Selected Works: Articles on General Linguistics 9783110815627, 9789027926937

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curai C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Maior, 72

ED compiled by: A. A. LEONT'EV

editorial committee: F. D. ASNIN, Y. P. GRIGOR'EV, VIAG. V. IVANOV, A. A. LEONT'EV, A. A. REFORMATSKIJ (Chairman)

1974

MOUTON T H E H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V. Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

Translated by Daniel Armstrong from the Russian edition: "Nauka" Publishers Moscow 1968

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-83930

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The volume offered for the reader's attention of the selected works on general linguistics by the noted Soviet linguist E. D. Polivanov was brought out in Russian in 1968 on the initiative and with the most active participation of Academician Nikolaj Iosifovic Konrad, now deceased. Of course, many of even the most fundamental of Polivanov's works have not been included in it; we decided to limit the topics of the Selected Works to that plan which Polivanov himself had outlined for the second (unrealized) volume of his Vvedenie v jazykoznanie dlja vostokovednyx vuzov [An Introduction to Linguistics for Higher Institutions of Oriental Studies]. This is, besides the introductory article, (a) the theory of the evolution of language; (b) methods of comparative historical linguistics; (c) sociological problems of linguistics; (d) applied linguistics; (e) linguistics and poetics. The name of Polivanov until very recently was little known beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. For those of us who have collected bit by bit the manuscript and printed legacy of E. D. Polivanov and biographical information about him, who have prepared the Russian edition of this book for the press, it is pleasant to realize that our effort has not only made the works of this talented linguist accessible for his own countrymen but has also promoted his international popularity. A. A. Leont'ev

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface to the English Edition From the Editors The Life and Activities of E. D. Polivanov List of the Works of E. D. Polivanov Posthumous Publications E. D. Polivanov's Most Important Manuscripts Basic Literature on E. D. Polivanov

5 9 11 32 46 48 51

SELECTED WORKS ON GENERAL LINGUISTICS I. INTRODUCTORY SECTION

Specific Features of the Last Decade, 1917-1927, in the History of Our Linguistic Thought (In Lieu of a Foreword)

57

II. THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

Factors in the Phonetic Evolution of Language as a Work Process Where Do the Reasons for Language Evolution Lie? Mutational Changes in the Phonic History of Language The Law of the Change of Quantity into Quality in the Processes of Historical Phonetic Evolution A Review of R. Jakobson's Book

65 81 93 113 131

III. METHODS OF COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

One of the Japanese-Malayan Parallels Toward Work on Musical Accentuation in Japanese (In Connection with Malayan Languages)

139 141

8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Toward the Question of the Kinship Relations of Korean and the "Altaic" Languages Indo-European *medhu - Common Chinese *mit Indo-European *jm-[j] - Ancient Chinese *cu 'pig' The Dungan Plural Suffix -mw

149 157 159 163

IV. SOCIOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

The Problem of Marxist Linguistics and the Japhetic Theory (Résumé of a Report) The Sphere of Immediate Problems in Contemporary Linguistics Revolution and the Literary Languages of the U.S.S.R On the Phonetic Features of the Dialects of Social Groups and, in Particular, of Standard Russian The Phonetics of the Language of Intellectuals

169 171 179 195 211

V. APPLIED LINGUISTICS

The Subjective Nature of the Perceptions of Language Sounds On Three Principles of Constructing an Orthography On the Russian Transcription of Japanese Words Even Mathematics Can Be Useful

223 238 245 266

VI. LINGUISTICS AND POETICS

Apropos "Sound Gestures" in Japanese Formal Types of Japanese Riddles On the Metrical Nature of Chinese Versification

275 285 289

APPENDIX

Commentary I Commentary II Historical Linguistics and Language Policy The General Phonetic Principle of Any Poetic Technique Index to Subjects Index to Names Index to Words by Language

295 308 335 350 369 372 376

FROM THE EDITORS

This edition of the works of the well-known Soviet linguist, Professor Evgenij Dmitrievic Polivanov (1891-1938), prepared for the 75th anniversary of his birth, includes only a small portion of his academic legacy, namely those articles and fragments on general linguistics which are of the greatest interest for present-day Soviet and international linguistics. The outline of this book corresponds to the plan for the second (unpublished) volume of An Introduction to Linguistics for Higher Institutions of Oriental Studies which was set forth by E. D. Polivanov himself in the foreword to the first volume.1 Not having at our disposal the text of the second volume, we decided to combine in this edition those published and unpublished works of E. D. Polivanov which in content satisfy this plan. The book includes articles according to the following sections, the names of which are also E. D. Polivanov's: 1. Introductory Section 2. The Theory of Language Evolution 3. Methods of Comparative-Historical Linguistics 4. Sociological Linguistics 5. Applied Linguistics 6. Linguistics and Poetics The assignment of individual articles to one section or another is, of course, arbitrary since in the course of one work E. D. Polivanov customarily treated a whole series of theoretical problems (cf. Index of subjects). This edition includes a series of articles from the book Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931). The editors declined to reprint this book in its entirety since it contains obsolete articles along with those which are still of interest. The article "IstoriSeskoe jazykoznanie i jazykovaja politika" [Historical Linguistics and Language Policy] from this book is reprinted in two editions of V. A. Zvegincev's anthology on the history of linguistics; we considered it unnecessary to 1 E. D. Polivanov, Vvedenie v jazykoznanie dlja vostokovednyx vuzov [An Introduction to Linguistics for Higher Institutions of Oriental Studies] (Leningrad, 1928), iii.

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FROM THE EDITORS

reprint it for the third time. For similar reasons the article "Obsdij foneticeskij princip vsjakoj poetiSeskoj texniki" [The General Phonetic Principle of Any Poetic Technique] is not included in the section "Linguistics and Poetics".2 In all the articles Polivanov's method of citation is retained. A translation of all the foreign language texts encountered in the citations appears at the end of the book. 3 In case it is needed, a more precise bibliographic description of the works mentioned is given in the commentary. There have been no cuts in the author's text. All editorial notes are given only in the commentaries. An introductory article about the life and creative activity of E. D. Polivanov has been added to this edition as well as a bibliography of his works and the most important works about him. As research aids, the book contains: (a) commentaries, (b) a subject index, (c) an index of names, (d) an index of languages and words, and (d) a translation of the foreign language citations. The editors express deep gratitude to all who have made possible the publication of the Selected Works of E. D. Polivanov, in particular to A. A. Brudnyj, V. V. Vinogradov, A. I. Kuz'min, G. G. Superfin, A. E. Suprun, Z. N. Fedina, and A. S. Stern. F. D. Asnin, V. P. Grigor'ev, Vjac. V. Ivanov, A. A. Leont'ev, A. A. Reformatskij

2

At Professor Leont'ev's suggestion, these articles have been included in the English edition (they appear at the end of the book). The system of notation for the notes and commentary to these articles has been preserved as it was in their Russian editions: "IstoriCeskoe jazykoznanie i jazykovaja politika" [Historical Linguistics and Language Policy] in Istorija jazykoznanija XIX i XX vekov v oierkax i izvlecenijax [The History of Linguistics in the 19th and 20th Centuries in Sketches and Excerpts], edited by V. A. Zvegincev, Part II (Moscow, 1960) (3rd edition Moscow, 1965) and "ObScij fonetiSeskij princip vsjakoj pofeticeskoj texniki" [The General Phonetic Principle of Any Poetic Technique] in Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1963, No. 1, 99-112. - Translator 3 Since in the Russian text all these citations are in German, French, or English, this brief section of the Russian edition has been omitted in the English translation. Aside from the additions noted above, the only other changes from the Russian edition in this English translation have involved expanding Russian abbreviations when necessary to assist the English reader, supplying glosses for Russian words used as examples, and changing italicization of titles and punctuation in bibliographic references to correspond to American practice. All Russian titles have been transliterated, and their translation is given in square brackets. The readily apparent typographical errors in the text and bibliographic citations have been corrected. The indices have been expanded to give reference to "The Life and Activities of E.D. Polivanov" and the Appendix. - Translator

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

Evgenij DmitrieviS Polivanov was born February 28, 1891, in the city of Smolensk.1 His father, Dmitrij Mixajlovid (1840-1918), began his career of service as a worker in the Imperial Public Library (now the M. E. Saltykov-Scedrin Government Public Library), then served in the guards for 5 years, after which he was a public servant in the department of railroads for 30 years. After 1905 he lost his job for a time. The Polivanov family was forced to live on a pension, on the mother's honoraria, and on what Evgenij could earn by tutoring and other means. It is sufficient to say that in order to have an opportunity to finish the university, E. D. Polivanov had to provide for his whole family for two years ahead during one summer - and, moreover, his mother was already gravely ill. Evgenij Dmitrievic's mother, Ekaterina Jakovlevna (1849-1913), was noted as a publisher, writer, journalist, and translator; she published in various Russian periodicals and enjoyed popularity in liberal intellectual circles. Working during the '80s on the newspaper Smolenskij vestnik [The Smolensk Herald], Ekaterina Jakovlevna became acquainted with the well-known Russian pedagogue Vasilij Porfir'eviC Vaxterov (1853-1924), who remained a friend of the Polivanov family until his death. His correspondence with the Polivanovs, father and son, gives evidence that he gave partial financial support to Evgenij Dmitrievic more than once while he worked on his dissertation. Another person close to the Polivanovs all these years was the noted historian, Professor N. I. Kareev. Already seriously ill, Ekaterina Jakovlevna published her very interesting memoirs "Iz proslogo (semidesjatniki)" [From the Past (of a Septuagenarian)] in the journal Istoriceskij vestnik [The Historical Herald] (May 1913). As D. M. Polivanov later wrote to V. P. Vaxterov, until her very last days she "was interested in all that was going on in our long- and much-suffering native land and reacted with particular

1 Because the dates of birth in various documents on E. D. Polivanov do not agree, there exists a similar discrepancy in publications devoted to him. The date given here is the correct one. It was established on the basis of an official check of the archives of the Smolensk Regional Bureau for Registration of Civil Acts.

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THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

vehemence to the blasphemous Beilis trial..." (GBL, F. 46, p. 6, No. 25).2 Having finished the Aleksandrov Secondary School in Riga in 1908, Evgenij Dmitrievic enrolled in the Historical-Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg University (the Slavic-Russian Division), and after a year entered the Oriental Practical Academy in the Japanese Division. This was a sort of course in Oriental languages designed basically for military personnel, diplomats, and other people who needed a good practical command of the language. Many remarkable scholars were teaching in the Historical-Philological Faculty at that time. But from the very beginning Evgenij Dmitrievic chose one of them and remained his student until the end of their days. This was Ivan Aleksandrovid Baudouin de Courtenay, who at that time was entering the seventh decade of his life. "From the second year of my studies, my world outlook was conditioned by the very comprehensive influence exerted on me by my teacher Baudouin de Courtenay by conviction an internationalist-radical", wrote Polivanov a quarter of a century later (IJaz). What sort of influence this was is easy to understand from following the further fate of those whom Baudouin numbered among his school: with the exception of M. R. Vasmer and K. Buga, all the closest students of Baudouin actively supported Soviet authority, and two of them, E. D. Polivanov and V. B. Toma§evskij, became Communists. E. D. Polivanov was one of the closest students not only of Baudouin but also of L. V. ScSerba.3 In particular, he regularly attended seminars and practical lectures in experimental phonetics; S. I. Bernstejn, who worked with Evgenij Dmitrievic from the end of 1910 to the beginning of 1920, remembers him as a brilliant phonetician who easily understood complicated instrumental recordings of speech. The course studied by E. D. Polivanov with Baudouin de Courtenay and L. V. Scerba turned out to be very important for his future as an orientalist. Having finished the university in 1912, E. D. Polivanov was retained on Baudouin's recommendation in the Department of Comparative Linguistics. In writing of him, Baudouin de Courtenay said that he, "it is true, is not known in scholarly literature but distinguishes himself by broad 2

References to several archival sources are given in abbreviation: AN SSSR = Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (Leningrad); GBL = Manuscript Section of the V. I. Lenin Government Public Library; IJaz = Archive of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (now partially transferred to the Moscow Division of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.); CGIALO = Central Government Historical Archive of the Leningrad Region; CGIAU = Central Government Historical Archive of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic; AR = personal archives of L. I. Rojzenzon. Other archive depositories are named in full in the text. We take this opportunity to express gratitude especially to G. G. Superfin, who first discovered and made possible the publication of many archival materials. 3 On Polivanov as a representative of the Petersburg School of Russian linguistics, cf. the article: A. A. Leont'ev, "I. A. Boduta de Kurtene i peterburgskaja Skola russkoj lingvistiki" [I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and the Petersburg School of Russian Linguistics], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1961, No. 4. On his linguistic views, cf. also V. V. Ivanov, "Lingvisticeskie vzgljady E. D. Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E. D. Polivanov], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1957, No. 3.

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

13

knowledge in his chosen field of specialization and related fields" (CGIALO, f. 733, op. 155, ed. xr. 389, 1.108). For two years the young master's degree candidate worked on his dissertation. They were very difficult years for him. Things were not good at home; just at this time Ekaterina Jakovlevna died. This was a heavy blow for the Polivanov family. "It is painful... to study, since Mama followed this so closely and liked for me to sit near her with a book", Evgenij Dmitrievic wrote to V. P. Vaxterov (GBL, f. 46, p. 6, No. 20). He had to spend much time and energy preparing the dissertation. And, at the same time, he attended lectures ("I continued my studies of Tibetan as an advanced student", ibid., No. 18) and gave lessons, mainly for the income ("I am busy with Kalmyks who are future folk school teachers", ibid., No. 19); he taught systematically for the Women's Pedagogical Courses in New Languages (later the lectures given there by Polivanov were published in two editions); he made reports in the Linguistics Section of the Neo-Philological Society, in the Russo-Japanese Society, in the Oriental Division of the Archeological Society. Finally came the master's examinations, and in 1914 Evgenij Dmitrievic became a private-docent of the Oriental Faculty in Japanese. Here is the program of his lectures as a private-docent: "(1) linguistic methods applied to Chinese and Japanese for the 1st and 2nd semesters - 1 hour per week; (2) introduction to Japanese dialectology for the 3rd through 8th semesters - 1 hour; (3) historical phonetics of Chinese in connection with Chinese borrowings in Japanese for the 3rd through 8th semesters" (CGIALO, f. 733, op. 156, No. 109,1. No. 87). Later he was offered the Department of Tibetan Philology, but for some reason this did not materialize. On the whole, Polivanov, as is evident from his notes and other documents, was trying to become a docent in Baudouin de Courtenay's department and passed the examinations in this department, but at the end of 1913 Baudouin was prosecuted in court for a brochure in which he exposed the tsarist government's oppression of minority peoples and was dismissed from the university. There began in the department, in Polivanov's words, "an interregnum". During these years E. D. Polivanov's first printed works appeared - on accentuation in Japanese. Incidentally, not all of them are known. Thus, Polivanov writes to Y. P. Vaxterov (spring 1914): "The issue of Zapiski Vostocnogo Otdelenija Arxeologiceskogo Obscestva [Notes of the Oriental Division of the Archeological Society] has already come out ... and besides this I have only two small notes not of general interest and very insignificant" (GBL, f. 46, p. 6, No. 17). Therefore, he did not include them in the list of his works and they remained unknown. Somewhat later, while in Japan for holidays, he was published there, too; this is mentioned in a document from 1927: "From 1916 the publication of my works in Japanese scholarly journals was interrupted" (IJaz). Not one of these works is known. Evgenij Dmitrievic went to Japan for the first time in May 1914 with the support of the Russo-Japanese Society, and for the second time in the summer of 1915. There he occupied himself with work on dialectology. At this point it would be useful to pose the questions: what sort of Japanese

14

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

scholar was E. D. Polivanov, and what contribution did he make to Soviet and world knowledge of Japan? E. D. Polivanov was the first to establish the presence of musical stress in Japanese and the first to study Japanese dialectology seriously. He collected many accented texts4 and produced a whole series of instrumental recordings of Japanese dialectal speech.6 To E. D. Polivanov belongs a series of important works on the historical phonetics of Japanese. He studied extensively the kinship ties of Japanese, advancing the hypothesis of its mixed nature (Malayo-Polynesian and Altaic components) and thus anticipating many later works by Japanese and European authors. Finally, it should not be forgotten that he was the author of a practical Russian transcription for Japanese texts. A few words about the importance of the works of E. D. Polivanov for Sinology are appropriate. To him belong the concept of "syllable-phoneme", developed further by A. A. Dragunov, and also the original grammatical treatment of Chinese (in particular, the concept of "binom"), developed further by A. A. Dragunov, N. N. Korotkov, and their students.6 E. D. Polivanov also studied at some length questions connected with the Russian transcription of Chinese. His works on the study of the Dungan language must also be mentioned. But let us return to the biography of Evgenij Dmitrievic. It is interesting that his political debut was an address against the imperialist war; he wrote an anti-war plan for which he was arrested and imprisoned for a week. "When the war began", he said, "my international platform became clear for me ... I was a pacifist; I then came to internationalism" (AR). In the pre-Revolutionary years, E. D. Polivanov became good friends with a group of young linguists and literary scholars gathered around O. M. Brik. His fascination with questions of poetics is not difficult to understand for he himself wrote verses that were sometimes not bad. We have at hand a series of poems by Evgenij DmitrieviS, among them a chapter from the poem "Lenin". It is interesting to point out that this chapter has the following dedication: "Dedicated to the memory of my friend V. V. Majakovskij. E.P". And if it is taken into account that Polivanov was a student of Baudouin's, to whom the idea of a functional-stylistic differentiation of speech was very near, then there is nothing surprising in the fact that he and another student 4

A significant part of them is still unpublished. * For a more extensive evaluation of the dialectological works of E. D. Polivanov, cf. N. I. Konrad, Sintaksis japonskogo nacionaVnogo literaturnogo jazyka [Syntax of the Japanese National Literary Language] (Moscow, 1937), 14. O. P. Petrova, a historian of Soviet Japanese studies, speaks directly of the "enormous significance" of E. D. Polivanov's research (Ucenye zapiski Instituía Narodov Azii AN SSSR [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of the Peoples of Asia of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.], Issue XXV [Moscow, 1960], 134). 8 Cf. N. N. Korotkov, "K probleme morfologiceskoj xarakteristiki sovremennogo kitajskogo literaturnogo jazyka" [Toward the Problem of a Morphological Characterization of the Contemporary Chinese Literary Language], XXV Mezdunarodnyj kongress vostokovedov. Doklady delegacii SSSR [XXV International Congress of Orientalists. Reports of the Delegation of the U.S.S.R.] (Moscow, 1960).

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

15

of Baudouin's, L. P. Jakubinskij, turned up at the inception of the "Ob§cestvo po izucenijupo£ticeskogo jazyka" [Society for the Study of Poetic Language], Already in the first publication of this Society, which then had not yet even been formed as an organization, in the Sbornikipo teorii poeticeskogo jazyka [Collections on the Theory of Poetic Language], 1 (Petrograd, 1916), his article ("Po povodu 'zvukovyx zestov' japonskogo jazyka" [Apropos "Sound Gestures" in Japanese]) is found. On the fourth page of the cover of the book by B. M. fejxenbaum, Melodika russkogo liriceskogo stixa [The Melodies of Russian Lyrical Verse], published by the Society for the Study of Poetic Language in 1922, it was mentioned that the sixth issue of the Sborniki [Collections], Revoljucija ijazyk [Revolution and Language], was being prepared for publication: articles by E. D. Polivanov, V. B. Sklovskij, and B. A. Kusner. This collection was never published. And in his further work, E. D. Polivanov more than once returned to problems of poetics.7 The most interesting period in the biography of E. D. Polivanov begins with 1917. "I met the Revolution as a revolution of labor. I greeted specifically the free, beloved work which became outlined as useful for me right in the revolutionary situation" (AR). Already in this period Evgenij Dmitrievic Polivanov was striving to be useful to the people. He was working in the Office of Military Press of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies. This office was evidently engaged primarily in the publication of textbooks for soldiers and in preparing articles and brochures on the subject of education. Simultaneously he worked on Novaja zizn' [New Life]. In these months he published in it the articles "Japonija i mir bez annekcii" [Japan and Peace without Annexation], "Svoevremenna li reforma orfografii?" [Is the Orthography Reform Timely?], and "Nuzna li 'Palata gospod' revoljucionnoj Rossii?" [Does Revolutionary Russia Need a "House of Lords"?]. In the elections for the Constituent Assembly in September 1917, E. D. Polivanov voted for the Bolshevist slate. From the first days of the October Revolution, he worked with I. A. Zalkind in the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, struggling with the civil servant-saboteurs.8 There exist the reminiscences of I. A. Zalkind on this period and also the special research published recently in the journal Istorija SSSR [History of the U.S.S.R.].9 From October to December 1917, Polivanov directed a large and multifaceted operation in the Ministry (which soon became the NKID 7

Concerning his works on poetics, cf. "Iz neopublikovannogo nasledstva E. D. Polivanova" [From the Unpublished Legacy of E. D. Polivanov], Voprosy jazykozrtanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1963, No. 1. 8 E. D. Polivanov's note "Prestupnaja igra Cinovnikov-diplomatov" [The Criminal Game of the Civil Servant-Diplomats], published in Pravda [Truth], November 4 (17), 1917, is devoted to unmasking the criminal sabotage by the civil servants of the Ministry. " I. Zalkind, "NKID v semnadcatom godu. Iz vospominanij ob Oktjabre" [The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in 1917. From Reminiscences about the October Revolution], Meidunarodnaja zizri [International Life], 1927, No. 10; M. P. IroSnikov, "Izistorii organizacii Narodnogo komissariata inostrannyx del" [From the History of the Organization of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs], Istorija SSSR [History of the U.S.S.R.], 1964, No. 1.

