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Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay (13 March 1845 – 3 November 1929) was a Polish linguist and Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and phonetic alternations.

For most of his life Baudouin de Courtenay worked at Imperial Russian universities: Kazan (1874–1883), Dorpat (as Tartu, Estonia was then known) (1883–1893), Kraków (1893–1899) in Austria-Hungary, and St. Petersburg (1900–1918), where he was known as Иван Александрович Бодуэн де Куртенэ (Ivan Aleksandrovich Boduen de Kurtene), and in Russia he is recognized as a Russian scientist. In 1919-1929 he was a professor at the re-established University of Warsaw in a once again independent Poland.

Biography

He was born in Radzymin, in the Warsaw Governorate of Congress Poland (a state in personal union with the Russian Empire), to a family of distant French extraction. One of his ancestors had been a French aristocrat who migrated to Poland during the reign of Polish King August II the Strong. In 1862 Baudouin de Courtenay entered the "Main School," a predecessor of the University of Warsaw. In 1866 he graduated from its historical and philological faculty and won a scholarship of the Russian Imperial Ministry of Education. Having left Poland, he studied at various foreign universities, including those of Prague, Jena and Berlin. In 1870 he received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig for his Polish-language dissertation On the Old Polish Language Prior to the 14th Century.

Baudouin de Courtenay established the Kazan school of linguistics in the mid-1870s and served as professor at the local university from 1875. Later he was chosen as the head of linguistics faculty at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) (1883–1893). Between 1894 and 1898 he occupied the same post at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków only to be appointed to St. Petersburg, where he continued to refine his theory of phonetic alternations. After Poland regained independence in 1918, he returned to Warsaw, where he formed the core of the linguistics faculty of the University of Warsaw. From 1887 he held a permanent seat in the Polish Academy of Skills and from 1897 he was a member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1925 he was one of the co-founders of the Polish Linguistic Society.

His work had a major impact on 20th-century linguistic theory, and it served as a foundation for several schools of phonology. He was an early champion of synchronic linguistics, the study of contemporary spoken languages, which he developed contemporaneously with the structuralist linguistic theory of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Among the most notable of his achievements is the distinction between statics and dynamics of languages and between a language (an abstract group of elements) and speech (its implementation by individuals) – compare Saussure's concepts of langue and parole. Together with his students, Mikołaj Kruszewski and Lev Shcherba, Baudouin de Courtenay also shaped the modern usage of the term phoneme (Baudouin de Courtenay 1876–77 and Baudouin de Courtenay 1894), which had been coined in 1873 by the French linguist A. Dufriche-Desgenettes who proposed it as a one-word equivalent for the German Sprachlaut. His work on the theory of phonetic alternations may have had an influence on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure according to E. F. K. Koerner.

Three major schools of 20th-century phonology arose directly from his distinction between physiophonetic (phonological) and psychophonetic (morphophonological) alternations: the Leningrad school of phonology, the Moscow school of phonology, and the Prague school of phonology. All three schools developed different positions on the nature of Baudouin's alternational dichotomy. The Prague School was best known outside the field of Slavic linguistics. Throughout his life he published hundreds of scientific works in Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, Italian, French and German.

Apart from his scientific work, Baudouin de Courtenay was also a strong supporter of national revival of various national minority and ethnic groups. In 1915 he was arrested by the Okhrana, the Russian secret service, for publishing a brochure on the autonomy of peoples under Russian rule. He spent three months in prison, but was released. In 1922, without his knowledge, he was proposed by the national minorities of Poland as a presidential candidate, but was defeated in the third round of voting in the Polish parliament and eventually Gabriel Narutowicz was chosen. He was also an active Esperantist and president of the Polish Esperanto Association.

In 1927 he formally withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church without joining any other religious denomination. He died in Warsaw. He is buried at the Protestant Reformed Cemetery in Warsaw with the epitaph “He sought truth and justice".

