Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy ( rus, Никола́й Серге́евич Трубецко́й, p=trʊbʲɪtsˈkoj; 16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was a Russian
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
whose teachings formed a nucleus of the
Prague School
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
. He was also associated with the Russian
Eurasianists
Eurasianism (russian: евразийство, ''yevraziystvo'') is a political movement in Russia which states that Russian civilization does not belong in the "European" or "Asian" categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia, t ...
.
Life and career
Trubetzkoy was born into privilege. His father,
Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy
Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy (russian: Серге́й Никола́евич Трубецко́й; 4 August Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._23_June.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>O._S._23_June">O ...
princely family
A royal family is the immediate family of kings/queens, emirs/emiras, sultans/ sultanas, or raja/rani and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or empress, and the term papa ...
. In 1908, he enrolled at the Moscow University. While spending some time at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
, Trubetzkoy was taught by
August Leskien
August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German linguist active in the field of comparative linguistics, particularly relating to the Baltic and Slavic languages.
Biography
Leskien was born in Kiel. He studied philology at the ...
, a pioneer of research into
sound laws
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
.
After he graduated from the Moscow University (1913), Trubetzkoy delivered lectures there until the Russian Revolution, when he moved first to the University of Rostov-on-Don, then to the
University of Sofia
Sofia University, "St. Kliment Ohridski" at the University of Sofia, ( bg, Софийски университет „Св. Климент Охридски“, ''Sofijski universitet „Sv. Kliment Ohridski“'') is the oldest higher education i ...
(1920–1922) and finally took the chair of Professor of Slavic Philology at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...
(1922-1938). Trubetzkoy was involved with the Eurasianist movement and became one of their leading theorists and political leaders. After the emergence of "left Eurasianism" in Paris, where some of the movement's leaders became pro-Soviet, Trubetzkoy who was a staunch anti-communist heavily criticised them and eventually broke with the Eurasianist movement.
He died from a heart attack attributed to
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
persecution after he had published an article that was highly critical of
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's theories.
Trubetzkoy's chief contributions to linguistics lie in the domain of
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, particularly in the analyses of the phonological systems of individual languages and in the search for general and universal phonological laws. His magnum opus, ''Grundzüge der Phonologie'' ''(Principles of Phonology)'' was issued posthumously in which he defined the
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
as the smallest distinctive unit within the structure of a given language. It was crucial in establishing phonology as a discipline separate from
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
.
Trubetzkoy also wrote as a literary critic. In ''Writings on Literature'', a brief collection of translated articles, he analyzed Russian literature beginning with the
Old Russian
Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian; be, старажытнаруская мова; russian: древнерусский язык; uk, давньоруська мова) was a language used during the 9th–15th centuries by East ...
epic ''
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
''The Tale of Igor's Campaign'' ( orv, Слово о пълкѹ Игоревѣ, translit=Slovo o pŭlku Igorevě) is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.
The title is occasionally translated as ''The Tale of the Campai ...
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Nicolas Bourbaki, Amir Aczel described Trubetzkoy as a pioneer in structuralism, an interdisciplinary outgrowth of structural linguistics that would be applied in mathematics by the Bourbaki group, as in the notion of a mathematical structure, and in anthropology by
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social An ...
, who sought to describe rules governing human behavior. According to Aczel, Trubetzkoy's focus in ''Principles of Phonology'' was the study of
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s and their opposing aspects to describe rules of language, the goal of describing general underlying rules being the common goal of structuralism.
Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy ( rus, Никола́й Серге́евич Трубецко́й, p=trʊbʲɪtsˈkoj; 16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague Schoo ...