Jan Baudouin de Courtenay

Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, also known in Russian as Иван Александрович Бодуэн-де-Куртенэ (Ivan Aleksandrovič Boduėn-de-Kurtenė), was a Polish linguist. His family name is Baudouin de Courtenay, which can be shortened to Baudouin but is often erroneously indexed under C. Baudouin was a remarkably versatile scholar who taught general, historical-comparative, and Slavic linguistics and contributed to many subfields of the language sciences. Over the course of sixty years, he published a number of monographs and several hundred articles, mostly in Polish and Russian but also in German, French, Czech, and other languages. During his lifetime, he was highly respected internationally; after his death, he fell out of favor in Communist countries for ideological reasons, while he remained largely unknown in the West because of the language barrier and because many of his publications were difficult to find. Since the 1960s, interest in his work has gradually increased, and many of his writings have been republished, translated, and/or made available on the Internet. The literature about him has been growing too. Frequently, Baudouin is described as one of the founding fathers of structuralism or as a forerunner of certain modern theories. He was, however, an independent thinker who does not fit into any mold. This is also true of his political ideas, which he voiced in numerous pamphlets and articles. In particular, he defended the rights of all linguistic groups wherever he lived. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay was born in Radzymin near Warsaw on 13 March (1 March in the Julian calendar) 1845. He studied at the universities of Warsaw, Prague, Jena and Berlin and then obtained his doctorate in Leipzig. Since the Russian authorities did not allow him to teach in Warsaw, he went to Petersburg. In 1875, he defended his Russian doctoral dissertation (comparable to the German Habilitation) and became professor at the University of Kazan’. There, he cooperated closely with a number of colleagues and students, notably Mikołaj Kruszewski (b. 1851–d. 1887). From 1883 to 1893, he taught in Dorpat (Tartu) and subsequently in Krakow, which then had the only Polish-language university. For political reasons, his contract was not renewed, and he had to return to Russia. He was professor at the University of Petersburg from 1900 to 1914, when he was imprisoned and dismissed because he advocated minority rights, and from 1917 until July 1918, when he fled to Warsaw. He continued to work there until his death on 3 November 1929.

COMMUNICATION FUNCTIONS OF SLANG AND CANT/ARGOT

This brief overview deals with the definition of sociolects in Slavic and non-Slavic linguistics. It presents the historical development of slang and cant/argot research in the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, as well as the similarities or differences in the definitions of basic terms. It pays attention to the classification of some facultative slangs from an exclusive environment (e.g. criminal). In the last decades, some slangs have been inappropriately characterized as argot. When classifying sociolects, the type of social environment and the social status of the person are often overestimated. Insufficient attention is paid to the communication functions of the sociolect in society and outside, the communication space and the communication potential of the sociolect. Attention is also paid to argot and its inappropriate definition as “the secret language of the low/excluded social groups”. In the case of argot, specific codes can only be identified by a member of a closed community who knows rules for the use of specific verbal or non-verbal codes. Argot may arise and exist in the environment where two antagonistic groups occur. Therefore, argot is not a language of low/excluded social groups, it only has a cryptic function. It is a discrete strategy shielding the communication goal and its occurrence is expected only in a small group of communicators. It has a low communication potential and a radius that is concentrated inside the community. The user of argot can potentially be anyone in any environment, regardless of the motivation for secrecy of communication.

A spiritual verse in the Russian-Serbian linguacultural tradition: stylism of speech resources

This paper is to study the origins of existence of the Russian spiritual verse as a national cultural heritage, which is part of the common lingua-culture of the Russian and Serbian peoples. This still insufficiently explored issue of modern Slavic studies is viewed from the perspective where language and religion are the basis of the mutual influence of two great cultures. Along with proposed typology of the language of Christian chants, the authors highlight lexical and stylistic features of the Russian spiritual verse in the context of the modern Serbian linguacultural tradition. Scientific novelty of the research consists in the integration of linguistic and culturological approaches to the object and subject of the study in a synchronous-diachronic aspect, identifying common and varied linguistic features determined by sociolinguistic factors in the texts of spiritual poems. The methods and methodology of the research follow the traditions of Russian studies and Slavic linguistics, and the implementation of the research allows us to draw a relevant conclusion that the sources of spiritual verse, closely related to the sacred world, are a sociocultural phenomenon.

Эволюция взглядов С. Б. Бернштейна на кашубский вопрос

Samuil B. Bernstein was one of the most renowned Soviet and Russian Slavists, who had an unmatched scholarly breadth and depth and was interested in all aspects of Slavic linguistics. Though he was famous as a specialist in the South Slavic languages and Slavic historical and comparative grammar, he was equally interested in West Slavic languages, particularly in Polish, including Kashubian. In his lifetime, Bernstein did not write much about Kashubian, but from little that he wrote, it seems clear that he changed his views toward Kashubian several times. In this presentation, I will analyze Bernstein’s published and unpublished materials in order to establish at what points in his career, and for what reasons, he changed his views on Kashubian.

