XII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2020

Lev Shcherba was a Russian linguist and lexicographer specializing in phonetics and phonology.

Born in Igumen (Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire, now Chervyen, Belarus) to the family of an engineer. Shcherba went to high school in Kiev, graduating in 1898, and briefly attended Kiev University before moving to the capital and entering St. Petersburg University. There he studied under Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, graduating in 1903. In 1906 he traveled abroad, first to Leipzig and then to northern Italy, where he studied Tuscan dialects. During the autumn holidays of 1907 and 1908, on the advice of Baudouin de Courtenay, he studied the Sorbian languages, writing a description of the Mužakow dialect (spoken in the east, near Muskau). At the end of 1907 he went to Paris, where he worked in the experimental phonetics laboratory of Jean-Pierre Rousselot studying the phonetics of a series of languages using experimental methods; on his return to Russia he began setting up an experimental phonetics laboratory, paying for equipment from his own stipend, and this became the institution that now bears his name.

As early as 1912, basing himself on the ideas of Baudouin de Courtenay, he elaborated the concept of the phoneme, defined by him as the grouping of sounds into "sound types". In 1912 he defended his master's thesis and in 1915 received his doctorate from St. Petersburg University, where he was a professor from 1916 to 1941. He became the founder of the so-called "Leningrad school" of phonology, which included M. I. Matusevich and L. R. Zinder among others and carried on a polemic with the "Moscow school." However, he spent the last few years of his life in Moscow, where he died. He became an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1943.

He defines the phoneme as the smallest general phonetic unit of a given language, which can be associated with sense notions & can differentitate words or word forms.

Мел-мель, little-less

Scherba speaks about the sense differentiation functions of the phoneme. The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit, realized in speech in the forms of speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.

The phoneme is a functional unit. The opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of morphemes and words. Sometimes the opposition of phonemes serves to distinguish the meaning of the whole phrase. (Example: He was hurt badly; He was heard badly).

Allophone is used for sounds which are the variants of a phoneme the usually occur in different positions in the word, but cannot contrast with each other, no be used to make meaningful distinctions.

All the actual speech sounds are allophones that exist in the language. Those the variants that help to distinguish words when opposed to one acquire only in certain positions or in certain sound combinations are realization of one and the same phoneme.

Those sounds, which can’t distinguish the meaning of words and occur only in certain positions or in certain sound combinations are realizations of one and the same phoneme.

Variants of allophones of one and the same phoneme can’t distinguish the meaning of the words though the acoustic and articulatory aspects may be different and quite distinct.

Allophones which never occur in one and the same position are said to be in complementary distribution. Allophones which occur in same phonetic position, but can never distinguish meanings of the words are said to be in free variation.

The Relation of a Phoneme and its Allophones

On one the the phoneme is an abstraction and generalization. It is abstracted from its variants that exist in the actual speech and characterized by features that are common to all these variants.

On the other the the phoneme is material, real and objective, because in speech it is represented by concrete material sounds. It correlates with its allophones as universal with an individual

The linguistic role of the phoneme is seeing in its functions:

The constitutive function. Phonemes make up morphemes, words and their forms (sentences, phrases).

The distinctive function. Phonemes help to distinguish morphemes, words and their forms.

The precognitive function. Phonemes help to recognize words, morphemes.

In speech we constantly carry out a phonetic and phonological analysis, so it is phonetic characteristics of sounds. But as soon as we determine the role of those sounds in communication when it is of phonological analysis.

Phonetic and phonological analysis of one and the same phenomenon — the sound substance of a language.

The main problems of the Phoneme Theory

To establish the inventory of phonemes in a given language

To establish the relations among phonemes in a given language

To define the phonetic status of a sound in a neutral position

Beyond phonology, Shcherba made significant contributions to the wider fields of linguistics and lexicography. In contrast to Ferdinand de Saussure, he recognized three rather than two objects of study: speech activity, language systems, and language material. He placed emphasis on the question of the capacity of the speaker to produce sentences never previously heard, a question which would become important to the linguistics of the later twentieth century. He also emphasized the importance of experiments in linguistics, particularly that of negative results, developing methods which became important for field study. He was the teacher of the lexicographer Sergei Ozhegov, author of the most widely used Russian dictionary.

Shcherba is the author of the “glokaya kuzdra” sentence, which consists of words whose roots do not exist in Russian, but has correct construction in terms of Russian morphology and syntax — similar to Chomsky's Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. He invented this sentence to illustrate the distinction between grammar and vocabulary.

References

Peoples.ru bio (in Russian)

"Sto let eksperimental'no-foneticheskikh issledovanii v Rossii" (in Russian)

Yazykovoi ostrov bio with short bibliography (in Russian)

Shcherba's Curriculum Vitae in "Три автобиографии Л.В. Щербы" (in Russian)

Yazykovoi ostrov bio

"Sto let eksperimental'no-foneticheskikh issledovanii v Rossii"

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