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THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

[=Narodnyj kommissariat inostrannyx del [People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs]]). He handled in particular all ties with the countries of the Orient, being a "plenipotentiary of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs", i.e., a deputy of the People's Commissariat for the Orient, and heading the section which dealt with these matters. E. D. Polivanov's role is especially noticeable in the publication of the secret agreements of the tsarist government. As time went on, the chief merit in the publication of these agreements was often attributed to the remarkable revolutionary, the Baltic sailor Nikolaj Grigor'evic Markin.10 However, although N. G. Markin did participate actively in this matter, he was definitely not the main member of the case and certainly not the only one. He published the Sbornik tajnyx dokumentov [Collection of Secret Documents], using documents already deciphered and translated but unpublished in the Soviet press. According to the reminiscences of N. I. Konrad, one of the main participants in the search for and publication of the secret agreements was E. D. Polivanov. It was not accidental that the bourgeois Nasa rec' [Our Speech], in the issue of November 16 (29), 1917, in a note under the headline "V Ministerstve inostrannyx del" [In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs], wrote that in the Ministry only Mr. Polivanov, a specialist in deciphering secret agreements, and the Secretary of the People's Commissariat, Mr. Zalkind, were in charge. After February 1918, E. D. Polivanov was busy with political work among the Petrograd Chinese. "In the summer of 1920 a Chinese cell of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was created in Petrograd. One important worker, Comrade Polivanov, who spoke Chinese, often conversed with us Chinese workers on political topics and taught Russian. With the help of Comrade Polivanov and the Chinese Communist cell, I understood the profound meaning of the revolution that was in progress" (from the reminiscences of one of the Chinese workers who was then living in Petrograd). However, the activity of E. D. Polivanov among the Chinese had begun much earlier. In 1918 he was one of the organizers of the "Union of Chinese Workers". He was the editor of the first Chinese communist newspaper and was connected with the Chinese Soviet of Working Deputies. There is information about the fact that he was connected with the Chinese volunteers who fought on the fronts of the Civil War: two of his poems tell about their feats in battle, and another poem has the notation "Scerbakov, 1918". N. P. Arxangel'skij, who gave us Evgenij Dmitrievic's verses, established that in 1918 only one settled point on the shore of the Azov Sea bore this name. It was there that the Chinese detachments fought in 1918. ( l i m 10 Cf., for example, G. Ronina, "Vaxtennyj revoljucii" [Watchman of the Revolution], Komsomol'skaja pravda [Young Communist's Truth], May 19, 1963. 11 There is no footnote 11 in the text. - Translator 12 On the activities of E. D. Polivanov among the Chinese, cf. F. Novogrudskij and A. Dunaevskij, Po sledam Pau [In the Footsteps of Pau] (Moscow, 1962), 75-77. We cite an excerpt from the reminiscences of N. I. Konrad which pertain to this period: "How we racked our brains trying to translate into Chinese the word Sovet 'Soviet', 'council'. We dug in dictionaries, hefted volumes of classical

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

17

Among the Chinese workers E. D. Polivanov wielded unlimited authority. Having known him in the beginning of the '20s, M. S. Kardasev relates that one reminder of his acquaintance with Polivanov was sufficient to make him a respected person in the Tashkent Chinese colony. The year 1919 was marked for E. D. Polivanov by two events. He was accepted into the membership of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and the Academic Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Petrograd University selected him professor. E. D. Polivanov was one of those representatives of the old intelligentsia who, like K. A. Timirjazev, did not hesitate a minute in choosing their way and immediately devoted all their efforts, abilities, and knowledge to the service of the people. "I was attracted to the rank of revolutionary Bolshevist workers by faith in the Revolution, belief in this just cause, burning with enthusiasm for the practical struggle" (CGIAU). He had a right to speak this way: in the matter of defending the struggles of the Revolution and the construction of the young Soviet republic, his contribution is not insignificant, and long ago it was time to assess the value of this side of his activity, too. In the beginning of 1921, E. D. Polivanov moved to Moscow, where he worked as the assistant director of the Far-Eastern Section of the Comintern and at the same time taught in the Communist University of the Workers of the East. In the autumn he was sent by the Comintern on a trip to Tashkent, where he stayed for several years, as he later explained, in connection with his wife's illness. The Tashkent period in the biography of Polivanov is the one most studied. The Tashkent teacher N. P. Arxangel'skij has done especially much in reconstructing these years of the life of Evgenij Dmitrievic. He recalls: "At this time an Academic Council was created in the Narkompros [People's Commissariat for Education] of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - primarily for preparing textbooks and curriculum and methodology materials for the new national Soviet schools. The basic units of the Academic Council in 1921 were three national academic commissions: Uzbek, 'Kirghiz' ( = Kazakh), and Turkmen. An academicpedagogical commission was organized to help them; they appointed me its chairman. Soon the Academic Council changed its name to the Government Academic Council. Chinese works, turned this way and that every word that was somehow close - but nothing came of it, not one was capable of conveying precisely what the Russian people put into the concepts Sovet 'Soviet', Sovety 'Soviets', Sovetskij 'Soviet' (adj.). Here we sat, tormenting ourselves, arguing, and suddenly Evgenij Dmitrievii bangs his fist on the table: 'There is a word!' What Polivanov suggested was really excellent. For while we were arguing and searching, the Chinese workers and the Chinese Red Army soldiers, not splitting any philological hairs, solved this problem without us. They didn't even try to translate the Russian word Sovety into their own language; they simply included this great word in their own speech just as it was. And Polivanov, a linguist of amazing sensitivity and talent, was the first to understand: the word Sovet will sound best of all in all languages just as it sounds in Russian. This is what his suggestion amounted to. 'Sovieta!' he pronounced in a Peking manner. 'A fine Chinese word! You can't say it more precisely'. This is how he did it. And thus it was written from then on in Chinese" (G. Novogrudskij and A. Dunaevskij, Po sledam Pau [In the Footsteps of Pau], 77).

18

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

"In August of 1921 E. D. Polivanov, the newly appointed assistant to the chairman, came ,.. 13 E. D. and I recognized each other immediately. He also remembered me from the university... E.D. and I quickly established a productive friendship. Together we prepared the first issue of the organ of the Academic Soviet, the journal Nauka i prosvescenie [Science and Education].... We both struggled for organizing within the structure of the Academic Soviet of the Turkestan Narkompros a Tadzhik Academic Commission, against which several members of the Uzbek Commission objected; they claimed that there were no longer any Tadzhiks in the Turkestan A.S.S.R., that all the Turkestan Tadzhiks had become Uzbeks, that there were still Tadzhiks only in the Bukhara Republic.... I ... know of his scholarly activity in planning a series of textbooks and courses for teachers to help in teaching Russian in the national schools of the Turkestan A.S.S.R., mainly Uzbek schools; he began to write the first sections of the future books of this series." By using the documents which have been preserved, the names of some of these works can be established. For example, a Russian primer for Uzbek schools, a series of primers for Kirghiz schools, an Uzbek textbook for Russians, The Folk Epos (the first part of a history of world literature for translation into Kirghiz), Antireligious Conversations for European Schools of the Second Level, and others. Some of these were published, for example, the Uzbek textbook for Russians (Vvedenie v izucenie uzbekskogo jazyka [An Introduction to the Study of Uzbek]), the Russian primer (Mak [The Poppy]), and others. Despite some isolated shortcomings (V. P. Vaxterov's primer was used as a basis for the texts of the primer Mak, and therefore objects unfamiliar to Uzbek children appeared in it on the first pages), these textbooks and methodological works by E. D. Polivanov, like his later books and articles on methodological topics (for example, Opyt castnoj metodiki prepodavanija russkogo jazyka uzbekam [An Experiment in Special Methodology for Teaching Russian Language to Uzbeks]) had great importance for teaching Russian in the national school. It is no accident that the Opyt castnoj metodiki [Experiment in Special Methodology] was reprinted in 1961 as a textbook of methodology. Of course, work with methodology requires a detailed knowledge of the languages of Central Asia. This knowledge E. D. Polivanov acquired rather rapidly; already in the first issue of the journal Nauka i prosvescenie [Science and Education] (1922) his work "Zvukovoj sostav taskentskogo dialekta" [The Sound Structure of the Tashkent Dialect] appeared, and later he undertook the enormous task of studying the dialects of Uzbek which nevertheless was never completed. Not one linguist specializing in Turkology who studies Uzbek dialectology can even today surpass the works of E. D. Polivanov. He alone described more dialects than perhaps all the other linguists of Uzbekistan of the 1920s. We will list these dialects: Margelan, Samarkand, KazakNajman, Kyjat-Kungrad, Gurlen, Khiva, Kazli-Najman, Turkestan, Kashgar, the 13

Later, in the Government Academic Council, he was a member of the academic-pedagogical commission, chairman of the linguistic commission, and an assistant not on the stalf. A.L., L.R.,A.X.

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

19

Ljuli dialect, the dialect of the Fergana Karakalpaks, and the dialect of the indigenous Jews of Fergana. A brilliant knowledge of all the dialects of Uzbekistan, a deep understanding of the tendencies of their development, and in general a colossal command of general linguistics brought E. D. Polivanov to the conclusion that the Iranized (non-synharmonic) urban dialect of Tashkent, Samarkand, and Fergana served as a basis for the Uzbek literary language. This conclusion, which later proved completely correct, contradicted the point of view of several Uzbek linguists and educators, who tried to lean on a "more Turkic" dialect and justified this attempt with the necessity, as they said, of "turning one's face to the village". O n October 22, 1928, in the newspaper Pravda Vostoka [Truth of the East] E. D. Polivanov's article on this topic ("Nevozmozno molcat'" [One Cannot Be Silent]) was published, in which he comes out sharply against the attempt to bind to all of Uzbekistan an alphabet worked out on the basis of synharmonic dialects: this would mean introducing into Uzbek orthography "three jat's". This brings us to the problem which concerned E. D. Polivanov all his life - the problem of creating new alphabets for the languages of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. "The participation of scholars in such a problem as, for example, the organization of a new alphabet, I consider of prime importance, one of the most important tasks for scholars ... The most important aspect of my work is its application for the present and the near future" (AR). The first people after the Revolution for whom a system of writing was created on an academic basis were the Yakuts. At the end of 1917 a primer was published which had been worked out by S. A. Novgorodov with the close participation of E. D. Polivanov. And in 1922 a Latin alphabet for Azerbaijani appeared. Also in 1922 the Second Congress of the Educational Workers of Uzbekistan took place. At this congress two reports on the Latinization of the Uzbek written language were given; one of them was Polivanov's. His was the first project to Latinize the Uzbek written language. A year later the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow brought out in mimeographed form E. D. Polivanov's brochure, Problema latinskogo srifta v tureckix pis'mennostjax [The Problem of Latin Script in Turkic Written Languages], In the foreword to this brochure, it is stated: "The practical conclusion of this article is the necessity of calling a conference of educational workers of the Turkish peoples of the U.S.S.R. on questions of orthography to avert the imminent 'babel' that will result from carrying out the reform by various and sundry writing systems and the unnecessary expense connected with this." It was in just this direction, the direction of creating one coordinated organ, that the development of written languages for the peoples of the U.S.S.R. proceeded. E. D. Polivanov took a very active part in this. He attended and spoke at the first, second, and third plenary sessions of the All-Union Central Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet. Besides this, he carried on extensive practical work. More than twenty works of general complexity devoted to the theory and practice of Latinization belong

20

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POUVANOV

to him. In 1928 E. D. Polivanov was made a member of the Academic Council of the All-Union Central Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet. While he was in Tashkent, E. D. Polivanov carried on another practical job, too. According to the reminiscences of the late A. K. Borovkov, in connection with the national demarcation of the Turkestan A.S.S.R., a government commission was sent into the Pricircik region (Kuramin area) in 1924 in order to verify the accuracy of the demarcation. On this commission was E. D. Polivanov. Already in 1923 the Government Academic Council at two sessions had listened to a report by Professor E. D. Polivanov on the linguistic census of Turkestan. "After listening to Prof. Polivanov's report on the linguistic census of Turkestan, i.e., on the systematic collecting of materials on the living dialects of Turkestan and their linguistic processing, the decision was made to create a center under the auspieces of the Government Academic Council for collective work on this matter under Prof. Polivanov's directorship and with the cooperation of the academic personnel of the Oriental Institute and the local teaching staffs, and to entrust Comrade Polivanov with compilation of the appropriate instructions and also with teaching a special course on the methods of collecting linguistic materials."14 The Oriental Institute, mentioned in this protocol, was organized as an independent educational institution in 1918, at the same time as the Central-Asian Government University. In this Institute, as well as in the Historical-Philological Faculty of the University, E. D. Polivanov lectured and gave classes. Even now many of his students from that time are living in Tashkent. Here is what they remember about Polivanov: I remember how one day in 1921 a man climbed to the lectern with quick movements, undoubtedly a very nervous man.... From his first words Prof. E. D. Polivanov earned the attention of the young audience of the Turkestan Oriental Institute. After that E. D. Polivanov's lectures attracted a huge audience. Several of the student-orientalists did not miss even one of his lectures. Even our professors and instructors came to listen to the brilliant lecturer. The only other person to attract such a large audience at that time was, I think, Academician V. V. Bartol'd, who was giving us a special course on the history of Turkestan.... He [Polivanov] was evidently lecturing on what he not only knew extremely well but also loved. The 'dry' subject (comparative linguistics) turned out to be very interesting. Polivanov could engage our interest, captivate us, and we should be grateful to him for this to this day. (T. N. Krylov, manuscript)

"He lectured in a captivating manner, using neither outlines nor cards with citations" (Z. N. Seligran, manuscript); "Polivanov's astounding memory impressed us. He never used cribs, rarely quoted, but mostly put forth his own views, giving a mass of examples from various languages" (P. A. Danilov, newspaper Samarkand universiteti, September 16, 1964). His course on Chinese language (with a demonstration of the pronunciation of speakers of various dialects!) and a course on formal poetics were evidently especially outstanding among his lectures. One of his students - his name is unfortunately not known - wrote during these years under E. D. Polivanov's super14

Bjulleten' narodnogo komissariata

prosveSienija

Turkrespubliki

[Bulletin of the People's Com-

missariat for Education of the Turkestan Republic], No. 2 (March 20, 1923), 14.

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

21

vision a paper "The Evolution of Rhyme in Recent Russian Poetry". In 1925 Evgenij DmitrieviS lectured not only on linguistic subjects but also gave a course on general ethnography. During these years E. D. Polivanov was intensely occupied with scholarly work. Here is one anecdote characterizing his, so to speak, creative potential: Sometime early in the spring, Prof. E. D. Polivanov came into the publishing office ('Turkpecat") and asked to be given an advance on a new article he had proposed. But it was explained that the professor had not submitted an article for which he had received a previous advance. He had to be refused a new advance. Then E. D. Polivanov asked that he be shown a free desk where he could work for the day. A free desk was found.... Professor Polivanov sat down at this desk and quickly began to fill up one page after another. In about four hours he presented a finished article according to the terms of the previous advance. This exceptional speed with which a serious article on a linguistic topic was written astonished all the workers in the publishing house. In printing this article it was not necessary to make any serious changes in the proof. (V. V. Gruza, manuscript) It must be supposed that this article was devoted either to Uzbek dialectology or to the theory of evolution. This latter problem occupied Polivanov a great deal in the 1920s; he wrote many separate studies treating various problems of the development of language, more than once presented reports, etc. In Tashkent he published in Uzbek a small book on the theory of evolution. In many of his manuscripts there is mention of the fact that he prepared an analogous book in Russian; unfortunately, it was not preserved. E. D. Polivanov's views on the theory of evolution are even now of great scholarly interest. This is clear even from the number of reports devoted to them at the Polivanov Conference in Samarkand in the autumn of 1964. One must regret only that they have not yet become the subject of a profound monographic analysis, for they reflect Polivanov's attempt to connect the question of language and society directly with the concrete mechanism of language development, an attempt which few after him have ventured. It seems that just now this circle of linguistic problems is again becoming pressing. E. D. Polivanov was a polyglot. He himself considered that he knew sixteen languages: French, German, English, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Serbian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Tatar, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kirghiz, and Tadzhik. But this list is deliberately understated. It is known for certain that he also had a command (at least linguistically) of Abkhaz, Azerbaijani, Albanian, Assyrian, Arabic, Georgian, the Dungan language, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Korean, Mordvin (Erza), Tagalog, Tibetan, Turkish, Uighur, Chechen, Chuvash, Estonian, and perhaps still others. Many stories have been preserved about how E. D. Polivanov learned new languages literally "during the summer"; in particular, N. A. Baskakov tells how Evgenij DmitrieviS, having come to Nukus, after a month had a sufficient command of Karakalpak to read a report in Karakalpak before a Karakalpak audience. It must not be forgotten that besides this E. D. Polivanov knew not only literary Japanese, Peking Chinese, and Tashkent Uzbek, but also many of their dialects. During the Polivanov Con-

22

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

ference in Samarkand in the autumn of 1964, someone from the audience asked the old collective farmer Maxmud Xadzimuradov, who was presenting reminiscences about Polivanov, how Evgenij Dmitrievic spoke Uzbek (in Xadzimuradov's native dialect); there followed the laconic answer: "Better than I do." The next period, the most productive and biographically one of the most interesting periods in the life of E. D. Polivanov, is the time from 1926 to 1929, which he spent in Moscow, where he had gone at the invitation of Academician V. M. Fride, director of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences. As was written afterwards, Polivanov "was nominated for the leading linguistic job in the Association to counterbalance the representatives of the 'Moscow Fortunatov School' " 15 and immediately became an active member of the linguistic section of the Institute of Language and Thought, a professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies, a director of the section of native languages of the Communist University of the Workers of the East, an active member of the Institute of Peoples of the Orient, a member of the board of the linguistic division of the Institute of Language and Literature, and then (1927) the chairman of the linguistic section of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences. In one of the official papers, he writes: "During the winter I am giving an average of 4 reports a month in many different academic societies and institutions" (IJaz). The names of some of them can be established. For example, in the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences, he gave the following reports: "Principles of the Statistical Phonetic Description of Language" (in collaboration with M. N. Peterson), "Methods of the Comparative Description of Dialect", "Problems of Evolution in Language", and "Korean Language". In the section of Russian language of the Communist University of the Workers of the East, he gave a report entitled "Scerba's Morphological Classification". And here are the names of several courses which E. D. Polivanov gave in 1927-1928 for graduate students of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences: a comparative study of Turkic languages, comparative studies of the grammar of Altaic languages, comparative phonetics of Sino-Tibetan languages, a linguistic introduction to the study of languages of the Far-Eastern group, a descriptive grammar of the Japanese languages (thus, evidently, E. D. Polivanov indicated in brief Japanese and Ryukyus. A.L., L.R., A.X.), and contemporary studies of the comparative grammar of the Japanese languages. E. D. Polivanov was not at all an antagonist of N. Ja. Marr from the very beginning. On the contrary, they knew each other well from the Oriental Faculty of Petrograd University. Polivanov attended Marr's Georgian course. After Evgenij DmitrieviS's departure from Petrograd, they corresponded. 15 G . D a n i l o v (review), "E. Polivanov, Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie" [E. Polivanov, In Favor of Marxist Linguistics], Russkij jazyk v sovetskoj Skole [Russian Language in the Soviet School],1931, Nos. 6-7, 165.

