, accumulating experimental material. Autumn holidays 1907 and 1908 Lev Vladimirovich spends in Germany, studying the Muzhakovsky dialect of the Lusatian language in the vicinity of the city of Muskau (Muzhakov).
The study of this Slavic language of the peasants, lost in the German language environment, was prompted to him by Baudouin de Courtenay in order to develop a theory of mixing languages. In addition, Lev Vladimirovich strove to comprehensively study some living, unwritten language completely unfamiliar to him, which he considered especially important in order not to impose any preconceived categories on the language, not to fit the language into ready-made schemes. He settles in a village near the town of Muzhakov, not understanding a single word in the dialect he is studying. He learns the language, living the same life with the family that adopted him, participating with her in field work, sharing Sunday entertainment. Lev Vladimirovich subsequently designed the collected materials into a book, submitted by him for a doctoral degree. He spends the end of his business trip abroad in Prague, studying the Czech language.
Dictionary, ed. acad. L.V. Shcherby, publishing house Soviet encyclopedia, M., 1969
Returning to St. Petersburg in 1909, Lev Vladimirovich became the curator of the experimental phonetics cabinet, which was founded at the university in 1899, but was in a state of disrepair.
The office became the favorite brainchild of Lev Vladimirovich. Having achieved some subsidies, he writes out and builds equipment, systematically replenishes the library. Under his leadership, for more than thirty years, the laboratory has been continuously conducting experimental research on the phonetics and phonological systems of the languages of various peoples of our Union. In the laboratory, for the first time in Russia, Lev Vladimirovich organizes phonetic training in the pronunciation of Western European languages.
In the early twenties, Lev Vladimirovich drew up a project for the organization of the Linguistic Institute with the wide involvement of various specialists. The connections of phonetics with other disciplines were always clear to him. He says: “Being interested in the development of general linguistics and, in particular, phonetics, I have long noticed that, in addition to linguists, various sciences deal with speech issues: in physics (acoustics of speech sounds), in physiology, in psychology, in psychiatry and neurology (all kinds of aphasia and other speech disorders); finally, stage figures (singers, actors) also approach questions of speech from a practical point of view and have a significant supply of interesting observations. However, everyone works completely isolated from each other ... It always seemed to me that all these disciplines would benefit from mutual rapprochement, and that rapprochement should most naturally occur in the bosom of general linguistics ... ”.
In terms of his scientific activity, Lev Vladimirovich almost completely implemented these ideas of his. Beginning in 1910, he read an introduction to linguistics at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Psychoneurological Institute, and taught phonetics at courses for teachers of the deaf and dumb. Lev Vladimirovich was an employee of the Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. In 1929, a seminar on experimental phonetics was organized in the laboratory especially for a group of doctors and speech therapists. Lev Vladimirovich several times makes presentations at the Society of Otolaryngologists. No less lively are his connections with the artistic world, with specialists in diction and voice production, with singing theorists. At the beginning of the twenties, Lev Vladimirovich worked with enthusiasm at the Institute of the Living Word. In the thirties, he gave lectures on phonetics and the Russian language at the Russian Theater Society, and made a report at the vocal department of the Leningrad State Conservatory.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics of the Leningrad University turned into a first-class research institution. It is replenished with new equipment, the composition of its employees is increasing, the range of its work is expanding. From all over the Union, mainly from the national republics, people come here to study.
Photo: M. Reeves
The grave of L. V. Shcherba at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow
The period of Lev Vladimirovich's life, from 1909 to 1916, is scientifically fruitful. During these six years he writes two books, defends them, becomes a master and a doctor. Lev Vladimirovich conducts classes in experimental phonetics, seminars on the Old Church Slavonic language, on linguistics, on the Russian language, reads a course on comparative grammar of Indo-European languages, which he builds every year on the material of a new language.
Since 1914, he has led a student circle for the study of the living Russian language. Among the active participants in this circle are S. G. Barkhudarov, S. M. Bondi, S. A. Eremin, Yu. N. Tynyanov.
