Phonetik und Politik

Abstract

The contribution of the Prague Linguistic Circle to linguistics lies in establishing the foundations of phonology, an endeavour that originated from political interests. Intellectuals who emigrated from Russia, together with Czech linguists, formed the Prague Linguistic Circle and set ambitious goals—the creation of a new Eurasian state that would encompass the territory of the nineteenth-century Russian Empire while responding to the demands of the new century. It was precisely through linguistic or, to be more accurate, phonological characteristics of languages that they attempted to delineate the political map of Russia-Eurasia; however, they easily compromised linguistic objectivity whenever the traits of a particular language contradicted their political aspirations. An analysis of the works of Petr Savitsky, Roman Jakobson, and Nikolai Trubetzkoy demonstrates that they reduced phonetics to a handmaiden of Eurasian theory. Nevertheless, the value of the Prague Linguistic Circle’s phonological theory is so profound that it continues to yield significant results in the hands of an objective linguist. While Russian emigrés were developing this theory, Giorgi Akhvlediani was formulating ideas in Georgia that closely paralleled Nikolai Trubetzkoy’s phonological discoveries. Yet, due to the Iron Curtain between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, they remained completely unaware of each other’s writings. Giorgi Akhvlediani only became acquainted with Nikolai Trubetzkoy’s renowned work twenty-five years after Trubetzkoy's death. In comparison, Roman Jakobson read Giorgi Akhvlediani’s study on the vowel system of the Georgian language forty years later. Although Jakobson offered words of praise for the work, it was too late, leaving it solely to historians of linguistics to discern the connections between them.