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Comparative Slavic Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Roman Jakobson
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Extract

“Slavic Studies”—the very expression implies their comparative aspect and raises the question: what enables us to refer to Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lusatian Sorbs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians by the single all-encompassing term, the “Slavic” peoples? What is their common denominator?

It is indisputable that the Slavic peoples are to be defined basically as Slavic-speaking peoples. If speech is the point of departure, the problem becomes primarily a linguistic one. Since the pioneering work of the Czech Abbé Dobrovský (1753–1829), comparative linguistics has proved the existence of a common ancestral language for all the living Slavic languages and has largely reconstructed the sound pattern, grammatical framework and lexical stock of this Common (or Primitive) Slavic language. The problem of where and by whom this Common Slavic language was spoken is being gradually solved by persistent efforts to synchronize the findings of comparative linguistics, toponymy, and archeology. The archeologists' data are like a motion picture without its sound track; whereas the linguists have the sound track without the film. Thus, interdepartmental teamwork becomes indispensable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 1954 , pp. 67 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1954

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References

1 This essay is a more detailed version of the paper delivered on June 27, 1953, at the inaugural meeting of the Conference of American and Canadian Slavicists at the University of Michigan.

2 See Harvard Slavic Studies, IGoogle Scholar, and Oxford Slavonic Papers, III.Google Scholar

3 XIV (October 1952), p. 523.

4 Jan. 31, 1953, p. 489.

5 Conférences de l'Institut de linguistique, VIII, (Paris, 1949), p. 31.Google Scholar

6 See The Review of Politics, VII, (01 1945), 29–42.Google Scholar

* Because of technical difficulties some Slavic diacritical marks were omitted.—Editor.