Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 78. kötet (1976)

Tanulmányok - Vachek, Josef: Gyula Laziczius and Early Prague Phonology 480

GYULA LAZICZIUS AND EARLY PRAGUE PHONOLOGY 481 thus was not easily intelligible to most of the Prague scholars, to whom the contents of the paper were therefore mediated by a young Slovak member of the Prague Circle who was well versed in the Hungárián language.5 Favourably impressed by Laziczius's paper, Mathesius and his colleagues invited its author to corne to Prague for a short visit. Laziczius accepted the invitation and in a private gathering of several members of the Circle (in Mathesius's household) explained in more detail some aspects of his phonological conception. (Incidentally, in a friedly talk he revealed to his host the interesting fact that one of his I6th Century ancestors had been the well-known Polish histórián Jan Lasicki (Lasicius), an author of the Latin history of the religious group of Czech Urethren „De origine et rebus gestis Fratrum Bohemorum"6; in some parts of the Western world the group is better known under the label Moravian Brethren). Some of the ideas covered by Laziczius's Prague talk appear to hâve been worked out in his Germán paper to be published three years after his visit to Prague.7 Since that time Prague phonologists maintained the contact with their Hungárián colleague and friend until the gloomy years of the World War II in the course of which virtually ail contact of the Prague Circle with foreign countries was to corne to a standstill and in which also Laziczius himself was to find himself in very reduced existential circumstances, due to his well-known anti-Nazi views. Of this plight of their Hungárián colleague his Prague friends were to learn only occasionally and without any possibility of alleviating his regrettable lot. Thus members of the Prague group could only hear about Laziczius again after the war. The pre-war meetings with Laziczius, unfortunately, were not to be followed by others because in the stormy turmoil of the following years Laziczius was again to fall on evil days. The troubles to which he was subjected certainly very much contributed to the breakdown of his already badly shattered health and were the cause of his prématuré death at a relatively early âge. So much, then, can be said about Laziczius's personal contacts with the early Prague School. Let us now examine, as briefly as possible, the importance of the emphasis laid by the Hungárián scholar on other than purely referential („purely informative") function of the phonic phenomena of language. Admittedly, Laziczius was not the first to observe the fact that emotive appeal is often signalled in language utterances by specific phonic features included in them. Thus, e.g., as early as in 1923 Roman Jakobson8 had pointed out the unusual palatal quality of the Common Colloquial Czech consonant [r] in the street cries of news-vendors in instances liké Právo lidu! Similarly, Vilém Mathesius had called linguists' attention to the occurrence in interjections and onomatopoetic expressions of phonic facts unkown in purely referential function - see, e.g., ModGerm tschingdada, etc.9 Finally, in the discussions held in the Circle's meetings it was also noted (particularly by BOHUSLAV 5 He was a young member of the Circle DB L'UDOVÍT NÓVÁK (at présent Professor of P. J. Safárik University in Presov, Slovakia). 6 Cf. JOSEF JAKXTBEC, Dëjiny literatury ceské I. Praha 1929, pp. 702 et pass. 7 G. LAZICZIUS, Probleme der Phonologie. Ungarische Jahrbücher 15 (1935): 495—510. 8 ROMAN JAKOBSON, O cesskom Stiche, preimuscestvenno v sopostavlenii s russkim (Berlin 3923), p. 75. 9 See MATHESIUS'S paper Ziele und Aufgaben, quoted here above, note 1.