At the same time, Lev Vladimirovich takes on administrative duties in various educational institutions: he is looking for opportunities to influence the organization of teaching, its character, strives to raise teaching, both native and foreign, to the level of modern scientific achievements. He tirelessly fights formalism and routine in teaching and does not compromise his ideals. So, in 1913, Lev Vladimirovich left the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute, where now “The main business of a teacher is not the communication of knowledge, but the strict implementation of bureaucratic rules that supplant science and paralyze students’ amateur performances”,- write his former students.
The brightest page in the activity of Lev Vladimirovich in the twenties was the development of the phonetic method of teaching a foreign language and the wide dissemination of this method. Characteristic is the attention paid to the purity and correctness of pronunciation. All phonetic phenomena of the studied language receive scientific coverage and are consciously assimilated by students. A significant place in teaching is occupied by listening and learning gramophone records with foreign texts. Ideally, all teaching should be built on records, selected in a certain system.
This intensive study of the sound side of the language was based on the idea of Lev Vladimirovich that a complete understanding of foreign speech is inextricably linked with the correct reproduction of their sound form, up to intonations. This idea is connected with the general linguistic concept of Lev Vladimirovich, who believed that the most essential for the language as a means of communication is its oral form.
In 1924, Lev Vladimirovich was elected a corresponding member of the All-Union Academy of Sciences. At the same time, he was a member of the Vocabulary Commission of the Academy of Sciences, which is working on the publication of a large dictionary of the Russian language, undertaken by Acad. A. A. Shakhmatov. As a result of this work, Lev Vladimirovich has his own ideas in the field of lexicography. In the second half of the twenties, he was working on compiling the Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language, trying to put his theoretical constructions into practice.
Since 1930, Lev Vladimirovich began work on compiling a Russian-French dictionary. He builds his theory of differential lexicography, briefly outlined in the preface to the second edition of the dictionary, which he created as a result of almost ten years of work. This dictionary is not only one of the best Soviet manuals on the French language, its principles and system are put by the State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries as the basis for all work on similar dictionaries.
Photo: I. Blagoveshchensky
Bust of academician L.V. Shcherba, installed in the courtyard of the philological faculty of St.
Another manual on the French language, written by Lev Vladimirovich, also belongs to the mid-thirties: Phonetics of the French language. This book is the result of his twenty years of research and teaching work on French pronunciation. It is based on a comparison of French pronunciation with Russian.
In 1937, Lev Vladimirovich became the head of the university-wide department of foreign languages. He reorganizes the teaching of languages, introducing into it his own method of reading and disclosing the content of foreign texts. To this end, he conducts a special methodological seminar for teachers, demonstrating his techniques on Latin material. His ideas are reflected in the brochure How to learn foreign languages. For two years of his head of the department, Lev Vladimirovich significantly raises the level of knowledge of languages by students.
In addition, he participates in the widely developed work on the standardization and regulation of spelling and grammar of the Russian language. Lev Vladimirovich is a member of the board that edits the school textbook on the grammar of the Russian language by S. G. Barkhudarov, participates in the drafting of the "Project Rules for a Unified Spelling and Punctuation", published in 1940.
In October 1941, Lev Vladimirovich was evacuated to the city of Molotovsk, Kirov Region. In the summer of 1943 he moved to Moscow, where he returned to his usual way of life, immersing himself in scientific, pedagogical and organizational activities. Since August 1944 he has been seriously ill. Lev Vladimirovich died on December 26, 1944.
(D. L. Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, from a collection of articles In memory of Academician Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, publishing house of Leningrad State University, 1951)
“Until the last days of his life, he was a knight of philology, who did not betray her during the years of the greatest losses, humiliations and attacks on philological education.
The testaments of L. V. Shcherba are dear to us and will inspire us for a long time to come. His ideas will live on and become the property of many, many - and even those who will never hear or recognize the name of Shcherba.
B. A. LARIN
The significance of the works of Academician L. V. Shcherba in Russian linguistics