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

23

Polivanov followed the development of Marr's thoughts with interest and initially shared them in some way. We shall quote an excerpt from a very interesting letter from N. Ja. Marr of October 18, 1924: As concerns Japhetic linguistics, I will be very glad if the theory which is still developing will find you, and you particularly, among those who accept it, for it has already long ago begun to slip out of my hands, as I feel doomed to slip out of life into the depths of the earth whither leads the road of the peace that is for me the greatest of all. I do not know if I have told you that I am obliged to include the Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages among the subjects of direct Japhetidological study; one throws across a bridge, I threw across Chuvash. Here there is something improbable. I completely understand that I will not come to the royal court with my improbable things. (AN SSSR, f. 800, op. 2, No. 30, 1. 820b.-83) This letter requires some comment, first of all a chronological one. Two years before this N. Ja. Marr advanced his "new study of language", and the period between 1922 and 1926 was exactly the time of crystallization of "the new study", culminated in 1926 by the book Po étapam razvitija jafeticeskoj teorii [Along the Stages of Development of the Japhetic Theory], A second comment which this letter requires is connected with Marr's relationship to his Japhetic theory, which crept into the letter. It was about this relationship that the late I. A. Orbeli spoke, 16 and one must think that it really was like this.... The third comment is connected with the mention of Chuvash: it was, as a matter of fact, the publication by Marr in 1926 of the book Cuvasi-jafetidy na Volge [The Chuvash-Japhetids on the Volga] which caused Polivanov to reconsider his relationship to Marr's views and later to call this book "the pattern and first sharply expressed step of the false way". Another reason for this reconsideration was Polivanov's disagreement on principle with the analytic alphabet for Abkhaz (which was unjustified) proposed by Marr (1926; Polivanov's report with criticism of Marr winter 1927-1928). " I. A. Orbeli, "Vospominanija studenceskix let" [Reminiscences of Student Years]. From a shorthand record; in the book: K. N. JuzbaSjan, Akademik losif Abgarovic Orbeli [Academician Iosif Abgarovió Orbeli] (Moscow, 1964), 152-153. Here is what he said then: "Do you know that all these absurd constructions which were elevated into the object of a cult came not from Marr but from the conditions which ... sycophants created around him?... If a man created or thought up a working hypothesis, can it possibly have been in chorus, on the pages of the press, with conjectures, with references to the fact that it is purely Marxist opinion, to explain it as a great truth, as theses on the basis of which genuine linguistics should be constructed? "... I know (I have the right to say this) that in the spring of 1934, when Marr was sent from the hospital to the Crimea and returned here from there, he spoke of nothing else but of his old formulations about the Japhetic family of languages and its interrelations with the Indo-European family of languages. "During our numerous meetings after N. Ja. Marr's return from the Crimea and before the day when he was taken off to the hospital from which he never returned - during all this time not once did he touch upon the question of 'the new study' ... Once he said to me: 'How good it was earlier with the Japhetic family'. This was in the summer of 1934." And in conclusion, 1. A. Orbeli made the high-sounding and very accurate statement that "one of the sacred responsibilities of our orientalists, philologists, and linguists is to demarcate that Marr who stood on the soil of the deepest, most profound research into questions of language and questions of culture, from that Marr whom people made in their own manner, people for whom this was easier than learning languages".

24

THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF E. D. POLIVANOV

In 1927-1928 E. D. Polivanov more than once presented open criticism of the "Japhetic theory". In particular, he made such a report under the title "O postroenii marksistskoj lingvistiki" [On the Construction of Marxist Linguistics] in the linguistic section of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences in 1928. Polivanov was a dangerous opponent for those who tried to canonize "the new study of language" and to portray it as the only Marxist study of language. Therefore, the struggle against him went on until death. The arena of this struggle was the socalled subsection of materialistic linguistics of the Communist Academy, where proponents of "the new study", with V. B. Aptekar' as their head, were in charge. A discussion which later received the name "the Polivanov debate" was announced. It opened on December 27, 1928, with a report by N. Ja. Marr, which was preceded by a presentation by Academician V. M. Frice. Here is what V. M. Frifeci, cf. Greek riOrj/ii, Armenian 1st person past tense edi, Old Persian 3rd person ada, Sanskrit d"a-); x (from which h, example: hortus); xw (*niijxwiti -v ninguit).

The spirants indicated were basically voiceless, but, at the same time, in the oldest period of Latin they fluctuated (namely in connection with the absence of a category of voiced spirants basically different from them) between voiceless and voiced variants depending on combinatory conditions (namely, the voiced variant appeared within the word between two neighboring voiced sounds). In this way: s-*s/-z

(from which s and -z diverged further -> -r, the latter, for example, in

aurora *kariMdo -> West and South Japanese *kariudo~*Nagasaki kar'u:do->kar'u:ro in the dialect of the village Miye; *aki-mbito 'man of trade' - 'merchant'; this last word gives, for example, the following forms: Tokyo akindo // Nagasaki ak'u.do, ak'u:ro in the Miye dialect. (5) In Ryukyus (the Nafa dialect): *-mbur- (and also *-mur)-*nd. For example, Ryukyus anda (cf. standard Japanese abura) 'butter'; Ryukyus -nda at the end of local names of villages *- *-mura (cf. Japanese mura 'village'); Ryukyus sanda: // Japanese saburo (proper name) from Chinese *sam-laij, the original Japanese-Ryukyus form *scfburaM, from which, in agreement with regular sound correspondences -»Japanese *saburau ->saburo:, Ryukyus sanda (for *M gives in Japanese non-syllabic u, but a zero vowel in Ryukyus). NOTE: One can compare the Italian process of mbul-*nd in Latin ambulare-* Italian andare with this Ryukyus development of *mbur-*nd (from the phonological point of view, the Japanese-Ryukyus phoneme r is fully comparable - although not commensurable - to the / of European languages; more details on this in E. Polivanov's work "Sub"ektivnyj xarakter vosprijatij zvukov jazyka" [The Subjective Nature of the Perceptions of Language Sounds]).

(6) A case somewhat isolated from the others in a formal respect: in many dialects *uturo -*ut(u)ro (cf. Tosa ut(u)ro - this form may be considered an intermediate stage of development) uro 'hollow' (beside the literary doublet ucuro, where cu *- tu, as in all other positions in the majority of dialects but not in Tosa). The number of similar varieties of the process may be greatly increased (not to speak, of course, of examples for every variety), for, I repeat, this type of process (reduction of a syllable containing i or u to zero) is very widely manifested in the history of Japanese. I add that the course of historical phonetic developments presented now in the formulas for each example may be considered proven: intermediate stages are created on the basis of meticulous study13 of every one of the given developments in isola13

For an example, I will point out that a monographic work of several printed pages (written in 1918) was devoted to the South Japanese-Ryukyus process of V} alone (e.g., tori-+toi in the Miye dialect of Nagasaki prefecture; see above, Example 3), considered within the limits of Kyushu dialects. I was unsuccessful in getting it printed in its entirety (for reasons completely understandable for 1918), but its most important parts went into "Istoriko-foneticeskij oSerk japonskogo konsonantizma" [A Historical Phonetic Outline of the Japanese Consonant System]. This very process of Krj'-> Vi is an example of just how the results of a detailed study ("microscopic" and therefore guaranteed to be free from fundamental errors) may nonetheless diverge from what may "seem at first glance" to be the case (and from what, consequently, is apt to become even generally accepted). It is treated by all the authors before me (who did not research this phenomenon in detail) as a "loss of r". In other words, here the beginning and basic essence of the process are defined as the reduction of the consonant (r) to zero, while in fact the impetus or antithesis of the dialectical contradiction turned out to be a striving toward zero of the vowel / and not of the consonant (r).

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THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

tion and, if they cannot always be theoretically defended against theoretical assumptions of certain chances (although minimal) for another probable course of the process (and this one may say with regard to those intermediate stages which can be established in the history of a given dialect by analogy to facts of another dialect where the given forms are attested, i.e., given in the modern state of this latter dialect), 14 then within the bounds of proof sufficient for practical purposes they may be recognized as entirely convincing (to the same extent as are the generally recognized structures of any other historical phonetic system). However, having made this remark, I should also add the following stipulation. The historical phonetic formulas I have cited (for example, *kap(i)ta -*• West Japanese *kauta or *jomb(i)ta *joMda -» West Japanese jotida) are given here in the most simplified form without specifications and explanations which it would be absolutely necessary to make if I intended to present the phonetic evolution of the given word (for example, the sign *M is not explained - it is the symbol for a labial nasal coming from the convergence of Japanese *mu and Chinese q in Chinese borrowings, and later replaced in Japanese by u and in Ryukyus giving a zero vowel); but here there remains only that which is necessary for an explanation of the given historical phonetic development (and not for the history of the given word on the whole). Besides this, I bring to attention the fact that the examples I have taken were of fully completed processes of a given category; this is why such cases (very well-known to Japanologists) of the reduction of u, i as in the Tokyo unstressed syllables su and si (for example, rhas(i) 'chopsticks', rdas(u) 'he takes out', etc.) also did not enter in here. All the examples cited above are varieties of a historical (historical phonetic) process which discloses the following stages. I. The first stage (the thesis of dialectical development): a long (and usually very long) period of overall (and physical) correspondence of the complex under consideration to the LAW OF OPEN SYLLABLES [according to which the possible structure of syllables is defined exclusively by the formula (C)V, where C is the symbol for a consonant, and V is the symbol for a vocalic element]. 15 Consequently, this period of unconditional bisyllabicity of the complexes nomi (in the word *nomi-to), ami (in "amipari) (Example 1), dasi (in the form *dasita) (Example 2), tori (Example 3), sini,

14

Thus, i.e., by analogy, the stage daf-ta (with the consonant p-, German ich-Laut, for example, is created in Example 2, and to a certain extent (but not exclusively) the analogy serves us also in creating the stage tor' with the consonant r' in place of the syllable ri- in Example 3. In other words, in some other dialects we encounter in fact (in the period contemporary with us) both the given s ' t ^ - f t and the given ri->r' in conditions which correspond genetically to the conditions of the given examples. 15 True, for the pre-Japanese epoch, I am forced to assume (at least for one of the pre-Japanese sources of the Japanese language-hybrid) the absence or at least the basic destruction of the law of open syllables in the form of syllables in a nasal consonant, as, for example, in "Common KoreanJapanese" *acam (Japanese-Kyoto asa/lKorean ac'am, acam 'morning') or *turum (Common Japanese turu-^-modern Kyoto curu/lKorean turum 'crane').

MUTATIONAL CHANGES IN THE PHONIC HISTORY OF LANGUAGE

105

kapi, nomi, jombi in the forms of the past, rfbi in the word *karimbito, kimbi in the word *akimbito (Example 4), ]), i.e., the least typical representatives of the class of vowels, expend in a unit of time the greatest quantity of exhaled air (by comparison with other vowels; for example, a). Consequently, expending in general the same quantity of air, the vowel a succeeds in being pronounced for a significantly greater interval of time than the vowels i, u, y, and iu. And here it is easy to come to the conclusion that, other things being equal,11 " And this may easily be confirmed by experience (even by means of an experiment, i.e., an experience with intentionally constructed conditions); for example, a Japanese hearing the Russian words tak 'thus', tam 'there', pit' 'to drink' perceives and repeats them not as monosyllabics but as bisyllabic complexes: taku, tamu, pici (or pit'i, if we have a native of Tosa), and the word drama as a trisyllabic complex dorama or surama. The same took place also in antiquity - in the period (or, more accurately, in various periods) of Chinese borrowings: for example, monosyllabic Chinese *kam gave Japanese kami 'paper' or (in a later period) Chinese Japanese *iti->modern Japanese ici 'one'; Chinese *pat->Japanese *pati->modern Japanese haci 'eight'; Chinese *ljuk->Japanese roku 'six'; Chinese *zip^>zipu (and further to z'u:, Tokyo iu: 'ten', and so on; the number of examples is unlimited). 11 Speaking of the equality of other conditions (besides narrowness or broadness, i.e., the degree of opening), it is appropriate to keep in mind here not only purely statistical aspects, i.e., those which occur in a given epoch (combinatory conditions, the fact of belonging to the stressed or, on the contrary, the unstressed syllable, to a monosyllabic or bisyllabic word, etc., to one and the same style and tempo of speech, etc.), but also historical quantitative adequacy: for example, vowels of the type «, i, if they go back at least in the relatively recent past to a combination of two phonemes, can

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narrow vowels will be pronounced, on the average or as a general norm, with less length than broad vowels (of the type a) or semi-broad vowels (of the type e, o, and others).18 And this is nothing other than a dominant inclination to reduction of precisely the narrow vowels (in comparison with the broader ones). Being inclined to the least length, in that general process of "wearing out" to which all the sounds of a language are constantly being subjected (although very slowly, i.e., over huge chronological distances), they (the narrow vowels) should leave the other (broader) vowels behind on the way to the ultimate result of "wearing out" (or reduction), i.e., they will become zero and disappear from the pronunciation of words sooner than the wider vowels in conditions identical to theirs. Empirically this tendency (i.e., the dominant tendency) of narrow vowels toward reduction to zero is fully confirmed: if we take the sum total of all languages studied in a historical phonetic respect (i.e., all the historical phonetics known to us of concrete languages), then the cases of "loss" of narrow vowels will clearly prevail over "losses" of other vowels. It is true that not in all languages by far do the facts relevant here (i.e., facts of the reduction and loss of narrow vowels) represent such a neat picture as is true in the history of Slavic languages (the loss of 6, &) and, on the other hand, in Japanese. Therefore, we still do not find this conclusion (or generalization) which has already been made (and has entered into scholarly linguistic literature) about the loss of the narrow vowels in Slavic languages and Japanese made with respect to many languages.19 But this indicates only that we should draw this conclusion (the conclusion concerning the dominant regularity of the narrow vowels and not the broad ones) independently on the basis of a reexamination of all the given historical phonetic system as a whole.20 preserve as an "inherited" trait remnants of dual quantity, i.e., may possess relatively greater length even by comparison with the maximally broad vowel a, if it goes back in the given language not to two but to one simple phoneme. But u, i are precisely this kind, and they must not be considered commensurate with the given ones: here there is no equality of the other conditions. I should point out, incidentally, that Russian i, u, y may serve as an example of narrow vowels which have inherited a dual quantity: they go back either to old diphthongs (combinations of two phonemes) or to a basically long vowel. As for the simple sounds i, u, i.e., those which derive from originally short sounds, they have long since become zero in the majority of their positions in the history of Slavic languages (Russian among them): these are the vowels written with the letters 6, b in Slavic and Old Russian; due to their shortness they long ago reached the limit of reduction, i.e., the zero vowel. 18 Of course, this conclusion presupposed as one of its premises the principle of more or less equal distribution of phonational energy (and in connection with it, of exhaled air) among commensurable phonetic units (under equal conditions) - a principle which in turn rests again precisely on the concept of "language as a work process" (i.e., outside of the given concept of language there is no logical motivation). 19 The Slavic phenomenon is very well known; I pointed out the "loss" of Japanese u, i in my first student work in 1913 and mentioned it more than once in subsequent works. 20 For example, Turkic languages (and not one or two of them but all of the Turkic languages I have studied personally) may serve as an excellent example of the reduction of narrow vowels (and of the stability of the "non-narrow" vowels in various conditions with them, i.e., broad and semi-broad vowels) but, as far as I know, this has not yet entered into linguistic literature, if my as yet unpublished work "Vokalizm azerbajdzanskogo jazyka" [The Vowel System of Azerbaijani] is not considered.

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One should say, it is true, that in some individual cases (for example, in the history of some Germanic languages) we come across even such phenomena which, it would seem, contradict the general position indicated above, i.e., developments in which it is the wider vowels that are reduced (and disappear) while the narrow vowel is preserved. But in a close analysis of these instances (not to mention again the fact that they are encountered rarely, i.e., they may be viewed as exceptions), they can be explained by the presence of specific attendant conditions. And, consequently, the general law indicated above (the law of the dominant reduction of narrow vowels) may be proven a posteriori - precisely on the basis of facts not of some one language but, on the contrary, on the basis of the historical phonetics of as large a number of languages as possible. The effect of the tendency toward reduction to zero of Japanese short i, u was manifested in each of the examples cited above, evidently just as it is manifested in contemporary processes not yet completed in which u and i are "lost", which we can observe, for example, in the contemporary standard, or Tokyo, dialect in such cases as rdas(u), rhas(i), etc., i.e., the given vowel (u, i) is gradually shortened both quantitatively and articulatorily (and in the case of contiguity with two voiceless consonants was also devoiced) so that ultimately, at least in a certain tempo of speech (i.e., with a certain rapidity of pronunciation of the given word), it has reached full physical zero. To the question of whether this physical reduction to zero (or - if we take into account the necessity of a certain tempo of speech for this reduction to zero the physical facultative reduction to zero) must obligatorily be accompanied by a loss of the given vowel's image (u or i) in the given word, we should no doubt answer negatively. The fact that the physical reduction of u or i to zero can be realized without the loss of its basic image (in the given word) is attested by modern (incomplete) cases of the loss of u, i, as, for example, in the Tokyo words cited above: rdas(u), r has(i).21 And, of course, this contradiction between the normal physical realization of the given word (without the pronunciation of u or i, i.e., in the form nomto instead of nomito - Example 1, das'ta instead of das'ita - Example 2, tor' instead of tori = tor'i - Example 3, etc.) in its main phonetic image could exist for a long time in view of the general principle inherent to the Japanese linguistic consciousness which we have called the "law of open syllables". The linguistic consciousness did not in principle admit the possibility of closed syllables (those which end in a consonant), but the pronunciation apparatus - at least with a certain tempo of phonation (of the given words) - pronounced closed syllables. 81

True, a detailed analysis of all cases (or of a large number of different examples) of modern Tokyo reduction shows us that in reality the matter is more complicated than it may seem a priori or at first glance: of the majority of cases similar to the examples rdas(u), rhas(i), such cases of reduction as in the suffixes -des from *-des-u, -des-ta from *des-i-ta, -mas from *mas-u, -mast-a from *mas-i-t-a. In the latter two examples, the conditions for the loss of u, i are specific: the physical reduction of the given u, i to zero is accompanied by full loss of the "semantic load" of these vowels (loss of the morphemes -u, -i-). And in such conditions we actually observe the absence of the very image of the given vowels.

