Různost jazyků a její interpretace v díle Vladimíra Skaličky: studie z moderních dějin české lingvistiky

• Authors: Ivo Vasiljev

Title variants

EN

The diversity of languages and its interpretation in the work of Vladimír Skalička: an inquiry into the modern history of Czech linguistics

DE

Die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen und ihre Interpretation im Werk von Vladimír Skalička: eine Studie zur modernen Geschichte der tschechischen Sprachwissenschaft

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Vladimír Skalička’s contributions to linguistic typology have been widely recognized. This paper tries to capture the significance of the problem of language diversity in its broadest sense for the development of Skalička’s scholarship and for his scientific legacy. The author argues that in a 1947 Czech-language article titled “The problem of language diversity” published in Slovo a slovesnost, Skalička gave in fact a sketch of a blueprint for modern linguistics in which he advocated a holistic approach to the study of language through a balanced texture of the triple aspect of language: its semiotic nature, its diversity and its structure. The least one can say is that Skalička seems to have followed these self-imposed, yet highly stimulating guidelines for the rest of his life. The final part of the paper is an attempt at summarizing Skalička’s contribution to the understanding of the semiotic connection of linguistic typology and the mutual relations between language and mind or language and society. The author concludes that although Skalička did not directly answer or even explicitly ask the question of why languages differ from each other, he nevertheless cleared the way for future attempts at a structural explanation of the origins of language diversity.

Keywords

CS

dějiny jazykovědy; různost jazyků; gramatika; slovní zásoba; jazyk a společnost; jazyk a psychika; sémiologie; synchronie; vývoj jazyka; typologie

EN

history of linguistics; diversity of languages; grammar; lexicon; language and society; language and mind; semiology; synchrony; language development; typology

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovo a slovesnost: časopis pro otázky teorie a kultury jazyka (Slovo a slovesnost: A journal for the theory of language and language cultivation)
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 69
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 99-109
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Ivo Vasiljev

• Slovo a slovesnost, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic