František Trávníček (17 August 1888 – 6 June 1961) was a Czechoslovak

Slavist Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...

, Bohemist, professor of the Czech language at

Masaryk University Masaryk University (MU) (; ) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno, it now consists of ten faculties and 35,115 students. It is named after To ...

and an academician of the

Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Czech: ''Československá akademie věd'', Slovak: ''Česko-slovenská akadémia vied'') was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Czech Academy of Science ...

. After February 1948, he was also a politician of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and promoted

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

interpretations of linguistics.

Biography

Trávníček was born in to a middle-class family. He lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his grandparents. In the years 1907–1911 he studied Slavic and

Indo-European studies Indo-European studies () is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical p ...

at the Faculty of Philosophy of

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

. He was especially influenced by his meeting with the Russian Slavist and dialectologist

Aleksey Shakhmatov Aleksey Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov (, – 16 August 1920) was a Russian philology, philologist and historian credited with laying the foundations for the science of Textual criticism, textology. Shakhmatov held the title of Doctor of Russ ...

. After graduating from university, he taught at a secondary school in Prague. From 1911 to 1915 he was secretary of the Dialectological Commission of the

Czech Academy of Sciences The Czech Academy of Sciences (abbr. CAS, , abbr. AV ČR) was established in 1992 by the Czech National Council as the Czech successor of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and its tradition goes back to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sc ...

and Arts in Prague. In 1915 he was sent to the Russian front. He surrendered and rose to the rank of staff captain of the Czechoslovak legions and became the editor of the ''Československé listy'' newspaper. In 1920 he passed a

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

at the Charles University. From 1921 to 1927 he was a visiting professor of Czech grammar at the University of Brno. In 1927, he received the title of ordinary professor there. In 1945 he joined the

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia ( Czech and Slovak: ''Komunistická strana Československa'', KSČ) was a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992. It was a member of the Com ...

. After 1948, he took a critical position in relation to

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

in Czech linguistics, although before and during the Second World War he was an adherent of structuralism, as well as a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle; in the 1950s he criticized structuralism from a Marxist position. From 1948 to 1959 he was rector of Masaryk University, at the same time was a member of parliament (1948–1960). He founded the Brno branch of the Institute of Czech Language of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and was its first director.

Works

* ''Studie o českém vidu slovesném'', 1923. * ''Moravská nářečí'', 1926. * ''Jazyk a národ'', 1930. * ''Neslovesné věty v češtině. Díl I, Věty interjekční'', 1930. * ''Neslovesné věty v češtině. Díl 2., Věty nominální'', 1931. * ''Historická mluvnice československá'', 1935. * ''Spisovná česká výslovnost''. 2. vydání, 1940. * ''Stručná mluvnice česká''. 1. vyd. 1941, další 1943, 1945. * ''Mluvnice spisovné češtiny. Část I., Hláskosloví, tvoření slov, tvarosloví.'' 1. vyd. 1948, další 1949, 1951. ** V roce 1948 poctěno Státní cenou. * ''Mluvnice spisovné češtiny. Část 2, Skladba.'' 1. vyd. 1949, další 1951. * ''Český jazykozpytný strukturalismus ve světle Stalinova učení o jazyce'', 1951. * ''O jazyce naší nové prózy'', 1954. * ''Historická mluvnice česká 3. Skladba''. 1. vyd. 1956, další 1962.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Travnicek, Frantisek 1888 births 1961 deaths People from Blansko District Czech philologists Academic staff of Masaryk University Academic staff of Charles University Charles University alumni 20th-century Czech lithographers Czech literary historians Czech lexicographers Czech science writers Communist Party of Czechoslovakia politicians Czech Marxists Czechoslovak Marxists Members of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia (1948–1954) Members of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia (1954–1960) Czechoslovak Legion personnel Linguists from the Czech Republic Burials at Brno Central Cemetery