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With this, it would seem, the characterization of the second stage (or, more precisely, of the last stages of the second stage) of the development we have been considering could be concluded - the stage on which both antithetical beginnings are found in a state of irreconcilable contradiction. But, taking into consideration the complexity of the modern picture of unjustified cases of the loss of u, i about which contemporary Tokyo facts give us an idea (on the one hand, rdas(u), rhas(i), etc., with facultative loss of the narrow vowels, and on the other, the suffixes -des »' + a, s' +j + a-*s' + a, etc.). Thus, the following transformations served as the actual basis for the Dungan process under consideration: b

+j-*b'

P

+j-+p'

m

j -* m'

d

+

t I

+J-I'

NOTE: D' and t' were preserved only in the so-called Kansu dialect of the Dungan language; in the so-called Shensi dialect, yet another phonological change took place: the convergence of these sounds with cz' and c'. Examples of syllabemes (syllables) in which the above-named changes took place: b-\-j-\-a-\-u-*b'-\- polyphthongal o [=30] (= bjo in Dungan orthography);p+j + vowel E [mid-back-unrounded] -»/>' + combinatory variant of the vowel e (=pje in

CHANGE OF QUANTITY INTO QUALITY IN PHONETIC EVOLUTION

117

Dungan orthography); / +j+ a + u->/' + polyphthongal o [=oo\ (= ljo); /+>'+ back a + + back a -f y (= Ijorj), etc., etc. The transition of quantity into quality is manifested here by the fact that in place of two phonemes (quantitatively!) one qualitatively new phoneme grows which is lacking in the previous state of the consonant system - namely, a palatalized consonant the specific quality of which consists, consequently, of a combination of the articulations (and acoustic aspects) of both source phonemes: of both the previous consonant not differentiated by hardness ~ softness and non-syllabic j (as, for example, in the Dungan palatalized consonant /', articulations and acoustic aspects of both phonemes present in the "proto-Dungan" complex I - \ - j = li are combined). Generalizing from the above-mentioned processes (in the genesis of the consonants b' from b + j, etc.), we deduce the formula: Cj.-* C" (where C is the symbol for a consonant, and C' is the symbol for a palatalized consonant). This formula speaks clearly of the presence of the change of quantity into quality. (2) A second concrete example is the completely analogous formation (analogous to the Dungan process cited above) of palatalized consonants in Japanese, which took effect on the same lexical material (Chinese) as in the Dungan case. For example, in the following complexes - Chinese biatf Japanese *b'au~* modern Japanese b'o:; Chin, piau-*Jap. *p'au-+ mod. Jap. h'o:; Chin. Hay-*Jap. *r'aM-+r'aif->mod. r'o:; etc. - the mechanism of the process is the same as in the Dungan formation of palatalized consonants cited above and, consequently, the quantity and quality contained, as well as the formula which generalizes cases of the formation of Japanese palatalized consonantal phonemes, are the same as in the first example. In order to give a complete picture, it will be necessary to point out the following specific conditions of the Japanese case cited, i.e., the formation of paired "soft" phonemes, and consequently also of the "softness" correlation in the Japanese consonant

system:

(a) besides Chinese borrowing (which undoubtedly served as the main lexical material in the formation of the Japanese paired soft consonants, the material without which this formation could not have taken place at all6 in the history of Japanese), cases of the formation of palatalized consonants' may be ascertained in some places in purely Japanese words as well. For example: *kepu^>*lce((p)u-*k'o: 'yesterday', etc. But there is no doubt that these cases are secondary in relation to cases of the appearance of the given palatalized consonants in Chinese borrowings (I remind the reader that the main portion of the cases of palatalized consonants in purely Japanese language material belongs to forms from individual Japanese dialects: cf., for example, the abundance of clearly later cases of soft consonants in Nagasaki or, on the other hand, in Tosa dialects); in other words, processes of the * At least in these periods. ' In independent position (i.e., not before /)• The appearance of "soft" consonants in dependent position, in turn, should be viewed as a secondary phenomenon (regardless of which language served as the source for the examples relevant here) with respect to the process indicated above.

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type *CiV (or CeV) -> *CiV-> C' Ve in indigenous, i.e., purely Japanese, lexical material, turned out to be possible only after and indeed because the concept C' had prior to this become known to the collective Japanese linguistic consciousness (the image of a soft paired consonant from the Japanese forms of the Chinese borrowings cited above: b'o: from Chinese biau; h'o from Chin, piau, etc.); (b) an important role in carrying out the development of Chin. Ci-* Jap. C' was played, undoubtedly, by the Japanese norm of syllable structure which did not permit two sounds before a vowel sound in a given syllable (also due to this norm a second transformation of Chinese Anlauts took place - a transformation the result of which was the appearance of back labialized consonants: Chin, kya -> Jap. kwa, Chin, gua -*• Jap. gwa; see below). However, we should admit a certain analogy to this factor also in the Dungan phenomenon cited above (i.e., in the first example): for, if we admit the phonological influence of Turkic languages on Dungan, 9 then we are obliged because of this development to remember the fact that neither do the Turkic languages permit two consonants, among them, e.g., bj, tj, etc., before a vowel in the same syllable. But, of course, for Japanese we can confirm a much greater activity for this factor (a general syllabic norm) because in Dungan the influence which we have proposed - of the Turkic phonological norm - did not lead at all to absolute elimination of the cases of Anlaut which contradict this norm (for example, there are in the Dungan language syllabemes such as xwa // xua, dwan // duan, etc.); 10 (c) in the structure of the Japanese category of paired soft consonants, there were originally palatalized consonants (among them, for example, s', t', d', n', etc.); but afterwards some of these palatalized consonants (in the majority of dialects) went to palatal sounds: s' (of the Russian type, i.e., similar to Russ. (of the Polish type or, on the other hand, similar to the Dungan t' (similar to Russ. i ' ) - > c ' ; d' (Russ. d') and z' (Russ. z') coalesced in the double phoneme 3/z. The Tosa dialect, on the contrary, preserved the old quality of these consonants, i.e., palatalized s', t', d', z' (similar to Russian s', t\d\ z'). On the other hand, palatalized nasal n (h' in Russian) precisely in Tosa (under completely definable phonological, so-called inter-phonemic conditions) went to a palatal sound (of the type of Serbian h>, Italian grt, etc.). (3) The third example. Processes fully analogous in their principal features 11 to the Dungan and Japanese processes cited above may easily be pointed out in many other languages, of course, among those languages which possess (or possessed) the "softness" correlation (beginning with Russian and ending with Irish, etc.). But in this case we 8

Concrete examples from the dialects: Tosa *umi-pa-+*umia-J>um'a 'pus' in the case of the logical subject; Nagasaki *ore-pa->*orea-J>or'a 'I' in the case of the logical subject, etc. • The general trend of phonetic (and morphological) changes in precisely the direction of the principal features of Turkic languages permits us to admit this influence with assurance. 10 We may think that in syllables of the latter type (xwa, dwan, etc.), the process of contraction of the first two elements into one element (with the same change of quantity into quality as in the Japanese case ktf...->-kw, gu-..->gw) is only prepared as a change common for all syllables of this type. 11 I.e., by the presence of the change Q'-> C" (and, consequently, the change of precisely the abovementioned quantity into precisely the above-mentioned quality).

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turn not to repetitions (in various other languages) of the formations of the palatalized consonants considered above, but to a phenomenon parallel to it - to the formation of labialized consonants, in particular, to the Japanese case of back labialized consonants (k w , gw) which has already been mentioned in connection with the second example. Besides Chinese syllables with the initial complex Ci, Japanese also borrowed syllables with the initial complexes ku...,12 gu..., xu..., nu....13 Under the pressure of the same basic norm of the syllabic structure (which did not permit two syllableforming phonemes at the beginning of the Japanese syllable) which we mention above apropos the formation of the palatalized consonants (Ci... -• C'...), the given combinations of back consonants with u contracted into the image of a single consonant which was, however, complex in articulation, namely the back labialized consonant kw and gw. EXAMPLES: Chin, kuanJap. kwan (-kwaN)~*modern South Japanese kwarj (in the majority of the so-called central dialects, there followed a convergence of back consonants with simple k, g, and, consequently, instead of kwaN we have already simply kay); Chin. Jap. kwa (preserved to the present time in southern Chinese and, on the other hand, also in northeastern Chinese dialects; in the central dialects, however, in place of kwa there is now simply ka); Chin, yuak -> Jap. gwaku (preserved in southern and northeastern Japanese dialects; in central dialects, however, gaku), etc. In these processes of contraction (of two phonemes into one new, articulatorily complex phoneme ku->kw, gu -» gw), the change of quantity into quality may be perceived, of course, in the fact that two phonological units (quantity) become one, a phonetic unit which, on the other hand, possesses a new complex quality, the complex quality of the given reflexes kw, gw consists, of course, of the fact that these consonants combine in themselves both the articulation of the simple back obstruents k, g and the labial articulation present in the Chinese element y. NOTE: From my observations of the South Japanese sounds kw, gw, I was convinced of the fact that for the subjective Russian, for example, sense of hearing, 14 these sounds, perceived in the structure of South Japanese words pronounced rapidly at a normal tempo, may give the impression of the sounds p, b, i.e., in other words, may converge in the Russian sound consciousness with the Russian obstruent labial consonants - the phonemes p, b. If we permit ourselves apropos this "change" (a change which did not take place in the history of the collective linguistic system but only in " I should say that throughout the present article I have omitted indication of the aspiration of Chinese consonants, and thus instead of the two Old Chinese Anlauts ku... and k"v..., I generalize them in the spelling ku... 18 And with the complexes ky...,gy..., etc., too, which have been given the same value in Japanese as

kv-..,gv..., etc.

14 I judge not only on the basis of my personal experience but also on the basis of corresponding experiments with two other representatives of the Russian language consciousness (one of them, N. I. Konrad, now a professor of Japanese).

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cases of crossing individuals of the two language systems, in the consciousness of the individual speaking Russian who perceives the given sounds kw, gw) to pose the question: "In this 'change' just what is the change from quantity to quality?", the answer will naturally coincide with the corresponding analysis of the concrete cases kw-*p, gw->b, which took place in the factual history of some other languages, e.g., Greek (in an ancient, prehistoric epoch), certain old Italic language systems, in particular, those Italic dialects from which the words lupus [ ) is the combination in one articulation of the cardinal features of both the articulations mentioned above: in a labial stop, moreover, a labial stop of a specific formation, for in this reflex we have not simply b, p but labial stops of a special, namely single-flap trilled, method of formation. A completely similar explanation can also be given for the Abkhaz genesis of sounds of the type /?,

e, from the history of concrete languages is extremely great: the embarras du richesse here is such that it is difficult, on the contrary, to name a language in which it would not be possible to indicate a development of the type au -* o or ai e. As completely fortuitous examples, we shall name at least the following languages: Persian (we have lexical examples of au ->o, ai -»e, for example, inOldPersian kaufa-* modern Persian köh // Northern Tadzhik küh 'mountain'; Old Persian daiva -> modern Persian dev 'evil spirit'); Sanskrit (soma, devah); French (chauve = [so:v], where o *Mg, or *Mp-**Mb, etc.), to which the lexical example considered here (the word 'throat') belongs, this nasal *M occurred in the formation of the voiced semi-nasal consonant phoneme nd="d (by assimilation of Md -> nd) and, in this manner, produced phonemic zero (at least in the part of the dialects to which the modern standard Japanese form nodo belongs).33 Having agreed to speak only about the initial stage of the phonetic evolution set forth above (nomi-to -> nom{i)to -> noM-to, etc., i.e., of the change mi-*M), we ascertain here the change of quantity into quality precisely in the fact that two completely normal elements (m and i) are transformed into one element having a fully specific quality - M. The specific quality of this nasal is caused, of course, by its extraordinary position: not before a vowel but before a consonant sound. The extraordinary position has also involved a special phonational and phonological characteristic of M in contrast to usual post-vocalic m. We find a manifestation of the change of quantity into quality completely analogous to this in the example which follows of the formation of *M from the complex *mi (see the following, second example; the difference here will consist only of the subsequent fates of this *M: as we shall see below, it no longer gave phonemic zero in standard Japanese, as in the word 'throat', but non-syllabic *u) and then in all the other examples cited here which repeat the same type of evolutionary phenomenon: the transformation of a complex of two elements, consisting of some consonant + narrow vowel (/ or u) into a single element which serves as the direct continuation of the given consonant, but which is found in a specific extraordinary position - not before a vowel,34 but in connection with this " Belonging to this most ancient category of cases of the nasal in the position before a consonant, i.e., to that category of cases in which the given nasal resulted in phonemic zero (entering in the formation of the voiced semi-nasal), but not u or reflexes similar to it (cf., on the contrary, the second example: *nomi-ta-**nou"da)y are also those complexes of the type *M-t~>-"d, *M-k-*—"g, etc., in compounds which caused the appearance of so-called nigori, i.e., alternation of an initial voiceless with a corresponding voiced sound within the compound: cf., for example, the modern words such as kao 'face' and asa-gao (//in part of the dialects asa-qao 'morning glory' 'morning face') where -g is explained as from M-g+-Vg (Jig), since *asaM 'morning' + kapo 'face' *asaM-ka(p)o, asa-Vgao (in isolated position, however, i.e., outside a compound, the word *asaM 'morning', in which the final labial nasal is reconstructed on the basis of the Korean form acam, became asa with falling stress [ A ] on the final syllable; cf. modern West Japanese, specifically Kyoto asa). " I.e., either before a consonant or at the end of the word.

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THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

having also a specific internal quality, i.e., a specific phonational acoustic and phonological characteristic; in this way, as a general formula for examples of the whole given series the following may serve: C'u-> Cu where by C x I mean a non-syllabic 36 element of a quality specific from the point of view of Japanese phonology; (2) an example which relates to the contraction of the preterite (and gerundive) form of Japanese verbs of the first conjugation with stem in a consonant, i.e., to processes which took place . 36

85

•

I.e., moving back to the syllable headed by the preceding vowel. At this word the manuscript stops. - Editor.

A REVIEW OF R. JAKOBSON'S BOOK1

It is necessary first of all to point out the basic differences in the aims and content of Jakobson's book from what we are accustomed to encountering in typical linguistic and specifically historical phonetic literature on Slavistics. These differences are characteristic to the extent that one wants to say: this is no longer that stage of science with which we have to do in the majority of works on the historical phonetics of Slavic languages; this book belongs already to a new period in this scholarly discipline. Namely: the goal of the book is no longer simply to establish the historical phonetic facts at various stages in the history of a language, but to give the pragmatic motivation for these facts, in sum presenting a logically explained picture of the whole given evolution (i.e., of the whole history of the East Slavic, or Russian, phonological system from the oldest state accessible for comparative analysis up to modern times). Thus, the first, although perhaps not the most important, difference between this work and traditional comparative studies is its very approach to the historical phonetic fact: for the author it is important not only to establish the presence of a certain sound change (by the comparative method or otherwise, for example, on the basis of data from old written texts), but also to justify, i.e., to explain pragmatically, this sound change as the result of certain evolutionary factors taken into account in the general theory of phonetic evolution which is accepted by the author (and by the "phonological" school created by him). The second feature directly connected with the study's general linguistic basis just mentioned (connected with the given theory of phonetic evolution) may be formulated as the following demand made by it on historical phonetics : not one of the sound changes (and not one of the phenomena, on the other hand, of the static phonetics of a given language) should or may be considered in isolation without some connection with the given phonetic system as a whole, for the subject of historical phonetics is not the separate changes of individual sounds of a language (much less separate words, i.e., individual functions of a given sound of the language in certain words), but precisely the evolution of the systems of phonetic images which systematically replace each other (from generation to generation), i.e., 1

Roman Jakobson, Remarques sur révolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves — Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague II (Prague, 1929), 118 pp.

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THE THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

if Baudouin's terminology is allowed, the evolution of the language consciousness in the area of the sounds of the language. Only with such a view of things, i.e., on the basis of facts already established in the field of the evolution of the phonetic system (as a whole) is it possible to give a correct pragmatic explanation for individual facts (considered as parts in the structure of the whole system, logically dependent on the entire structure of this whole). Consequently, from Jakobson's point of view (as also from the point of view of the writer of these lines), an explanation of a historical phonetic fact based on the fact that the reason and source of the sound change a -* b in some word X is exhausted by the sound structure of this word X (and, in particular, by the sound a) in the language of the previous generation will be completely insufficient (and unacceptable). The phonetic fate of the given word X (and, in particular, of a -* b) depended not only on this word in the past history of the language, and all cases (all lexical functions) of the sound a (or of the sound image, the phoneme) in the language of the preceding generation, in other words, the common phonetic image of this sound, should be brought to bear. From its change to (or replacement by) the sound image b, there necessarily results the change of a -> b in this word X, for the phonetic structure of the word A'is created, or constructed (composed), from elements present in the phonetic system of the given generation (among them the element b also), namely on the basis of the psychological act of comparison of every one of the lexical functions of the given sound to this sound in words previously mastered, i.e, to the general phonetic image of this sound (since the mastery of every word being learned is possible only by means of breaking down the sound perception of this word into n phonetic elements and recognizing in each of these n elements one of the elements present in its system of phonetic elements, i.e., the system belonging to the given new generation). But this is not enough. The change of a b in the structure of the given word X had as a reason and source not only the general phonetic image a in the language of the older generation, but also a series of other facts which relate no longer to the given sound a (and its reflex b) but to other members of the given phonetic system (or, rather, of two phonetic systems of both the older and the younger generation). For any change overtaking one of the elements (one of the sound images) of the phonetic system is tightly bound by threads of many types to the fate of the other elements of the system and is realized only when obstacles are not met in the situation of the other elements (i.e., it is connected with the evolution of the rest of the structure of the system - in the change from the given older to the given younger generation). And here one can name various forms of these dependences - of one element on the other and, consequently, of the evolutionary fate of one element on the evolutionary fate of the whole. It is, of course, impossible for me to undertake a listing of these possible dependences; I can only name some general examples, of course. One may point out the simple principle of economy (or self-economy) of the phonetic system - a large increase in the number of differentiated elements (phonemes) is undesirable (and within certain limits is even impossible); therefore, when the divergence of the phoneme a (into two

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phonemes ¿ and c) should take place, the language strives to counterbalance this increase in the number of elements with a simultaneous convergence (the convergence of one of these reflexes of a, for example, c, with some other phoneme - d) or by some other means which nonetheless attain the same ultimate goal (a survey of these instances is understandably impossible in a review). Consequently, the change of a -* b and the divergence of the phoneme a are possible in this case only due to the coordination with the convergence with d of one of the divergents of the phoneme a. Or another general case: in the majority of convergences (a->c and b->c), one of the convergents certainly would not have given this reflex (c) if it had evolved in isolation - without the convergence (in the opposite case, it would have been necessary to admit that two different causes have as a general rule the same result; of course, it is possible to imagine a case where two different elements would give an identical result in a certain direction of evolution and without self-contained participation of the factor of convergence: such is the case, specifically, of the coalescence of two phonemes with zero; but this is an exception and not a norm for phenomena of convergence). Consequently, at least for one of these elements (the convergents a and b), and in some situations, it may be asserted, even for both of them, the change into c cannot be explained from the given element itself (for example, a) but can be explained only by bringing in the fate of the second of these elements (b) and, consequently, at the expense of the self-contained function of the convergence. In confirmation of this methodological principle (of the necessity of including in the explanation not only the given element but also the other elements of the system and the system as a whole), there is, of course, much that could be said; but it seems to me that at the present time, when the phonological school already exists and enjoys recognition (and when, in particular, Jakobson's book under review here contains a brilliant confirmation of this principle based on a large quantity of facts - even for those who will not agree with some of his explanations of individual facts), to speak in this regard is already superfluous. I should stipulate that my full recognition (which I stated long ago, by the way) of the same general principle which serves as the basis for Jakobson's work still does not at all mean that the theory of phonetic evolution which I would begin to use in explaining phenomena of historical linguistics is fully identical with Jakobson's theory of evolution. Some differences may be indicated precisely on the basis of this book by Jakobson. I doubt, for example, the ever-present possibility of deciding which of the combinatory variants of the phoneme is basic, or normal, and the possibility of explaining from this alone certain historical phonetic phenomena ("shifts"). But in any case these differences relate to details and not to the indicated general methodological principle or to something of prime essence in its application, and - 1 will say further - however strange it may seem at first glance, they bear not a qualitative but a quantitative character: namely, of the factors of phonetic evolution which we have recognized as potential factors, I am inclined to see more often the actions of certain factors in the concrete histories of languages, while Jakobson, to a certain extent, sees the action of other factors. I remind the reader, in

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connection with the example just cited concerning our views of the meaning of the basic, or normal, variant, that even I consider the concept itself of the basic, or normal, variant fully legitimate and active in evolution; I do not doubt what Jakobson says about Russian i as a basic, or normal, variant of the double phoneme i/y, but in regard to some other vowels, and the Russian phoneme e in particular, I would use this concept (of the basic, or normal, variant of a phoneme) with greater care (the very fact of the presence of a broad variant of e in initial position - in ètot 'this', etc. I would meet with caution; at least in my individual dialect both variants of e - both broad and narrow - are encountered at the beginning of words : for example, in ètot 'this' and èti 'these', etc.). From what I said above about the aim of Jakobson's book (as a goal characteristic of a new stage in the discipline of historical linguistics consisting of giving the motivation for evolutionary development), the impression may have been created that Jakobson considers the task of establishing the factual stages of evolution a matter already finished and is satisfied with accepting those historical phonetic facts which were established before him. But this would be far from true. Taking his predecessors fully into consideration (mainly, A. A. Saxmatov), Jakobson nonetheless considers it necessary to subject a whole series of points to re-investigation in the structure of the Slavic, resp. Russian, phonetic history created by them : in certain cases he undertakes the refinement (or reformulation) of an evolutionary fact (in the question of je o in Russian o/en' 'deer', etc.) and in many other cases is inclined to give a new (historical phonetic) treatment of a question utilizing new initial data from both living Slavic languages and the evidence of literary monuments. And it is very rarely possible - at least from my point of view - to make the remark that a construction accepted by an author (stated by his predecessor) is well enough founded not to need re-investigation (this, in my opinion, is the situation with Trubetzkoy's study of the delabialization of common Slavic long vowels). I do not intend to present here a criticism of Jakobson's concrete assertions on individual historical phonetic phenomena (in Russian as well as other Slavic languages on which the author touches in passing) - I return to some general methodological premises stated in the beginning of the book under review. One of the most remarkable sentences, which will without doubt attract the attention of the reader, is, in my opinion, the following characterization of the Slavic phonetic systems (p. 5) : "Dans les langues slaves, le système des éléments significatifs réalisés dans le mot est un, il ne se subdivise pas en sous-systèmes solidaires entre eux, avec des fonctions spécialisées." The author has in mind here the absence of the delimitation of functions which is observed, for example, in Semitic languages, where the vowels have morphologized and the consonants (at least predominantly) have semasiologized, etc. An excellent definition stated in precisely the right place: one must begin the phonetic characterization of any given language from precisely this cardinally important aspect (which also contains the coordination of phonetics with the morphology of this language). And how heterogeneous the characterizations of

