Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 78. kötet (1976)
Tanulmányok - Vachek, Josef: Gyula Laziczius and Early Prague Phonology 480
Gyula Laziczius and Early Prague Phonology GYULA LAZICZIUS was not only one of the first Hungarian scholars to view problems of phonology from the functionalist angle. Besides, he can justly claim to have been the first Hungarian linguist to attempt a synthetizing functionalist hierarchy of the basic phonic facts of language. Moreover, one can justly call him the first functionally orientated linguiest, not only in his own country but in the world at large, to draw a clear demarcative line between purely referential phonology (later labelled by N. S. TBUBETZKOY ,,Darstellungsphonologie") and the phonological research dealing with subjective and emotionally motivated aspects of the functionalist analysis of language phenomena, the research into which was to be later denoted by the Trubetzkoyan term ,,phonostylistics" (in the original German version of the term, ,,Lautet ilistik"). It was only natural that the functionally orientated scholar Laziczius was soon to contact the Prague centre of the functionalist linguistic studies,its Linguistic Circle, which at that time had already gained international reputation not only by the lectures delivered by its protagonists (mainly by VIE/EM MATHESIUS, R. JAKOBSON and N. S. TBUBETZKOY) at the two internationational congresses of linguists held in The Hague in 1928 and in Geneva in 193I1, not to speak of the Prague international phonological conference in 19302 , but especially by three volumes of its now almost legendary series Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, of which, by 1931, all were dealing mostly with phonological issues.3 In the year 1932 Laziczius sent to Mathesius and some of his colleagues a lengthy paper introducing the reader into phonological problems and already foreshadowing some of his own main theses by which he was to become one of the outstanding functionalist phonologists of the nineteen-thirties. The paper was of course written in Hungarian4 and 1 See particularly V. MATHESIUS, On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English. Actes du Premier Congres International de Linguistes ä la Haye (1928). 56 — 63. — R. JAKOBSON—S. KABCEVSKIJ —N. S. TBUBETZKOY, Propositions. Ibidem, p. 336 (reprinted in JAKOBSON'S Selected Writings I. The Hague 1962, pp. 3 — 6). (Mathesius's paper was reprinted in J. VACHEK, A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington 1964. 55 — 67.) — See also V. MATHESIUS, Ziele und Aufgaben der vergleichenden Phonologie. Xenia Pragensia. Prague 1929. 432 — 445. 2 The talks delivered at the conference (with a summary of discussions) can be found in Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4, 1931. 3 Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 1929 and were dedicated to the First International Congress of Slavists then meeting in Prague, for volume 4 see the preceding note. — Vol. 3, by BOHUMIL TRNKA, does not deal with phonological problems. 4 GY. LAZICZIUS, Bevezetés a fonológiába. A Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság Kiadványai 33. 1932, pp. 109ff.