Typology of Slavic languages

The book provides with a description of the Slavic world: Slavic countries, Slavic peoples, systems of Slavic writing. A typological description of modern Slavic languages is presented: their lexical, phonetic, grammatical features are considered, including some categories of sentences and text. The study is implemented in a comparative historical aspect, which makes it possible to identify universals and individuals, the logic and dynamics of their appearance and preservation in the linguistic systems of the Slavic world. The book is addressed to bachelors and masters, PhD students of philological faculties, linguists, as well as everyone who is interested in the Slavic world and the problems of Slavic linguistics.

Wybór publikacji Hienadzia Cychuna wyrazem wszechstronności zainteresowań slawistycznych autora

A Volume of Henadzʹ Tsykhun’s Selected Studies as a Testimony to His Wide-Ranging Interests in Slavic Linguistics This article is a review of Henadzʹ Tsykhun’s volume of selected studies entitled Prastora movy: Moŭnyia suviazi: Historyia sloŭ: vybranyia pratsy [Language Space, Language Connections, History of Words: Selected Studies]. The reviewed work describes issues of language contact, sociolinguistics, etymology and terminology. The volume concerns widely understood Slavic studies in both diachronic and synchronic aspects, with a special emphasis on the Belarusian language. Wybór publikacji Hienadzia Cychuna wyrazem wszechstronności zainteresowań slawistycznych autora Niniejsza publikacja stanowi recenzję monografii Hienadzia Cychuna pt. Прастора мовы. Моўныя сувязі. Гісторыя слоў: выбраныя працы [Przestrzeń języka. Związki językowe. Historia słów. Wybrane opracowania]. Recenzowana praca opisuje zagadnienia kontaktów językowych, socjolingwistyki, etymologii oraz terminologii. Dotyczy szeroko rozumianej slawistyki zarówno w aspekcie diachronicznym, jak i synchronicznym, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem języka białoruskiego.

Wspomnienie. Elżbieta Kędelska (16 marca 1949 – 10 listopada 2014)

In Memoriam: Elżbieta Kędelska (16 March 1949 – 10 November 2014) Throughout her professional life, Elżbieta Kędelska (1949–2014) was associated with the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. She made a substantial contribution to research on the history of Polish dictionary-making. Her work was focused on Polish and Slavic linguistics, mainly the history of Latin-Polish and Latin-Czech lexicography, comparative lexicography and issues of sixteenth-century Polish lexis. She also transcribed the 1532 and 1544 Latin-Polish manuscripts by Bartholomeus de Bydgostia – the most outstanding Polish lexicographer of the first half of the sixteenth century, and co-authored the recent reversed Polish-Latin edition of Bartholemeus’ dictionary.Wspomnienie. Elżbieta Kędelska (16 marca 1949 – 10 listopada 2014) Elżbieta Kędelska (1949–2014) przez całe swoje życie zawodowe była związana z Instytutem Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Wniosła znaczący wkład w rozwój badań nad historią polskiego słownikarstwa. Skupiała się na językoznawstwie polskim i słowiańskim: głównie historii łacińsko-polskiej i łacińsko-czeskiej leksykografii, komparatystyce leksykograficznej oraz zagadnieniach XVI-wiecznej leksyki polskiej. Odczytywała łacińsko-polskie rękopisy z lat 1532 i 1544 autorstwa Bartłomieja z Bydgoszczy – najwybitniejszego leksykografa polskiego pierwszej połowy XVI wieku. Jest współautorką obecnej edycji Słownika Bartłomieja w odwróconej, polsko-łacińskiej wersji językowej.

Multilingual Dictionary of Keywords as a Tool for the Digital Bibliographic Database of World Slavic Linguistics

The paper presents the structure of a multilingual dictionary of keywords, which is an integral part of the bibliographic database of Slavic linguistics iSybislaw representing the digital information retrieval system (www.isybislaw.ispan.waw.pl). The lexical units (keywords) of the language of keywords used in the system are represented primarily by linguistic terms. In spite of a different denotation – the keywords directly denote sets of documents, and indirectly the non-documentary reality, while the terms denote elements of linguistic reality – they are formally equal with linguistic terms, which allows them to map the semantic field of a particular discipline, in this case Slavic linguistics. The dictionary is therefore a domain-based online specialist dictionary, which is a tool for users of the bibliographic database of Slavic linguistics. The dictionary is addressed to all those who deal with linguistics and linguistic terminology, first of all to scholar-linguists, Ph.D. students and students of philologies, as well as translators of academic papers in the field of linguistics.

Krakowsko-lwowskie korzenie wrocławskiej slawistyki

Cracow-Lviv Roots of Wrocław Slavic Studies The paper discusses the beginnings of Polish and Slavic linguistics at the Univertsity of Wroclaw directly after World War II. It was created by young scholars, linguists, Slavicists and Polonists, who gained their education and academic degrees at the Jagiellonian University and the John Casimir University in Lviv. This group included primarily S. Rospond, L. Ossowski, W. Kuraszkiewicz, S. Bąk, all educated before the war, as well as A. Furdal, much younger than the others and educated already after the war. These scholars received their education under the guidance of the best Polish linguists, Slavicists, Polonists, and Indo-Europeanists. In addition, the paper presents basic information about preparations made in Cracow during the war, to create Polish and Slavic studies at the University of Wroclaw.