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languages with respect to this feature may be (and along with this how important the formulation of this feature is) can be judged especially by a linguist and orientalist who should know (in addition to the comparison drawn by Jakobson with the Semitic phonetic system, a dualistic one) many other cases differing in principle from the Slavic case. I will point out here, for example, Chinese, with reference to which I considered it necessary in the very beginning of an account of the Chinese phonetic system to say: "The melodic character of the syllable is semasiologized, the expiratory-accentual character of the syllable is morphologized, and, finally, the syllabeme (i.e., the image of the structure of the syllable of consonants, sonants, and vowels) is predominantly semasiologized" (in other words, three basically different classes of phonetic images have special functional characteristics). True, the example of Chinese may be used (in my opinion) - for a second time - as a contradiction to Jakobson: on p. 18 it says: "Lorsqu'existe la corrélation 'l'une ~ l'autre structures de l'intonation syllabique', celle 'accent d'intensité ~ atonie' est absente." However, in Chinese (as is already evident from my definition cited above) there are both the correlation "l'une ~ l'autre structures de l'intonation syllabique" (the socalled "tones", i.e., the 'musikalischer Silbenakzent' of Chinese) and the correlation "accent d'intensité ~ atonie" (the expiratory-dynamic stress which is possible in modern Chinese precisely because in it only morphemic monosyllabism exists and not monosyllabism of the word, although the normal image of the elementary word is thought of as bisyllabic and not monosyllabic). Thus, the facts of Chinese contradict this empirical law given by Jakobson, which at least on the basis of only the one exception, modern Chinese - means, it would follow, to provide a paraphrase: "A combination of both given correlations is possible when their functional characteristics are basically different" (for musical syllable stress, as I already said, is exclusively semasiologized, and dynamic stress is exclusively morphologized in modern Chinese). But this still does not constitute the final formulation of this law - on the contrary, it must be reviewed (as well as the other similar laws in §5, pp. 17-18) in still a great many languages in order to make the final conclusion approach the concept of a conclusion by full induction. Other examples may be cited which are to a certain extent contradictory to the laws set forth by Jakobson in §5 (pp. 17-18), or which at least introduce a condition in them. Not being able to dwell on this in detail, I limit myself to pointing out Estonian as an example.2 1 In Estonian we have both 'accent d'intensité' (word stress in the form of an ictus on the first syllable) and four degrees of quantity in vowels (and consonants), which according to their functions should be considered two categories of phonetic means (shortness and length 1 [K ] is only semasiologized if cases of the alternation of length 1 [ K-] with the other two lengths - 2 [ V: :] and 3 [ V: : :] are not considered; lengths 2 and 3 [V:: and V:::] are exclusively morphologized) and even musical syllable stress, though in the role of an obligatory companion of lengths 2 and 3. In this manner, Estonian (like Chinese) again formally contradicts the generalizations of §5, and again it is possible to permit here the stipulation about the basically different functions of the various categories of

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But do similar exceptions (or contradictions) mean that the laws (or generalizations) deduced by Jakobson in §5 are in general not laws at all? Of course not. These laws ol "general phonology" are extremely interesting and important as relative generalizations, drawn with respect to a certain group (or a certain number) of languages; and along with this they need to be done for a large quantity of still other languages or need reformulations (conditions, etc.) on the basis of these other languages. Finally, Jakobson's general methodological assertion concerning the predominant meaning of the acoustic aspect in phonetic evolution seems debatable to me. This was formulated in §6 (p. 18): "Comme aux questions relatives à la production des sons se substituent des questions concernant les tendances et les buts des phénomènes phonologiques, la physiologie des sons du langage aura, dans le rôle de l'interprétation de l'aspect externe, matériel de ces phénomènes, à céder de plus en plus la place à l'acoustique, car c'est précisément l'image acoustique et non l'image motrice qui est visée par le sujet parlant et qui constitue le fait social." I do not wish to deny in any way the self-sufficient importance of the acoustic aspect in a great many processes of phonetic evolution; moreover, in the "theory of phonetic convergences" which I set forth (published in an insignificant number of copies in the brochure Foneticeskie konvergencii [Phonetic Convergences], in an article in Sbornik v ¿est' prof. A. È. Smidta [Collection in Honor of Prof. A. E. Schmidt], and in an article in Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i literatury (RANION) [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], No. 3) and in concrete explanations of the histories of individual languages on the basis of this theory, it has constantly been necessary for me to allot space to motivations of the basis of the acoustic aspect. Nevertheless, I would avoid making the decisive conclusion about the predominant role of the latter which was made by Jakobson. I can partially agree with R. Jakobson only in the respect that a great many historical phonetic phenomena which linguists of past generations viewed as physiologically motivated depended in fact on precisely the acoustic aspect (i.e., that it is necessary for us to avoid the traditional treatment with regard to certain phenomena). But my own linguistic experience hinders me in concluding that one of the two given aspects (acoustic, physiological) has predominant importance over the other.

phonetic means. But it is necessary to point out that in Estonian we have a situation which is from the point of view of general phonetics anomalously complex and, therefore, this example (from Estonian) does not in any way reduce to naught the relative significance of Jakobson's laws (in §5).

Ill

METHODS OF COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

ONE OF THE JAPANESE-MALAYAN PARALLELS

This note takes a look at one of the few prefixal formations of Japanese - namely, the intensive form of stems with qualitative meaning, the formal feature of which is the prefix ma- with length in the initial consonant of the stem, for example: ma-k:uro 'very black' from *kuro 'black', ma-ssiro < *ma-s:iro 'completely white' from *siro 'white', ma-p:ira from *pira (> gira) 'flat', ma-n:aka 'the very center' from naka 'center', ma-m:aru 'quite round' from maru 'round'. The length of the consonant must not be explained by assimilation of the final consonantal element of the prefix to the initial element of the stem (proposing, consequently, mak. uro < *maC-kuro, mas:iro < maC-siro), as could have been concluded by analogy to the formation of consonantal lengths in the historical epoch (for example, in the preterite kit'-a < *kir(i)-t-a from kir-u 'to cut', Tokyo kat:a 'autumn' (or the opposite change 'autumn' - > 'winter') may be considered fully possible.— Cf. the discrepancy in meaning of C o m m o n Turkic *ja:z in Yakut (sa:s 'spring') and, for example, in Turkmen (Ja:d 'summer'). It is extremely probable that similar changes of meanings (like 'spring' -»• 'summer', etc.) could also be connected with climatic data (different for two territories). Finally, one may theoretically assume also the possibility of a case such that one of the terms 'winter' and 'autumn' goes back to an old name for the cold half (and not quarter) of the year.

KINSHIP RELATIONS OF KOREAN AND THE " A L T A I C " LANGUAGES

155

Turkic kyz 'autumn'//Chuvash kar 'autumn'; cf. Korean k'AUI ( < - k j e - u l ) 'winter'. Turkic qius 'winter'//Chuvash xal 'winter'; cf. Korean kaml 'autumn'. 3. Mong., Manch., and Turk. / / / K o r . l/r-: Mongolian, Manchurian tala, Turkic Vli' 'steppe'//Korean tuil 'field'. Cf. also Manchurian xolo 'valley'//Korean kol 'idem'. 4. Turk. r / / M o n g . , etc. r / / K o r . l/r-: The Turkic plural suffix -lar\-ler, etc. (in Yakut, Kirghiz, and others, also -tarl-dar, etc.)//Mongolian -narj!Korean -tal/-dal (-tarj-dar). Mongolian naranH Korean nal-(nar-) 'day'. 15 Mongolian nere//Korean niram 'name'. Mongolian -fs zrl 'river'//Korean mul-(mur-) 'water' (cf. also Tungus correspondences). Korean mul often is also an equivalent for the concept of 'river'. Mongolian - r z ^ l Kalmyk morn) 'horse'//Korean mal-(mar-) 'horse'; 16 the spelling ^ points to an old form *m/-r, going back in turn probably to *mor. Cf. also Korean muray 'gelding'. Mongolian to^nci 'finger'//Korean karak, kuirak. Manchurian mere 'buckwheat'//Korean mil 'wheat' and the general name for kernel grains, mo-mil 'buckwheat'. Turkic turna, Yakut turuja 'crane'//Korean turum//Japanese *turu-»Kyoto curu, Tosa turru, nominative turruuga, Tokyo rcuru (the falling intonation [u] goes back to a pre-Japanese final nasal, cf. Japanese asa/l Korean *ac'am 'morning'). I intend to devote a subsequent article to the simplest correspondences for Korean obstruents and nasals (for example, Turkic / / / K o r e a n t in Turkic *ta:m/lKorean tam 'wall', etc.). Korean- or Altaic-Japanese relations - in connection with the general question of the genesis of Japanese, where (as my etymological material shows) a }s

This word should not be considered a Chinese borrowing, as P. Schmidt proposes (see Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar], p. 51). I have already mentioned the connection of the Mongolian-Korean word with Chinese and some other "Sino-Tibetan" words which mean 'horse' (and via the Chinese proto-form *mra also with Japanese *mma ->Tokyo mrma, Northeast ma) in the article "Dal'ne-vostocnye terminy..." [Far Eastern Terms...] in Sbornik v cest'prof! A. E. Smidta [Collection in Honor of Prof. A. E. Schmidt] (Tashkent). The remark by P. P. Schmidt (who cited the following Sino-Tibetan examples for Chinese and Korean mal: "in Sokpa mari, in Burmese mrang, in Gurung boroh, in Abormirian buri") is interesting, by the way: "In Asia they consider the Gobi Desert the original home of the horse, and there it was first domesticated (see Dr. O. Schmeil, Lehrbuch der Zoologie [1889]); therefore, it may be that the Chinese borrowed the horse along with its name from the Turko-Mongolian-Tungus tribes. If this is so, then the southern peoples became acquainted with the horse from the Chinese and also borrowed its name, which then should not have been monosyllabic" (Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar], p. 8). In any case, in this name for the horse, we see a migratory term which spread at such a distant time, however, that within the limits of one language family it is permissible to ascribe to it (with certain reservations) even a proto-language nature. On the other hand, since this is indeed a migratory term, we will have no cause for surprise if we find its deposits in languages of other families as well [similar to the way in which we discover another migratory word - a culture term of pre-history, 'honey' - in both the Indo-European and the Uralic family, and in Chinese (with further borrowing into Japanese and Korean) and even, finally, in Chechen] which, however, does not propose recognition of the Japhetidological operations performed with Chinese M . 18

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complex amalgam is revealed - should be discussed specially. But the matter of the continental "Altaic" languages is not so simple: there is no hope, evidently, of pulling from one "Common Altaic" proto-language all the facts inherent to them. A picture of much more complex relationships is foreseen. On the other hand, studying the Altaic problem, one must not pass by the Yenisei-Ostyak problem. Altaic elements, specifically Turkisms, may be identified in this language, of course as a very late influx (it is strange, incidentally, that Schiefner did not count among the Turkisms such an obvious fact as the suffix -dak 'how': 17 cf. Turkish Jb/dic-s). On the other hand, one must not fail to devote attention to a completely unexpected observation like the striking similarities with Basque (true, it is precisely because of their strikingness that these facts cause the supposition here of the possibility of accidental correspondences).

17

A. Schiefner, Castren's Versuch einer Jenissei-O st jakischen und Kottischen Sprachlehre (1858), §67.

INDO-EUROPEAN *medhu — COMMON CHINESE *mit

The correspondence of Indo-European *medhu 'honey', 'mead' with Finno-Ugric words expressing the same concepts (Finnish mesi*mit->modern Chinese miSA, which may be extended to at least three other language families, i.e., connected further with the

names for honey in Finno-Ugric *meti-+ Finnish mesi, Estonian mezi, etc./ChechenIngush (modern Chechen muoz modern Korean mal and Mongolian merin -* Russian merin 'gelding' have a certain genetic relationship), and also those borrowings - from Chinese and into Chinese - which were long ago mentioned in Sinological literature (for example, such migrations of ancient Chinese words as: (1) Old Chinese *kam ' p a p e r ' J a p a n e s e kami/lRyukyus kabi [ < *kambi] and -• Persian ka[gaz\; (2) Old Chinese dzian -> modern Peking ts'ien, Dungan (jan -> Japanese *zeni 'money'; on the other hand, however, cases of borrowings opposite in direction like Greek fiozpuQ-* Chinese p,ul-faol in modern pronunciation), then a general enumeration of the material turns out to be - although not very significant - nonetheless sufficient to dispel the view of the ancient stages of Chinese as a language history completely isolated from connections and contacts with languages of other families (i.e., those which do not belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family). I add that it would be a very useful task to give a critical review of what has been said (especially in Orientalist literature on the Far East) about similar archaic cases of "Chinese borrowings" since some of what is considered to have been established already in this field should be considered, it seems to me, not only unproven but also refuted (for example, the explanation of Japanese (pude *- * rpu"de' 'brush for writing' from ancient Chinese *pit should be replaced by an indigenous, i.e., purely Japanese, etymology of the Japanese word *rpunde~l ] (or *isw-[s]).4 And this, according to my hypothesis, is the first - more conservative - doublet of the Indo-European word, the continuation of which is Latvian tsuka (where *-k-a is, evidently, the same suffixation as *-k-a in Slavic *owi-k-a ovbca//Russian ovca 'sheep'-»cf. Sanskrit avih//Greek dig -> o/h: cf. the same sound change in Iranian Avestan ha- 'pig', and finally also in the Brythonic branch a

Since not one of the explanations which have attempted to give the etymology of *su-s on IndoEuropean soil (for example, the explanations by Curtius, Vanicek, and Hirt) can be considered proven, I see no obstacles to assuming this word to be a migratory term. 4 I bring to mind the fact that in historical phonetic reconstructions we have a possibility for establishing not phonemes but the sounds of a language, and only by depending on the presence of supplementary data can we, in certain cases, make further conjectures on the[phonematic(=phonological) structure of the forms we have reconstructed.

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of the Celtic languages - Cymric hwch, Cornish hoch with Old Irish soec -* modern Irish suig 'pig') and which is represented, on the other hand, in Latin su-s, Old High German su -> modern German Saw, Albanian 9i (with the change of *u into i, regular for Albanian: cf. mil/miis 'mouse'), and, finally, in such derived stems as Gothic swein, Old High German swin, Russian svin'ja, etc. 1 he significant role which the pig played - this strictly "Aryan" (in the modern German sense of the term) animal - in the ancient everyday life of the Indo-European peoples 5 as well as in the ancient economy of China, may speak only in favor of our hypothesis, reducing the Indo-European and Chinese names for this animal to the same migratory term. But in connection with this, attempts can be made to establish the depositions of the same migratory term (*tsu) in the languages of some other families, in particular in Turkic languages: cf. Uzbek cocqa 'pig', 8 corpa 'piglet'. But many questions pertinent here (among them the words already explained as a borrowing from Indo-European languages, for example, Estonian siga*-*sika 'pig', etc.) require special consideration and undoubtedly go beyond the framework of the present short report. Likewise, the comparative phonetic problem of the exceptions to the law *s-+h (within the limits of Indo-European studies), which it was necessary for me to touch upon here in connection with the treatment of vq and aug set forth above, in my opinion deserves review of all analogous examples (Greek oifim* 'briinstig' in comparison with Latin subo, subare ~ subere; and, on the other hand, Old Cymric dissuncnetic 'exanclata' and Neo-Cymric sugno7 in comparison with Latin sugo, sugere; also CUV- and and, finally, aupiy^f namely in the light of the explanation set forth above (which assumes in one of the doublets preservation of the element t in *tsu- until the period of activity of the Greek law *s -> h).

* Cf., by the way, the role of pigs in the Odyssey. • Incidentally, also the Russian ¿uSka 'pig' goes back to an evidently Tatar form (luSqa, SuSqa). ' For in the Brythonic languages (of the Celtic group) we encounter the same "law" of the change of initial *s into h as in Greek (and in Iranian languages and Armenian). 8 Which I am inclined, moreover, to consider, both on the basis of its suffix and its stem, a preGreek, non-Indo-European word - this in no way eliminates the necessity for clarifying the initial s in this word, too.

THE DUNGAN PLURAL SUFFIX -mw

The plural suffix -mw, used in the Dungan language in correspondence to North Chinese men (f["]) (for example, tamw 'they', vamw 'we', nimw 'you'), lacks, in the first place, an explanation of its phonetic structure: is it etymologically equivalent to the Chinese men (serving in such a case as its further historical phonetic modification)? And if so, then what are the reasons and what is the course of this sound change? In the second place, inasmuch as the etymological identity of Dungan -mw and Chinese men {-man ~ -mi}) can be established, the question arises: what is the origin, i.e., what is the common ancient Chinese source for both suffixes (-mw//men)? In other words, what word (originally independent) was grammaticalized in the given (Chinese and Dungan) plural suffix? To the second of these questions I have already given a short answer in Grammatika sovremennogo kitajskogo razgovornogo jazyka [A Grammar of Modern Colloquial Chinese] by A. I. Ivanov and E. D. Polivanov; and, therefore, here I need only repeat this answer, providing it with some new parallels of a general linguistic nature. But it is necessary tentatively, of course, to solve the first problem: is Dungan -mw really simply the historical phonetic reflex of Chinese men? (since in the opposite case there would be no sense in applying the Dungan suffix to the etymology of men, i.e., to the second of the above-named questions). It seems to me that an explanation (and specifically a historical phonetic explanation) of the Dungan suffix -mw from Chinese men is not only fully probable but also the only one possible (in view of the absence of explanations competing with it).1 I assume the following course of sound evolution in this instance: since Chinese men 1

Only one purely hypothetical consideration can be named which could be countered to our assumption (with respect to Chinese men -»Dungan -mw), namely - the Dungan suffix is a grammaticalization of the word mu 'mother': cf. the complex tzu-mu 'alphabet', 'primer', where mu is actually a substitute for the concepts "conglomerate" (i.e., "alphabet, primer" = literally "mother", literally "conglomerate of letters"), from which it is not far at all, of course, to the concept of the plural. But is it worthwhile to speak of the fact that precisely in application to the stems of personal pronouns (after which Dungan -mw is primarily used, as is Chinese men) this etymology reveals its inconsistency: "his mother", "my mother", "your mother" can in no way be transformed into the personal pronouns "we" and "you".