His daughter, Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay Ehrenkreutz Jędrzejewiczowa was one of the founders of the Polish school of ethnology and anthropology as well as a professor at the universities of Vilnius and Warsaw.

He appears as a character in Joseph Skibell's 2010 novel, A Curable Romantic.

Baudouin de Courtenay was the editor of the 3rd (1903–1909) and 4th (1912–1914) editions of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language compiled by Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dahl (1801–1872).

Work

Throughout his life, Baudouin de Courtenay published hundreds of scientific works in Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, Italian, French, and German.

His work had a major impact on twentieth century linguistic theory, and it served as a foundation for several schools of phonology. Together with his student, Mikołaj Kruszewski, de Courtenay coined the term phoneme.

He was an early champion of synchronic linguistics, the study of contemporary spoken languages, and he had a strong impact on the structuralist linguistic theory of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, among whose notable achievements is the distinction between statics and dynamics of languages and between a language, that is an abstract group of elements) and speech (its implementation by individuals).

Quantitative linguistics

The origin and development of modern quantitative linguistics is associated with the structuralist revolution of the first decades of the twentieth century, and particularly with the work of Baudouin de Courtenay. While he did not apply mathematical methods himself, he did, while conducting field studies, realize the virtues of a quantitative description of language. He foresaw the advent of rigorous investigations into the laws of language, and articulated them in his 1927 Quantity as a Dimension of Thought about Language.

Baudouin de Courtenay's concept principally involved the semantic, syntactic, and morphologic representations of the number, dimensions, and intensities of the attributes. Thus he did not touch upon the concept of statistical linguistics operating with frequencies or other expressly numerical features of the language elements. Nonetheless, he perceived analogies between the physical domain, defined by precise and formalized laws, and language. He realized that the contemporary level of linguistic and mathematical knowledge was inadequate for the formulation of exact linguistic laws:

I, personally, having considered the rigor and functional dependency of the laws of the world of physics and chemistry, would hesitate to call that a ‘law’ which I consider merely an exceptionally skillful generalization applied to phenomena at large (de Courtenay 1927 p.547).

However, he anticipated such laws also being formulated for linguistic relationships in the future:

the time for genuine laws in the psycho-social realm in general, and first and foremost in the linguistic realm, is approaching: laws which can stand proudly beside those of the exact sciences, laws expressed in formulae of the absolute dependency of one quantity on another (de Courtenay 1927 p. 560).

Relationship between language and nationality

Jan Baudouin de Courtenay devoted much of his attention to the mutual relationships and affinities between East Slavonic languages and the specific characteristic features of each of them (Great Russian, Belarusian, and Little Russian or Ukrainian).

He observed that in small villages along the Polish-Belarusian border areas, people were using both languages. Polish more often in some, while in others Belarusian dominated. In any case, Belarusian seemed to prevail in these regions. In spite of this, the gentry tended to consider itself Polish, and not only on account of religion, for they were almost all Catholic, but also because of the traditions of Polish gentry. The Polish language used there was quite standard, though the local population were also speaking quite good "peasant" language, namely Belarusian.

Taking into account the above observations, he wrote:

Although the local villagers and parishioners tend to identify "Polishness” with "Catholicism,” "Germanness” with "Protestantism” and "Russianness” with "Greek Orthodoxy” ... it does not require much effort, even on the part of the narrow minded and quite unenlightened, to understand that even a non-Catholic could be Polish, while Catholicism is not totally located within the confines of the Polish village (De Courtenay 1983).

Baudouin treated religion and creed as a personal and exceedingly intimate matter:

What right has any ruffian from the street to rummage in my soul and to paw around for my religious affiliation? Hands off! And that goes also for my beliefs, for what I hold holy, for what I cherish in the depths of my spirit! [...] I personally treat any question about my religious affiliation as a personal insult, as humiliation, as an offence against human dignity (De Courtenay 1923).