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(unstressed, since this is in general a property of Chinese suffixes) is pronounced as a rule without the vowel, i.e., with syllabic n (-mn; for example, fa-men = tha-mn 'they', etc.), then we have a right to trace the evolution on Dungan soil also from this complex -mi}. It is possible to assume the next, i.e., second, stage (although it is not compulsory) to be -*mt}x, due to assimilation of the second nasal (#) to the first (m) in its place of articulation, i.e., in lip action. As an analogy, the change of p ->• tp after a labial consonant in modern German may serve; for example, lieben = li.bnli:brp (in rapid speech), etc. But it is necessary to keep in mind that (1) this (second or intermediate) stage could be completely absent: the change to u ( = Dungan w) is possible also for the front syllabic nasal (in the given position); (2) that if this stage did exist, then it was only as an extremely ephemeral stage and, evidently, only as a facultative variant (a rapid-speech variant) of the front syllabic nasal -n (in view of the dialectal contradiction between the physiologically motivated change mn-+mip and the basic phonological norms of the West Chinese and also the North Chinese syllabeme which permit only n and r\, but not m, at the end of the syllable). For the following stage - for the change of p -> u or rp -* u (i.e., -mn -*mu = "mw" or *mtfl^*mu — "mw"), we can name an analogy - to a certain extent a close one again from German, namely from some German folk dialects. In his lectures 20-25 years ago, Prof. F. A. Braun quoted as a textual example the song sung by German soldiers beginning with the phrase: "Unser Kaiser soli lebun..." We shall leave aside, of course, the absurd content of the song: 2 1 cite its first line exclusively because in it the form lebun {le:bun in phonetic transcription) was noted by Prof. F. A. Braun) instead of leben (le:bn or le:bip in usual German pronunciation). This form shows that in this word (as in other words with a similar final sound combination) a change of syllabic nasal to un took place - in other words, the same process which is reconstructed for the ancient history of Germanic languages repeated itself. The similarity between this dialectal German (and ancient Germanic also) sound change, where in the structure of the reflex of a nasalis sonantis the vowel u develops, and the Dungan *m$->mu [ = "mw"] attains decisive importance in the eyes of a phonetician and, in particular, a phonologist if attention is given the acoustic reason for the appearance here (i.e., in the given - German and Dungan - reflexes of syllabic nasals) of the vowel u, i.e., a vowel with an extremely low characteristic tone (cf. apropos this the explanation given by R. Jakobson in Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, No. 2 - the appearance of the vowel u in the Russian, Serbian, and Czech reflexes of "large jus" x , i.e., nasal 0). Taking into consideration, consequently, as the main aspect the influence of nasalization which lowers the tone of the vowel, we can no longer lend any significance to the difference between the German, and also the old Germanic, and the Dungan reflexes: un, on the one hand, and Dungan u, on the other; the motivation of the absence of a final nasal in Dungan -mu (not men - and not murj\) does not present any difficulty. 2

In standard G e r m a n orthography its text is: Unser Kaiser soli

leben...

THE DUNGAN PLURAL SUFFIX -WW

165

Finally, I permit myself to add one more approximate parallel (to the given change of nasalis sonantis into u): the Japanese sound change *M (thus I designate m which played a role as the second element of a diphthong) into nonsyllabic u; 3 for example, siramu (future, "I will find out, he will find out") *siraM-> Japanese sirau siro: and Ryukyus f'irct, sira; Chinese fay 'side' ->• Japanese and Ryukyus *paM-• Japanese *pau^ho: and Ryukyus *pa:-> (pa:. In my opinion, the considerations mentioned above (and the parallels) permit us to imagine also a hypothetical picture (i.e., the reasons and course) of the sound change -mn -> Dungan -mw. Turning to the second question, on the source of Chinese men (and Dungan -mw, which goes back to it), one may point first of all to the hieroglyphic writing of the Chinese suffix ( fF5 ), which in itself already contains the solution to its etymology. The hieroglyph with which the Chinese suffix of number is written consists of the radical: "man", with the so-called phonetics men = 'door', 'gate' ( fP3 = f + f l ) ; along with this, this "phonetics" is an etymology: the suffix men is nothing other than the grammaticalized word 'door', 'gate'. 4 The evolution of meaning (from "gate" to the concept of the plural) is like this: "gate" or " d o o r " " y a r d (house)"->• " f a m i l y " " a n d the others"-»the concept of the plural (first of all in personal pronouns). For the beginning of the change in meaning, one may point to a parallel such as the common source of the Russian words elver' 'door' and dvor 'courtyard' (IndoEuropean stems dwer- ~ *dwor- are variants of the same stem - according to the most normal type of Umlaut *e/o), to the development: "house (or yard)" -* "family" -> the the meaning of the plural in personal pronouns. One can name cases from Japanese dialects as very close parallels (if some examples from the western Caucasian languages, which I omit in view of the difficulty of their transcription, are not considered); for example: (1) The morpheme ku 'house' in the Tosa dialect (the province of Tosa on Shikoku island) - in complexes like as'iqku = as'i-q-ku 'we', where as'i is 'I' and q- is a combinatory abbreviation of the genitive case suffix -no (consequently 'my house' = 'we'). (2) The morpheme -i- (instead of rje 'house' from iJe *piMka-> *piMga —> *piuga. 4 One can add that the radical "man" ("f , so-called jen tzuerh), which differentiates the given suffix from the lexical morpheme "door", "gate", is evidently explained by the circumstance (in the structure of the semantic characterization of the suffix) that this plural suffix is used almost exclusively after personal pronoun stems and names of persons (for example, wo-men 'we', ni-men 'you', tsammen 'you and I' = 1.2. Plur. Inclusiv., t'a-men 'they', and, on the other hand, for example, hsuehsheng-men 'students').

166

METHODS OF COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

"K proisxozdeniju tureckogo . 6

186

SOCIOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

the Russian literary language, but in certain fields the facts here bear a still much clearer character, and the influence of the Revolutionary era is told very forcefully. Thus, if the reflection of the October Revolution in the sphere of Russian orthography, i.e., the Russian "orthography of 1917", is no more than a reform in the literal sense of this word (i.e., ordering or improving a formerly existing system), then in the case of many national minorities of the Soviet Union the writing system created by the Revolutionary period signifies much more - not an improvement but simply a creation of a national written culture (and along with it a literary language and a literature as well); in particular, this is the way the matter stands with the Yakuts (who are, undoubtedly, progressive and the most radical of our Siberian peoples in the matter of written culture), who before the appearance of the new Latinized writing system (the so-called Novgorodov 6 transcription) in 1917 had neither an alphabet more or less widespread among the populace (not counting the Russian missionary transcription) nor a national literature (disregarding oral folk creativity, which began to be recorded by local workers again only in the period of the "Yakut national renaissance", i.e., after 1917). In other words, for the Yakuts (as for many other nationalities in analogous circumstances, for example the Japhetic Caucasians), the creation of a national written language accepted for compulsory study in the schools opens a new page in the cultural history of the people with which, strictly speaking, its national culture is only just beginning (with the written language, literature, study of the area, and schools in the native language; this would all have been impossible in the absence of an instrument of spiritual culture as essential as a national writing system). I do not in the least fear reproach for exaggeration if I compare the collective work done and being done now in various corners of the U.S.S.R. with the illustrious activity of Cyril and Methodius, for which these two esteemed scholars were honored in their own day with the rank of canonized saints and by many monographic studies on the part of more recent scholars; I will say even more: that the results of the work of latter-day Yakut, Azerbaijani, Chechen, Ingush, and other "Cyrils and Methodiuses" contemporary to us will be incomparably more fruitful, for they are opening the road not to the religious culture of the 10th century but to Soviet culture in its national forms. Closely connected with the October Revolution, these "graphical revolutions" have fulfilled (or are fulfilling) the very serious task of democratizing national written languages - and, consequently, also cultures - by means of a radical "regime of economy" with respect to the time and effort spent by both pupils and teachers in learning native reading and writing (for the elimination of superfluous difficulties in writing, justified by nothing and explained by nothing except historical inertia and tradition, shortens to a large extent 7 - in certain concrete cases by many times - the " After the name of the author of this alphabet, S. A. Novgorodov, who died an untimely death in 1924 - after his young life had been devoted wholly to the enlightenment of his native people. 7 By way of a peripheral analogy, it will not be superfluous to point out that an English (and

REVOLUTION AND THE LITERARY LANGUAGES OF THE U.S.S.R.

187

period of elementary education, which, of course, turns out to be the best possible help in liquidating illiteracy, that important matter on which the entire future of the Soviet Union depends). Thus, I do not at all over-value the significance of the reforms in graphics for our national minorities. However, this general evaluation by no means implies that I consider the present state of affairs held by all who have come out for the reform of nationalities to be brilliant and the reforms themselves to be ideal. Even in the best cases, as, for example, in the model solution to the problem of nationalizing the former Arabic alphabet among the Kazakhs (and, in consequence, among the Kirghiz), we see that their writing system could reach this fully satisfactory status only in 1924, i.e., after several years of less successful attempts. And at the same time this is still not the final point, but only a transitional stage in the reform, for after this a completely new route is selected (a new course) for the reform - Latinization. In like manner, also in the extremely rational "Yakut Latin alphabet" (the so-called Novgorodov transcription) we have some parts which could be replaced by another, technically less difficult selection of signs. And what can be said of the poorer cases of alphabets - those alphabets which in their present form (1926) have not yet gotten rid of many rather significant defects (such as, for example, the many Latin alphabets of the Japhetic peoples of the Caucasus, and also, to a certain extent, the East Finnic alphabets based on Russian script and even some of the Turkic ones, for example, the "Turkmen orthography of 1925", which was a step backwards by comparison with the "Gel'diev Turkmen alphabet" of 1924)? It does not befit Communists in viewing their activity to paint it in false-rose color and to silence the defects where they are. We should know in advance that not one mass undertaking can be promulgated across the whole territory of the Soviet American) elementary pupil loses two years in mastering the difficulties of English spelling (and a spelling reform would, consequently, permit using these two years in obtaining other important knowledge). Let us assume that English spelling is uniquely complex and confusing (significantly more difficult than all other European orthographies, among them French and pre-reform Russian), but this is still not the extreme case: Japanese hieroglyphic writing causes one to lose six whole years in its mastery, i.e., at least 60,000,000 individual working years (or by a minimal count 302,400,000,000 extra individual working hours) in the course of every decade throughout Japan. This work time is spent, so to say, "in vain", for the good of historical tradition. And from all this one can be saved by such a simple step as a reform in graphics, the example for which was given by China at the time of the Chinese revolution (for it is a historical law that only a period of revolution is a favorable moment for revolution in the writing system) as the last conquest of the Chinese elementary pupil: the "Chu-yintzu-mu" (i.e., "Phonetic alphabet"). Of course, this alphabet has not yet received general dissemination or at least has not yet become the basic form of Chinese writing and plays the role of an auxiliary system of graphics; besides this, it is possible that this is still not the final choice of alphabet, for in place of the "Chu-yin-tzu-mu", created from fragments of the tracings of Chinese hieroglyphs, China will prefer in the future, perhaps, the Latin alphabet, i.e., an alphabet of fully international importance. But this state of the graphic reform corresponds precisely to the political situation in modern China, where the social revolution is still far from its solution.

188

SOCIOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

Union with an equal degree of success and with the same deadline. And the graphic renovation of the whole Soviet Union, of course, is not a matter of one or two years or even of one shock campaign. During the first decade of the Revolution, much has thus been done with the writing systems of the national minorities; but some peoples have strongly advanced, while others have lagged (of course, according to their fully definable cultural-historical conditions). However, what has been done allows us to state with assurance that by the end of the second decade (by 1937) there will no longer be any laggards. The choice of one route or another of reform in writing systems (for example, either by putting the old system in order or, on the contrary, by changing to a completely new, Latin script) is determined fully, of course, by the cultural-historical and geographical conditions of the given nationality at the moment of the reform. It is completely clear, for example, why a non-Moslem (and, therefore, not knowing the Arabic alphabet) Turkic (i.e., "Turkish") people - the Yakuts - directly, and already in 1917, made the bold step into the future to a Latin, i.e., to the most international writing system; the Yakuts had nothing to correct (with the exception of missionary Russian transcriptions; but from this attempt the political associations would have been retained which were connected with this instrument of Russification by tsarist politics and which could in no way connect the missionary alphabet with the Revolutionary matter of creating writing systems and schools in the native language); this is why the road to a Latin alphabet was open for them.8 It is just as clear that, on the contrary, those Turkic peoples which due to Islam have long used the Arabic alphabet and had in it a literature, in some cases a more and in others a less significant one (such as, for example, the Tatars and Central Asian Turks, for example the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Turkmens) posed for themselves the task, at least for the first stage of the reform, of regulating (and, in particular, phoneticizing) this traditional system of writing in Arabic letters. Thus, a series of perfected Moslem alphabets has arisen, attaining the most perfection among the Kazakhs with the Kirghiz9 and among the Tatars. 8

Of course, a certain role in the selection of a Latin alphabet was played by the personality of Novgorodov, but only because Novgorodov's choice answered those possibilities which were represented by the collective political consciousness of the Yakut milieu: the aspirations of the people for national rebirth in the last ten years of tsarism moved Novgorodov, who went to Petersburg with a special task - to create a Yakut writing system, completed the Oriental Faculty there, and then fully intentionally selected the basis for the future Yakut writing system: the International Phonetic Alphabet (i.e., an alphabet on a Latin basis) with some arbitrary additions. However, if Novgorodov had not reflected the views of the Yakut intelligentsia in general, his "transcription" would either simply have been rejected or soon would have died off but would not have been turned into a genuine common Yakut writing system. 9 Everywhere in this article I use - in agreement with modern official terminology - the word "Kazaks" (qazaq) in place of the former term "Kazakh-Kirghiz" (which existed - moreover, erroneously - only in Russian literature but not in the local speech), and in like manner the word "Kirghiz" in place of the former term "Kara-Kirghiz", artificially created by Russians. By "Uzbeks" I have in mind, of course, the "Sarts" of former pre-Revolutionary terminology, as well as the Uzbeks proper. ]; see below). Another circumstance which is connected with this choice is the introduction, analogous to the choice of [a], of [K>], [e] instead of [fty], [fto]. Otherwise, it could seem that the syllables [a] ("jod" + [a]) and [K>] ("jod" + [y]) could have different consonants. ra see §6y {ra} || pa wa see §6K {wa} || Ba i {i} | H, i, ft | H We will stop for a moment on the choice of [H] for all cases of the Japanese syllable (or the second element of the diphthong); [i] would go too much counter to the Russian habit of writing u. Therefore, we prefer [a]. It would be desirable to introduce this spelling also in cases before vowels, for example, in [HO], the name of a province, and also before the "vowel letters" h, to, e (although not a vowel but a consonant sound - "jod" - follows after the [H]), for example, in [naHa] 'contrary'. By this, the Russian spelling habits suffer damage (although such spellings asPriamur'e do exist), but, on the other hand: (1) a unity is preserved which corresponds to a single Japanese image of the sound, (2) the possibility of misunderstanding is avoided since lo, for example, could easily be read as [e] (due to the existence of doublets like lona = [HOHa] or [eHa], and also in view of the established practice of writing lo for [ft] + [o] in Japanese words, for example in IoKozaMa 'Yokohama'). In a similar way, the problem of the desirability of [H] but not [i] also in those cases when the sound [H] follows a consonant is solved in advance. Moreover, one cannot help but foresee that, inasmuch as the transcription will be widely disseminated (for example, since Japanese names will figure in the periodical press), the Russian habit of writing i before "vowel letters" will prevail over the theoretical desire. Reproach should not be made with regard to the use of the symbol [ft] for the second element of the diphthongs [an], [OH], [3H], [yH] since use of this symbol makes note of the nonsyllabic nature of this second element. However, strange as it may be,

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

253

the use of a simple [h] for such cases, i.e., an intentionally false substitution of the image of bisyllabicity in place of unity of a diphthongal syllable, can, in view of the peculiarities of Japanese psychophonetics, not only be considered admissible but can be defended. In fact, for Russian the non-syllabic [h] which we pronounce at the end of the word caj 'tea', moj 'my' is recognized as a consonant because it figures as a consonant in morphology (we decline kraj, kraja [icpafta] 'edge' like nos, nosa [Hoca] 'nose'), while in Japanese final non-syllabic [h] in the syllables [an], [oh], [yu] has nothing in common with a consonant (and cannot have because of the law that only open syllables are possible) and in morphology plays the same role as [h] after a consonant, for example [jcaiiMacy] 'he buys' beside [icaKHMacy] 'he writes'; then (and this is the most important), between bisyllabicity with hiatus in [an], [oh], [yn] and monosyllabicity in the corresponding diphthongs [aii], [oft], [yft] there is no essential difference for a Japanese, and due to this it is difficult for them to master such differences as Russian zaika 'stammerer' and zajka 'hare'. I will cite the extremely valuable observation by D. M. Pozdneev: "With slow pronunciation a Japanese always says in such cases7 simply i" (Tokuxon, 1, p. xiii). From what has been said it follows that the choice of a symbol for non-syllabic [h] can vacillate between [h] and [ft]. I prefer [h], not at all insisting on this, however, in view of the following consideration: in the case where after the diphthong there follows another vowel, for example, in [6any] 'a rainy period', one could expect from the spelling 6aiiy a danger of reading this word as [6aio], which would be a serious error from the Japanese point of view, while reading in it three syllables [6a] + [h] + [y] would more satisfy a Japanese. ki {ki}8 || KH shi see §6y {si}

| ch, iiih, iiibh | c h

Of all the Russian consonant sounds, soft [s] (in the syllables si, sja, sju, se, se) is the closest to the Japanese sound; concerning Russian s, the difference between it and the Japanese sound is enormous, in tongue position (in Russian the tip of the tongue is active, turning up; in Japanese a narrowing is formed by the front part of the back of the tongue) as well as in acoustic result. In both Japanese and Russian there exists the opposition of soft and hard consonants, based on an identical acoustic aspect. This aspect is present both in Russian soft [s] in sja, sju, si, and in the Japanese sound under consideration; both are recognized as complications precisely by the presence of this acoustic aspect9 of the corresponding "hard" sound ([s] in so, sa). However, in Russian s this acoustic aspect (physiologically, a palatalization corresponds to it) is undoubtedly lacking. Finally, the combination of Russian s with the vowel y, and not with i, completely excludes the possibility of transmitting the ' It is a question namely of diphthongs with [h] as the second element. ' [k] before palatalized [i]; however, in view of the fact that in Japanese (as in Russian) nonpalatalized [k] cannot occur before [i], the symbol for palatalization can be arbitrarily omitted as with other palatalized consonants. 9 It consists of a rise in the characteristic tone of the given consonant.

254

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Japanese syllable by IUU. The presence, however, of shi in Romaji can only prompt us not to imitate blindly what is suitable for a Frenchman, a German, and an Englishman (who do not have the opposition of "soft" consonants to "hard" ones, with whom s before i is pronounced without palatalization, i.e., hard), but completely unsuitable either for a Russian or a Pole, in whose consonant systems there is something in common with the Japanese system which is absent in those of Western Europe. And the appearance of tun in the Russian transcription of Japanese words I explain exclusively by the influence of European transcription (sh) but not by the acoustic Russian perception since I have not had occasion to encounter Russian attempts to transcribe Polish s by tu. The spelling [uibn] would be an ugly palliative since anyway it would not suggest to a Russian person the notion of "softness" of the [in] and would be read as [iiihh], chi

see §68 {ci} | u h , hh, t h , u b h , h b h , t c h | t h

The spellings [hh] and [hlm] should be declined in accordance with considerations analogous to those for which [urn] and [iiii>h] were declined for the preceding combination. In the combination [uh] the fact that it gives indication of the affricative nature of the Japanese sound is tempting; but in view of the Russian habit of pronouncing [c] hard (reading identically both the spelling tfu and the spelling ifbi), I choose [th], which, in view of the presence of the acoustic aspect characteristic for "soft" consonants, is much more satisfying for a Japanese than [um]. Of course, it would be impossible to select for a Western European transcription (English, French, or German) of this Japanese syllable the combination ti (Sin-romaji, after all, was pursuing not phonetic but etymological aims); but this is quite possible for Russian, in which soft [t] (in ti, tja) is extremely close to the Japanese and Polish affricates. (Cf. L. V. Scerba, Vostocno-luzickoe narecie [The Eastern Lusatian Dialect]: "For example, Great Russian t', d' are much closer to c, 3, than is usually thought", Vol. 1, p. 191) (by [c] and [3] here are understood the soft, palatalized affricates [c] and [dz]). This presence of the fricative element in Russian soft [t], on the one hand, and, on the other, the softness or palatalizedness of the consonant primarily important for the Russian as well as for the Japanese and Polish mind which is lacking in [ci] ( = [cy]), makes Russian [th] the natural replacement for Japanese chi and for Polish ci in cicha.

One could expect reproach for the lack of parallelism in transmitting voiceless and corresponding voiced sounds: I propose to give a voiceless affricate by the Russian sign for a stop [t] (of course, in the presence of an [h] following), and the corresponding voiced (see §6e) by two signs, this time denoting the affricative nature of [fl3] (of course, in the presence of an [h] following); but, in fact, there is also a physical lack of parallelism which corresponds to this lack of parallelism in transcription - the stop element is much larger and more important (it is not capable of disappearing) in the voiceless affricate while in the voiced affricate it is facultative.