Baudouin de Courtenay, who strongly condemned the official imperial Russian policy of Russification of Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians, could also not accept attempts to Polonize Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania:

Panpolonism or ultra-Polishness have set before themselves the task of forcing all non-Poles who live among Poles or in, so called, ‘Polish’ lands, to recognize themselves as Poles or to retreat (De Courtenay 1923).

He saw that view as treating Lithuanians and others are merely "ethnographic material" who may be granted the privilege of cultural assimilation into "Polishness."

In consequence, Baudouin distinguished two types of patriotism:

"The patriotism of hoodlums and international expropriators, that is nationalistic patriotism, with its slogan of ‘national egoism’, slogan of mutual extermination of bipeds differing in creed, language, traditions, convictions, a patriotism which transforms ‘fatherland’ into a prison for convicts, a cage for different species of wild beasts, into hell populated by madmen obsessed with nationalism." (De Courtenay 1911)

"Territorial patriotism, under the banner of equal rights for all citizens, a common fatherland for all people of different creeds, different languages, different convictions, under the slogan of solidarity in the name of common work for the benefit of common fatherland, work in the sphere of material possessions and all the things which could be attained here on earth." (De Courtenay 1911).

Legacy

Jan Baudouin de Courtenay made a lasting contribution to phonology and foreshadowed the development of mathematical linguistics. He pioneered the scientific approach to contrastive and applied linguistics, inspired new theoretical and cognitive trends in lexicology, semantics, onomastics and anthroponymy, as well as in dialectology, sociolinguistics, and logopedics.

Baudouin de Courtenay’s role in the struggle for a civic and open society, both in imperial Russia and later in the Republic of Poland, which had regained its independence, could be hardly overdramatized. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay as a thinker, social activist, and journalist was engaged both in the central dilemmas of his time and in the mundane problems of everyday life. He strongly objected to any form of national exclusiveness and earned himself the reputation of a staunch spokesman for peaceful and brotherly coexistence, cooperation and development of all ethnic groups, nations and nationalities, and in particular Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Germans, and Jews. Recognition of this role was evidenced in 1922, when representatives of national minorities in the Polish parliament, after consultation each other, proposed him as their candidate for President of Poland.

References

Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak. “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay's contribution to linguistic theory”, Historiographia Linguistica 25 (1998): 25–60; reprint in Towards a History of Linguistics in Poland: From the Early Beginnings to the End of the Twentieth Century, eds. E.F.K. Koerner & Aleksander Szwedek. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001, pp. 175–208.

Maria di Salvo. Il pensiero linguistico di J. Baudouin de Courtenay. Venice & Padua: Marsilio, 1975.

Frank Häusler. Das Problem Phonetik und Phonologie bei Baudouin de Courtenay und in seiner Nachfolge. Leipzig: Niemeyer, 1968 (2nd edn., Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1976).

Roman Jakobson. “The Kazan school of Polish linguistics and its place in the international development of phonology”, Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings, vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.

E. F. K. Koerner. Essays in the History of Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004: ch. 7.

E. F. K. Koerner. “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay: His place in the history of linguistic science”, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des Slavistes 14, no. 4 (1972): 663–682 (repr. in Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays, 1978, pp. 107-126).

R. A. Rothstein. “The linguist as dissenter: Jan Baudouin de Courtenay”, For Wiktor Weintraub: Essays in Polish Literature, Language, and History Presented on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. V. Erlich. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.

W. R. Schmalstieg, “Baudouin de Courtenay contribution to Lithuanian linguistics”, Lituanus 41, no. 1 (1995): 5-25.

Edward Stankiewicz ed. & trans. A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1972.

Edward Stankiewicz. Baudouin de Courtenay and the Foundations of Structural Linguistics. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 1976.

Philipp Strazny, ed. “Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan Ignacy Niecisław”, Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. 1: A–L. NY–Oxon: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005, pp. 128–130.

Margaret Thomas, “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929)”, Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics. London–NY: Routledge, 2011, pp. 135–140.

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