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

255

The spelling [uba] also would not insure softness but would be read as [UHH]. The spelling [TCH], however, is dangerous because it may be read as in the word Betsy, i.e., [t] + [s]. ni hi see §69 mi 77 see §6^ u see §2

{ni} {gi} {mi} {ri} {u10,

|| |j || ||

HH XH MH

pn

M } | y, BI, B, M | y, M

The Japanese sound as it is in isolation, i.e., pronounced separately, has more common aspects with Russian [u] than with [y]. Thus, the participation (although weak) of the lips (especially the lower one) comprises what is lacking in the [y]. Therefore, for this vowel sound, since it forms a syllable independently - without consonants, [y] should no doubt be chosen; but, on the other hand, it is desirable to use a single sign for all those cases where a sound is pronounced by a Japanese which is comparable in concept to the given one, although in fact it would be pronounced differently (not all efforts would be realized) and would even disappear from pronunciation. Taking note of the combinatory nuances would greatly complicate the transcription. Therefore, the choice of [y] for the syllable [u] predetermines also the spelling of syllables with a preceding hard consonant. In the diphthong [ya] (for example in [yaHo], a place name), [y], not [B], should also be written since this sound is extremely different from Russian [v], and Russian [ve] can be perceived by a Japanese as [be]. The spelling [M] refers to the depiction of a syllabic nasal, for example in [MMS] (see §5.1), which is given in Japanese orthography identically with [y], ku { k u } || Ky su {su} | cy, c, c i , c(y) | cy, (c(y)), (c) The question of whether it is worthwhile noting those cases when [y] disappears from pronunciation (see §4) must be left open. Whoever has need of it (this need can arise, for example, in a question of stress in Japanese) can be recommended to place [y] in parentheses or simply to omit it. But undoubtedly one must not consider this essential since the disappearance of [y] is optional and to draw a precise boundary between cases of its preservation and cases of its disappearance (even for a certain tempo of speech which is accepted as normal) is difficult. tsu {cu} | uy, Tcy | (u(y)), (n) This spelling is inconvenient since it can be read not as an affricate but separately. With regard to the omission of [y], one can say the same as in the preceding combination. 10 Of course, this is a purely arbitrary usage which violates the associations usual for the International Alphabet.

256

APPLIED LINGUISTICS nu {nu} fu see §61 {y, ((y)), (cj>) || My | fiy, 1 0 | JO

On the choice of [10], see above on the combination [ya | a]. ru {ru} || py e {e} | 3, e, H3 | 3 Against the spelling [e] is first of all the fact that this symbol is spoiled by confusing associations which are connected with it in the Russian writing system. Finally, Tokyo initial [a] (in contrast to Nagasaki) does not have a "jod" before it (while Russian initial e = [je]). Moreover, by the choice [s] a uniformity with the symbol [s] after vowels is attained (in Tokyo the sound [s] does not combine with soft consonants). There remains the question of whether to write [ib] (or [e], which makes no difference) in those cases when there is before the [3] a transitional front element (see §8.2), for example in [H03] 'house', [CHTH83H] 'seven yen'. I prefer not to indicate this but to write simply [aa] because such transitional elements, conditioned by the presence of other sounds, in general need no designation, especially if they at least approximately and at least to a small degree exist also in Russian pronunciation, which is the case here. (Cf. Mr. Satow in the Discussion after Chamberlain, "Notes on the Dialect Spoken in Ahidzu", Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. IX, Part 1, p. 35: "It is also usually supposed that Kioto people pronounce ye instead of e when that syllable occurs at the beginning of a word, but though I have listened very carefully for this y I have never heard it except when pronounced rapidly after a word immediately preceding, when the passage from the final nasal n or a vowel naturally gives rise to the semivowel y, as is the case in the Yedo dialect also. It is the fact which has led foreigners to call the Japanese dollar yen instead of en, because they always hear it immediately after a numeral ending in a vowel. At the beginning of a sentence no y is heard either in the Kioto or in the Yedo dialect.") ke se te ne he me ye re 1

{ke} {se} {te} {ne} {he} {me} {e) {re}

|| K3 || C3 ¡1T3 || H3 || X3 || M3 II 3> see above || ps

{0} || o ko {ko} || KO so {so} || CO to {to} || TO

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

no ho mo yo

{no} {ho} {mo} {jo}

257

|| HO || xo || MO | HO, io, e | e

The possibility of reading [io] as [HO] speaks against the use of [io]. Against [HO] there are the same reasons as against [iia] for [h]. Against [e] are: (1) its lack of equality with the other letters of the alphabet, although e is indeed a very useful invention (its usage, for example, would greatly facilitate learning Russian by foreigners), (2) the inconvenience of combining it with a diacritical mark of length. However, the advantages of using this sign are so great that they cause one to do all possible to overcome the technical difficulties. In case this is impossible, one could think of replacing [e] for the transmission of Japanese [yo] at the beginning of words and after vowels (and diphthongs) by [HO] (and instead of the [e] indicated below after consonant letters - i.e., for transmitting the sound [o] after soft consonants - one could use [o] with a preceding 6, i.e., writing [MLO], [TI>O], [Hbo], [cbo], etc.). Finally, if the technical difficulty consisted only of using a capital E (and in this case it would not be desirable to abandon using a capital letter for proper names and for the beginning of sentences), then one could use [ii (M)] for the beginning of words, and e for transmitting the sound [o] after soft consonants (consequently, within the word). If the difficulty consists of the combination of the letter e with the sign for length, then the question of what to relinquish - (1) noting lengths in general, (2) a diacritical mark more or less well known to the public, a line which could be replaced, in such cases, by a colon or a dot above the line along with the letter, for example, or (3) the letter e - should be decided depending on the circle of readers for which the given publication is intended; see what is said below on the value of noting the lengths of vowels. o, wo { w o} | o,

BO

|o

Here is meant the sound [o] in the position after another vowel and having before it (see §8.1) a glide element. Under the influence of Japanese orthography, there arises the question of transmitting this transitional element in a special way for the accusative suffix [Bo], although here there is no difference from the same transitional element between a vowel and the sound [o] within the word (for example, in [icaBo] 'face'). It is best not to indicate this transitional element since the spelling [BO] (for example, meo accusative of [ica] 'mosquito'; or Kaeo 'face') would cause pronunciation of a strong Russian labiodental [v], for which there is nothing similar in Tokyo pronunciation and which could be perceived as [6]. ga {ga, ga} | ra, Hra, Hra | ra (Hra) Doubt can arise only over the problem of whether nasal [r] (see §6a) encountered between vowels should be depicted differently from a simple one. There are no means for this in the Russian written language, since the spelling m

258

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

is completely unsatisfactory. And only for those cases when it is necessary to indicate the given phonetic peculiarity, using still a small« above the line before it for nasal [r] can be proposed as a change toward an arbitrary transcription. za see §6£ {3a} | 43a, 3a, U3a | In view of the fact that [fl3] dominates over [3] as the ideal pronunciation of the sound (realized in the syllable in isolation) I prefer to write [«3a] everywhere - in the beginning as well as in the middle of words; the differentiation of nuances would greatly encumber the transcription. But the choice of [3] does not at all deserve reproach because, for the Japanese mind, which does not have this difference, both [33] and [3] are satisfactory. A certain preference for [3] could be that [fl3] has chances of being read separately (and not as the corresponding voiced sound for [u]); but if one escapes this danger, then it is not obligatory that [3] be chosen. Thus, according to my observation, many Russians (educated ones) have an image of a voiced front affricate which is related to the image [c] as [b] is related to [p], [d] to [t], etc.; this phoneme differs from the other phonemes by the fact that it is not used in Russian words; but I, for example, have it, and it is never replaced by the sum of the separate phonemes [d] + [z] when I pronounce (and I pronounce in Russian without any conscious attempt to imitate Chinese pronunciation) Chinese words (for example, Mengtzu, Tsang). And here there arose the graphical symbol if3 for the sound which will be the voiced consonant corresponding to [u], in view of the recognition of its kinship (equivalence of place and method of formation in the oral cavity) with [u]. Among persons completely unacquainted theoretically with the composition of this sound, there exists, however, a certain definite concept of the fact that with the spelling ¿>3 a separate pronunciation as [a] + [3] is impossible (and it is of this that the connection with [ij] consists), and on this basis differentiation of aif3a and ad3a is possible (i.e., these spellings placed beside each other may be read by a completely unprepared Russian with a differentiation, and, moreover, a definite one). 11 And in essence we should not fabricate a symbol for a voiced front affricate (for the tight combination of [a] + [3]); it has already more or less been created by the Russian written language: in the form if3.12 In this respect I do not quite agree with P. P. Smidt's protest (Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar], I, 30) against the use of 143 and hmc in the Russian transcription of Chinese words: "... In view of all this, the spellings if3 and hmc contradict two rules of phonetics: in the first place, voiceless sounds (c and c) do not fuse with voiced ones (z and z); in the second place, the sounds c and c by themselves are already affricates (from t + s and t + s) and cannot fuse with 11

This does not mean, however, that they will always be read differently. Analogously to this, atotca and abaca can also be differentiated, of course. 18 For the one who devised it imagined an affricate; of course, an affricate is given also by di, but there the fact that it is an affricate is not emphasized. Of course, differentiating the readings i(3 and ¿3 has no factual significance since Russian offers no examples of it.

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

259

other fricative sounds." While we take into account Russian written phonetic associations (and this is a prerequisite of a popular transcription), we should define fully all meanings of a given letter. After all, if in the combination 143 does not at all mean that sound which occurs in the combination ifa but means only that sound which is transmitted by tf3, similar to [a]. And this similarity with [a] can be destroyed in reading the spelling d3. I understand the desire to introduce healthy phonetic images into transcription which guided P. P. Smidt, and, incidentally, I am inclined to choose d3 for the Japanese sound partly from analogous motives, but this is possible only because in this case the recognition of [ip] as different from [33] has not too stable a social-phonetic soil under it. But to refuse, for example, to transmit Japanese ki by Russian ku because we connect the image of a hard consonant with the image of the isolated letter K, and a hard consonant does not combine (in Russian) with the vowel [h] (analogous to P. P. Smidt's judgment on if and z/3) is, of course, not necessary. In this manner, of the three possible transmissions for the Japanese sound, each is acceptable, and a choice is possible here under the influence, incidentally, also of "practical reasons". Among these latter I have in mind also solidarity with that school which wants somehow or another to introduce the phonetic principle into the Russian written language and into Russian transcriptions. Moreover, the question of the transmission of Japanese za should be decided in connection with the question of ji (if, for example, 3a, then also 3u), and there the conditions of choice are more complicated. da {da} || aa ba {ba} || 6a pa {pa} ¡1 na gi {gi, rji> || rn ( H ra) ji see §6e {3i} | OT, 3h, flb3H, # 3 h , hch, ahch, H3KH, 3KbH, fl3KbH, HXCbH | fl3H

[jkh], [a>kh], and [hjkh] are impossible for the reasons which voted down the choice of

for shi; [>ki>h], [ahcmi], [hhcbh] - for the reasons which voted down the choice of [uibH], In Russian di there is first of all the image of an obstruent, and the fricative element, although it is there, is something secondary, connected with the softness of the consonant. Meanwhile, in Japanese13 the consonant of the syllable is realized either as a "stop + spirant" (i.e., in the form of an affricate) or simply as a spirant. Therefore, the physical side of the matter speaks either for transmitting the sound as an affricate (in [£3h], [ai>3h], [u3h]), or as a spirant ([3h]). The psychic data speak in favor of [£3h] - such is the assiduous realization of the syllable [ji]. But every one of the combinations [fl3H], [ai>3h], [u3h] has some (true, very minor) inconveniences. Thus, [a3h] can be read as hard [a] + [3h]; [zimh] c a n give cause for an artificial [uih]

18

In Tokyo, of course; if it was necessary to transcribe the sounds of the dialects (for example, of the Tosa province), which differentiate cAj'-nigori from sto-nigori, it would be necessary to write the first with du, the second with 3«.

260

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

division into syllables (and rather in connection with the conjecture about some morphological division of the complex, for example: the word niji transcribed by [HH,ZU»3H] can give the reading [HHAI>] + a break in voicing + [ 3 H ] , and this will be understood by a Japanese as nijiji). From the spelling Huif3u one could perhaps expect a reading with a hard [a] + [3h] not fused with it, which will be for a Japanese nitsuji. I repeat that I consider all these reasons very weak; and this permits me to advance several subjective motives here for the choice of [fl3H]: it is simpler than [flb3H], which, moreover, has been applied by no one to the transcription of Japanese words, and "more phonetic" than [ I ( 3 H ] . bi {bi} || 6H pi {pi} |i na gu {gu, rju} || ry ( H ry)

zu see §6£ {3u} | (see above on za) | £3y bu {bu} || 6y pu {pu} i| ny ge {ge, ge} || rs (Hr3) ze see §6£ {3e} || £33 de {de} 11 #3 be {be} || 6s pe {pe} || n3 go {go, rjo} || ro ( H ro) zo see §6£ {30} || fl3o do {do} || AO bo {bo} || 60 po {po} || no kya {k'a}

| KH, KBH,

K0a, K t a |

KH

The spelling [Kba] would have raison d'etre if we were afraid of permitting at all the letter H in the transcription (in view of the confusion in its meaning: sometimes "jod" + [a], sometimes [a] + indication of the softness of the preceding consonant). But the fact that the choice of one meaning or another for it is strictly tied with the position after a consonant letter or not after a consonant letter, and the coincidence of these meanings with the requirements of the Japanese material (where there are also soft consonants) permits using it also in the second of the meanings indicated for it, similarly to what I have said of its application in the first meaning (see above on the syllable ya = [a]), [raa] (a literal transmission of the Romaji spelling kya) is impossible since it does not give the important thing - the softness of the consonant (ma = Kbua — KbH). [KLH] transmits this softness and, besides, also the "jod" between [Kb] and [a]. But in Japanese kya, pya, there is only a weak 14 glide element 14

And psychically just as valueless, occupying in the consciousness of a Japanese just as insignificant a place as in Russian combinations in a Russian's consciousness - all, of course, in view of its independent position. Cf. L. V. Scerba, Russkie glasnye v kacestvennom i kolicestvennom otnosenii [Russian Voweis in a Qualitative and Quantitative Respect], p. 87.

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

261

(see §8.3), approximately the same as in the Russian syllables kja = [Kta],pja = [nta] and that "jod" which occurs in the Russian word p'jan = [m>iiaH] 'drunk' is completely lacking. Consequently, there is no sense in writing [Ki»a], and I am inclined to [kh], which makes analogous decisions obligatory also for the other combinations of "soft" consonants. 15 gya sha see §6y ja see §6e cha see §68 hya see §69 mya rya bya pya kyu

{g'a, g ' a } || ra ( H ra)

{sa} {ia} {ca} {ça} {m'a} {r'a} {b'a} {p'a} {k'u}

| ca | Ä3H | TH | XH | MH 1 P« | 6h | na KIO,

niy, Kby | KIO

The choice of [kk>] is analogous to the choice of [kh] for kya. gyu {g'u, g ' u } || n o ( H n o ) shu see § 6 y { s u } ju

see § 6 e { i u }

chu see § 6 8 hyu see §69 myu pyu kyo

|| c i o || fl3io

tio

{cu}

||

{?u}

|| x i o

{ m ' u } ||

mk>

{ p ' u } || m o { k ' o } | Ke,

klo, Kio, kho | Ke

The choice of [ice] is analogous to the choice of [kh] for kya. See also on the syllable yo = [e]. gyo {g'o, r)'o} || re ( H re) sho see §6y {so} 1 cë jo see §6e {30} 1 fl3ë cho see §68 {co} 1 Të hyo see §69 {ço} 1 xë myo {m'o} 1 Më ryo {r'o} I Pë byo {b'o} 1 6 ë pyo {p'o} 1 n ë 15

It is possible that after various "soft" consonants (for example, pya, rya, sha, ya) the transitional element will be differentiated (cf. the observation on the glide elements in one of the Lusatian dialects: L. V. Sfierba, Vostocno-luiickoe narecie [The Eastern Lusatian Dialect], §75: "After r', n', 1', the vowels 'a, o, o, u' ... acquire very clearly expressed high transitional sounds ... After c, a, s, z, j', these transitional elements do not attract attention so much."). But these differences should undoubtedly not be taken into account in transcription.

262

APPLIED LINGUISTICS n see

§5.3 {g,16 m,17 n} |

H, H I ,

H-, Hr,

H(HÏ>), H T ,

HIT., M

|

M

For the end of the word and for the position before [K], [r], it would be desirable to use some sign other than [H], but this is impossible since there is no suitable letter, and the combination m would create a completely incorrect pronunciation. Therefore, I propose to write [H] everywhere besides the position before [M], [n], [6], where I will write [M], and the position before "jod" (for example, in [MaHbëcio]) - see what was said above on y a = [a]. Use of the hyphen (xon-my Man-ëcw) is undesirable since I would rather reserve this sign for a morphological meaning. I consider it unnecessary to decide the question of the use of a after H at the end of words - to please the Russian graphical custom - (by this, of course, I do not deny the necessity of uniformity within any publication): insofar as transcription pursues phonetic goals, a hard sign at the end of a word is completely superfluous in it; but, because Japanese words will be printed in publications of various types (journals, newspapers, etc.), the appearance of the hard sign is an unavoidable phenomenon. kwa gwa kwo gwo

{ k w a } 11 KBa { g w a } || rBa { k w o } ||

KBO

{ g w o } ||

TBO

These combinations do not occur in Tokyo, but it is easy to come across them in transcribing the orthography which is supported by the many dialects where they do occur, at least [kwa], [gwa]. Preference may be given [KB], [I-B] although these are by far not accurate transmissions of the Japanese labialized back consonants. The length of consonants is usually noted by doubling the letter, which should be accepted for [KK], [ T T ] , [ C C ] , [CC(H)], [nn], [TT(H)]. But long [ U ] is better written [ T U ] (by this the increase in duration of the stop, and not of the spirant element, is indicated, which corresponds to reality). 14

The possible reproach because I use one and the same sign rj both for the intervocalic nasal [q] (see §6a ; for example in [nagai] = [Haran]) and for the nasal element of diphthongs (the "un", see §5.3) before back consonants [k], [g] (for example [tarika] = [Tamca]) and at the end of words (for example [hor|] = [XOH]) in phonetic transcription (based on the associations of the International Phonetic Alphabet) really does have some foundation, but a similar reproach is applicable also to the usual usages (see Edwards, Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise, and in Romaji) of the same sign [n] both for a fully consonantal sound in [ano] = [aHo] and for the nasal element of the diphthong in [kanda] = [Kanwa], and analogously - for usages of [m] for the consonant in [ama] = [aina] and for the nasal element of the diphthong in [ambai] = [aMÔan]. New symbols should be devised for the nasal element of diphthongs before labials, front and back, different from [n], [m], [rj], or all combinatory modifications of this element should be combined under one symbol (for example [N]), which would correspond to the Japanese "un". Of course, until this is done, it is necessary to note with a special sign the syllable boundaries in those cases where the nasal diphthong occurs before a vowel; otherwise [tj] will be understood as a consonant beginning its own syllable. 17 With a little circle under the letter to express the syllabic nature of the sound.

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

263

The length of vowels cannot properly be transmitted by means of the Russian writing system since there is no image of long and short vowels in Russian. Inasmuch as it is necessary to turn to an arbitrary device, a line above the letter may be singled out of all possible means as the device more or less well known (due to the classical school) to the Russian public. But typographical difficulties may be encountered (especially with e). Other methods, such as: (1) a colon beside the vowel letter (it is only necessary that it not be divided from the letter by a blank space; otherwise it will be understood as a punctuation mark), for example [o:]; (2) a special form of colon with dots in the form of little triangles [:]; (3) a dot beside the letter above the line [o-], [e-]; (4) use of a letter of another script (for example boldface); and other similar ones equally permissible which, while representing arbitrary means incomprehensible for the uninitiated, do not, on the other hand, lead him to a false reading. One may speak out against simply doubling the vowel symbol in that it may evoke false readings, especially in such cases as [oooKa], [xoooo], [coooo]. Referring to the fact that the doubling of a letter for indicating vowel length is used in some written languages (for example in German and Finnish), and also in scholarly phonetic transcriptions (by Sweet), does not provide a reason for deciding on its suitability for Russian transcription, since in both German and Finnish there is an image of long consonants which is absent in Russian, and a scholarly phonetic transcription based on convention is also incompatible with the means of the Russian written language. (Cf. Grot, Russkoe pravopisanie [Russian Spelling], p. 87: "But there is no need for doubling lengthened e, denoted in German orthography by doubling this vowel, also in the Russian writing system. The name of the river on which Berlin is situated can, for example, be written simply Spre [and not Spree].") In publications intended for a wide circle of the public, the indication of length is better left out altogether (it is, after all, necessary only for people who have adopted the concept of the difference of short and long vowels independent of stress and not for those who only take into their lexicon from Japanese several proper names. One could still speak of noting length with a sign of stress, with which length is constantly connected among us Russians, but this means giving an intentionally false concept about one of the phonetic means of Japanese. A way out of this position is just as impossible as designating [ H r] by the usual means of the Russian writing system, as completely transmitting by these means, for example, the complex system of Korean vowels or the English sounds given by th (there are two of them - voiceless and voiced). It remains to resort to convention (if only it is possible, by means of a little line above the letter) where, i.e., in those publications where, precision is desired and to abandon noting long vowels where the convention cannot be understood. NOTE : The designations 3 (with a sign of length, if there are no obstacles to its use) and 3u for [§], capable of alternating with the diphthong [an], can be used with equal right; see § 3 NOTE. Musical stress in all its scope, of course, also belongs to the differentiations which

264

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

are lacking in Russian, 18 and for this reason (and also lor others: Japanologists, for example, are not accustomed to it) its designation should be made optional. For those cases when indication of the musical stress is desirable, a very large selection of symbols is possible, depending first of all on the typographical conditions. I do not see any special merits for the method which I used in "Muzykal'noe udarenie v govore Tokio" [Musical Stress in the Tokyo Dialect] (in part, Edwards, §159, also used the same symbols), and it can be replaced by any method. One can, for example, as the Japanese do, among them Imamura in his booklet TOK£63H [The Tokyo Dialect], set aside a special line under the transcription of the sound structure of words for indicating the stress; the sign of the acute ' is placed under a stressed syllable, and a horizontal line - is placed under an unstressed syllable; two signs are necessary for a long syllable; in this manner, the words [aca] 'morning', [xo] 'cheek', and [OH] 'kindness' are supplied with the signs the words [aca] 'hemp' and [xaHa] 'flower' are supplied with the signs and the words [xaHa] 'nose', [xo] 'law', and [OH] 'sound' are supplied with the signs— . With this, the survey of the transmission of the sound side may be considered concluded; there still remain questions on those supplements to the Russian writing system which are not connected with the sound side. These are: (1) the use of capital letters for proper names and for the beginnings of sentences; since the transcription pursues only phonetic aims, capital letters should be avoided (cf. Grot, Russkoe pravopisanie [Russian Spelling], p. 80: "Capital letters, strictly speaking, are a luxury of the writing system."), but it is absolutely necessary to take them into consideration in a popular transcription; (2) use of a little line (a small dash -) within a word. It would be desirable to reserve this means as a symbol of morphological division (and, of course, to make its use optional, for dividing into morphological parts is necessary only in special cases), separating by it, for example, a suffix from a stem: [xaHa-ra] nominative of [xaHa], [apn-Macy] or one part of a compound word from another, for example [ico6y-TopH]. I do not touch here on the question of which parts of the words should be considered deserving of division by a dash (after all, even ap-u-Mac-y is possible) and where the border lies between a part of a word and a separate word (for example [xHTO-,npcy] or [XHTO flacy], [63HKe-cypy] or [63HKS cypy]). The second possible aim of Russian transcription is the transmission of Japanese orthography. The main requirement is, of course, the separation of this transcription from the first one, for which it is recommended to indicate each time that the cited spelling is a copy of the spelling, or to enclose words transcribed in this manner in special quotation marks (which must again be stipulated). With regard to the choice of letters one may say: (1) for those signs of the Kana which are connected (in isolation from other signs) 18 I say "stress in all its scope" because certain facts of Japanese (Tokyo) stress find parallels in Russian; for example, the contrast of the word [aca] 'morning' to the word [aca] 'hemp' (see §9) can easily be perceived by a Russian. But the difference between the words [OH] 'kindness' and [OH] 'sound' (see §9) can only be mastered with significantly more difficulty.

ON THE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPTION OF JAPANESE WORDS

265

only with the image of a sound or syllable as this sound or syllable is pronounced at the present time - without any hint (drawn, for example, from Gojuon's chart) of the ancient meaning, differing from its modern meaning, one must use the complex of Russian letters which gives the given sound or syllable in the modern Japanese pronunciation. Therefore, one must write [xa], [y] (although in antiquity these syllables sounded like [na], [ny], but this is not known to a Japanese and does not follow from a direct consideration of Gojuon's chart). Thus, the orthography of some syllable [ce] can be transmitted, for example, by [ch n L:-no rkoJo-jo, merkuLra-ga rme-Lgane-orkano~' rmiLta. 'In Tosa, in the city of Kdti, on the Harimaya bridge (where women's jewelry is sold) (I) saw a Buddhist monk buying a comb (which women wear in their hair). This is something similar to a Buddhist monk buying a comb: (I) saw a blind man buying glasses.' The absurdity of a Buddhist monk's buying a comb lies in the fact that Buddhist monks shave their heads.

4 In transcription I include a series of syllables pronounced on a high note between the sign denotes that the syllables following it are pronounced on a low note.

r

and

while

ON THE METRICAL NATURE OF CHINESE VERSIFICATION

Although Chinese poetry evokes fully deserved interest both in the West and among us at the present time, it is not studied thoroughly. Even such an eminent specialist as V. M. Alekseev, in his Kitajskaja poèma o poète [A Chinese Poem about a Poet], spares only one page of the volume, devoted to just one comparatively small work, to the question of form; and, moreover, V.M. Alekseev is far from the historical point of view in studying verse structure. And yet it is clear that the description of the formal principles of Chinese versification will correspond to reality only when the point of departure in the study is the phonetic system (the elements of which are used for poetic purposes), which is contemporary to the creation of the poetic canon, i.e., in any case, the phonetic state of the Chinese language of the first millennium of our era (and of an even more remote time). Only by taking into consideration the "Common Chinese" proto-forms of monosyllabic morphemes established arbitrarily (by historical phonetic analysis) can the Chinese rhyme system be written down (while the tradition of rhyme creation existing even now, canonized by rhyme dictionaries, is already dead for the living Chinese language - due to the phonetic evolution of the latter, as also, for example, for the Chinese language in Japan, where to this day Chinese "classical" verses are written). This is also the state of affairs with metrics.1 The sources which should be used by a historian of Chinese - a Sinologist and poetry specialist - are as follows: (1) Chinese lexicography (and, in particular, the "Ch'ieh-yin" system and rhyme dictionaries) along with the analysis of it already executed, to a certain extent, in the works of Karlgren and Japanese Sinologists (for example Goto), (2) Chinese dialectology, (3) "non-Chinese dialects of Chinese" or the traditions of reading Chinese ideograms transformed on foreign soil, namely Annamese, Korean, and Japanese (in Japanese there are three entire Japanized Chinese literary dialects, different as to epoch of borrowing and their Chinese 1

I.e., here one must also begin from the state of the language established (by historical phonetic methods). Recitation contemporary to us can have, however, only approximately an importance such as modern Japanese musical accentuation has in reading a classical text (and, moreover, only by speakers of West Japanese dialects) for the reconstruction of musical accentuation in the Japanese language of the Henan period (in which the given text was written).

290

LINGUISTICS AND POETICS

dialectal source: Go-on, Kan-on- To-in; in each quite regular series of sound correspondences to Chinese proto-forms are observed; besides this, also oral borrowings of two different types serve as linguistic material: prehistoric borrowings, i.e., those belonging to the time of the pre-literary influence of China, and newer, dialectal borrowings: from Mandarin into the South Japanese-Kyushu dialects). In the problem of metrics, the data of Chinese dialectology itself have prime importance (while for the rhyme system, the indications of the Japanese, Korean, and Annamese tradition can play, it turns out, a role identical with them if not greater). Even the most cursory survey of the phonetic systems, in particular the systems of melodic accentuation (Sylbenakzent, or so-called tones), at ten or twenty points of the Chinese dialect territory already gives basis for the following conclusion apropos the "alternation of tones", usually considered a basic principle of Chinese versification. The Chinese system of versification, in the period of its creation, was a metrical system, for it was not the melodies of syllables which alternated according to the principle, but the categories or types of these melodies: syllables which were so-called "oblique" (tsey) in tone with the "direct" ones (p'ing). There are only two categories of these. The 1st and 3rd tones enter into one, and the 2nd and 4th into the other. Dialectological data indicate that the 1st and 3rd tones corresponded to the image of a long syllable, and the 2nd and 4th - to the image of a short one. In this way, "the alternation of tones", in fact of "categories of tones", is simply an alternation of long and short syllables (and Chinese versification, thus, stands beside Old Indie, Greek, and Persian). 2 However, of the indications that the 1st and 3rd tones cause the length of a syllable (in contrast to the 2nd and 4th), I mention only the facts from one dialect (putting aside the data from the other dialects I have observed, which could be brought to bear for the same conclusion, until the publication of Foneticeskie nabljudenija nad kitajskimi dialektami [Phonetic Observations on Chinese Dialects]), namely from the Tsin-chou-fu dialect of the Fengtien Province. The essential difference of the musical Sylbenakzent of this dialect from that of Peking concerns actually only the 1st tone (for example in t'a 'he'), which is characterized in Tsin-chou-fu by a rising-falling melody: ~ (t'a"). The first tone is, in this way, the diametric opposite of the 3rd - falling-rising: " (for example in ma" 'horse'). And the 1st consists, consequently, of the sequence: "2nd + 4 t h " , and the 3rd consists of the sequence of melodies: "4th + 2nd". The following scheme of differences is obtained:

!

Ordinary melodies (i.e., short syllables)

Double melodies (i.e., long syllables)

rising melody: 2nd tone '

rising-falling melody: 2nd + 4 t h = 1st tone

But not at all alongside Japanese and Ryukyus, examples of quite pure syllabic systems (not syllabic-accentual like French, and not accentual-syllabic like Russian).

ON THE METRICAL NATURE OF CHINESE VERSIFICATION

falling melody: 4th tone

291

falling-rising melody: 4th + 2 n d = 3rd tone

Due to the symmetricality maintained in this system of melodic differences, the concept of length (and shortness, i.e., quantity) of the syllable is quite reliably discovered (by psycho-phonetic methods) in the linguistic consciousness of the given dialect, since in Peking, Shantung (Tsi-nan-fu, Lai-chou-fu), and others, it is already obscured; the aspect of an even voice tone, present in the Peking characteristics of the 1st tone, eliminates the symmetrical opposition of the 1st to the 3rd tone. 3 However natural it would seem from the point of view of general phonetics to see the secondary nature of the Peking "even" 1st tone by comparison with that of Tsin-chou-fu (on the basis that the uselessness of the even melody - of such an essentially simple image - in the characteristics of tones can be considered a phonetic anomaly, and, therefore, the replacement of the "falling-rising" melody by the "even" melody seems quite natural); in fact the matter is more complicated in a historical phonetic respect. It is impossible for me within the bounds of the present note to explain the convergence by which this correspondence is caused in the characteristics of the 1st tone (Tsinchou-fu "rising-falling"//Peking "even" melody). But the dialect data, in any case, indicate the historical significance of the Tsin-chou-fu symmetrical system since, even in the ancient language of the period of the verse canon, we have a right to define the 1st and 3rd tones as long syllables and the 2nd and 4th as short ones. The question of a completely special phenomenon known by the name of 5th tone (with a final non-nasal consonant in the Common Chinese period, from which later came coup de glotte, i.e., hamza, and, finally, a complete zero of the consonant - in Peking) is, of course, also important for metrics but requires a completely separate consideration and will introduce only supplements and not changes into what has been said above. Starting from the premise made above about the metrical nature of Chinese verse, we can, for example, reduce the typical forms of Tang pentasyllabic quatrains to the following dimensions:

(The first syllable, not differentiated in quantity, is enclosed in parentheses.)

3

Although the length of the 3rd tone can to a certain extent be confirmed also on the basis of Peking data.

APPENDIX

COMMENTARY I*

1. "Specificeskie osobennosti poslednego desjatiletija 1917-1927 v istorii nasej lingvisticeskoj mysli (vmesto predislovija)" [Specific Features of the Last Decade, 1917-1927, in the History of Our Linguistic Thought (In Lieu of a Foreword)] (pp. 57-61). Printed according to the edition Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i literatury Rossijskoj associacii naucno-issledovateVskix institutov obscestvennyx nauk [RANION] [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1928), 3-9. The ideas expressed in this article were developed by E. D. Polivanov more than once, in particular in the report "Problema marksistskogo jazykoznanija i jafeticeskaja teorija" [The Problem of Marxist Linguistics and the Japhetic Theory] (see pp. 169-170 of the present edition) and in the book Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931), in particular in the section "Vmesto predislovija" [In Lieu of a Foreword] (pp. 3-9). Evidently, this article was written by E. D. Polivanov as a report - in connection with his work as the chairman of the linguistic section of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences. p. 58. See V.I.Lenin, "Zadaci sojuzov molodezi" [Tasks of the Youth Unions], Polnoe sobrante socinenij [Complete Collected Works], Vol. 41, 304. p. 58. Precise bibliographical data on the works mentioned here: R. O. Sor, Jazyk i obscestvo [Language and Society] (Moscow, 1926); M.N.Peterson, "Jazyk kak social'noe javlenie" [Language as a Social Phenomenon], Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i literatury RANION [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1927); N. M. Karinskij, "Jazyk obrazovannoj casti naselenija g. Vjatki i narodnye govory" [The Language of the Educated Portion of the Population of the City of Vjatka and Folk Dialects], ibid., Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1928); G.K.Danilov, "Jazyk obäöestvennogo klassa" [The Language of a Social Class],

*

Compiled by A. A. Leont'ev.

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ibid., Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1928); A.M.SelisSev, Jazyk revoljucionnoj époxi. Iz nabljudenij nad russkim jazykom poslednix let (1917-1926) [The Language of the Revolutionary Epoch. From Observations on the Russian Language of Recent Years (1917-1926)] (Moscow, 1928). The works of Polivanov mentioned are Nos. 67 and 84 in the bibliography. pp. 60-61. These works are mentioned: L. V. Scerba, Vostocno-luzickoe narecie[The Eastern Lusatian Dialect], Vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1915); A. A. Saxmatov, Sintaksis russkogo jazyka [Syntax of Russian], Parts 1-2 (Leningrad, 1925-1927; 2nd edition, Leningrad, 1941); A.M.Peskovskij, Russkij sintaksis v naucnom osvescenii [Russian Syntax in Scientific Interpretation] (1st edition, Moscow, 1914; 7th edition, Moscow, 1957); M.N.Peterson, Ocerk sintaksisa russkogo jazyka [Outline of Russian Syntax] (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923); M.V.Sergievskij, "Iz oblasti jazyka russkix cygan" [From the Area of the Language of Russian Gypsies], Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i literatury RANION [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1928). 2. "Faktory foneticeskoj évoljucii jazyka, kak trudovogo processa. Obzor processov, xarakternyx dlja jazykovogo razvitija v époxi natural'nogo xozjajstva" [Factors in the Phonetic Evolution of Language as a Work Process. A Survey of the Processes Characteristic for Language Development in Epochs of a Natural Economy] (pp. 6580). Printed according to the edition: Ucenye zapiski Instituto jazyka i literatury Rossijskoj associacii naucno-issledovateVskix institutov obscestvennyx nauk [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. 3 (Moscow, 1928), 20-42. Problems of the theory of language evolution occupied E.D. Polivanov from the beginning of the '20s. In 1923 in Tashkent his book The Concept of Evolution in Language was published in Uzbek, as an addendum to which the brochure Foneticeskie konvergencii [Phonetic Convergences] came out in Russian (reprinted in Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1957, No. 3, 77-83). Separate works on particular problems in the theory of evolution were also published later. Besides the chapter reprinted in the present edition (pp. 81-92) from the book Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics], the review of R. Jakobson's book (pp. 131-136 in the present edition), and the present article, E. D. Polivanov's general works on this topic did not appear during his lifetime, although he spoke more than once of the existence of a manuscript under the title "Teorija évoljucii jazyka" [The Theory of Language Evolution], Probably this manuscript was among the materials lost after E. D. Polivanov's tragic death. The idea of the influence of children's speech on the evolution of language was adopted by E. D. Polivanov from his teacher I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay (although it is also encountered - in a somewhat different form - in many Neogrammarians).

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Baudouin pointed out, in particular, that in mastering language, a child "captures the future, foretelling by the peculiarities of his speech the future state of the tribal language, and only afterwards does he move, so to say, backwards, more and more accommodating himself to the normal language of those surrounding him". Under the influence of the family, school, and language intercourse, children, it is true, learn to speak "correctly", but such "stimuli" do not pass in vain: "The accumulation (cumulation) of traces of stimuli of this sort in a whole series of generations leads to real, definitive changes in the whole language formed historically." (See "Nekotorye iz obscix polozenij ..." [Some of the General Premises ...] in the edition: I. A.Boduen de Kurtene [I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay], Izbrannye trudy po obscemu jazykoznartiju [Selected Works on General Linguistics], Vol. 1 [Moscow, 1963], 349-350. Cf. ibid.: "O smesannom xaraktere vsex jazykov" [On the Mixed Nature of All Languages], 364if.; "Opyt teorii foneticeskix al'ternacij" [A Tentative Theory of Phonetic Alternations], 335 if.). The theory of "economy of pronunciational energy" and the interpretation of the process of mastering a language as the equivalent of speech activity correspond to the modern concept of speech activity. See on this: A. A. Leont'ev, "fekonomija proiznositel'nyx usilij - fikcija ili dejstvitel'nost'?" [Economy of Pronunciational Efforts Fiction or Fact?], Materialy konferencii "Aktual'nye voprosy sovremennogo jazykoznanija i lingvisticeskoe nasledie E.D.PolivanovcT [Proceedings of the Conference "Current Problems in Modern Linguistics and the Linguistic Legacy of E.D.Polivanov"], Vol. I (Samarkand, 1964). On E.D.Polivanov's views of the problem of language evolution and historical phonetics, see: Vjac.Vs.Ivanov, "Lingvisticeskie vzgljady E.D.Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E. D. Polivanov], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1957, No. 3, 59-60, 71-72; A.A.Leont'ev, "I.A.Boduen de Kurtene i peterburgskaja skola russkoj lingvistiki" [I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and the Petersburg School in Russian Linguistics], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1961, No. 4, 116-124; I.V.Al'tman, S.S.Belokrinickaja, V.V.Sevoroskin, "O razrabotke nekotoryx voprosov fonetiki i fonologii v trudax E. D. Polivanova" [On the Analysis of Certain Problems of Phonetics and Phonology in the Works of E.D. Polivanov], Materialy konferencii... [Proceedings of the Conference ...], 9-13; V.A.Vinogradov, "Teorija foneticeskix konvergencij E. D. Polivanova i princip sistemnosti v fonologii" [E.D.Polivanov's Theory of Phonetic Convergences and the Principle of Systemicness in Phonology], ibid., 13-18; I. G. Dobrodomov, "Principy izucenija zvukovyx izmenenij v trudax E.D.Polivanova" [Principles of the Study of Sound Changes in the Works of E.D.Polivanov], ibid., 18-20; L.A.Andreeva, S.F.Zan'ko, "Vzgljady E.D.Polivanova na evoljuciju jazyka i sovremennye predstavlenija o jazykovom razvitii" [The Views of E. D. Polivanov on Language Evolution and Modern Concepts of Language Development], ibid., 21-22; L.P.Krysin, "Voprosy jazykovoj evoljucii v trudax E. D. Polivanova" [Questions of Language Evolution in the Works of E. D. Polivanov], ibid., 22-27.

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p. 68. See No. 72 in the bibliography, p. 73. See No. 32 in the bibliography. 3. "Gde lezat principy jazykovoj evoljucii?" [Where Do the Reasons for Language Evolution Lie?] (pp. 81-92). Printed according to the edition: Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie. Sbornik populjarnyx lingvisticeskix statej [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics. A Collection of Popular Linguistic Articles] (Moscow, 1931), 36-53. 4. "Mutacionnye izmenenija v zvukovoj istorii jazyka" [Mutational Changes in the Phonic History of Language] (pp. 93-112). Printed according to a typewritten copy with corrections and insertions in E. D. Polivanov's hand preserved in the L. V. Söerba Deposit in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (Leningrad), f. 770, op. 3, No. 25. Written at the beginning of the 1930's. p. 94. See W. Radioff, Phonetik der nördlichen Türksprachen (Leipzig, 1882). p. 100. See pp. 65-80 of the present edition. p. 101. Evidently what is meant is a report read by E. D. Polivanov in the Moscow Linguistic Circle (see Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1957, No. 3,73). p. 103. See pp. 223-237 of the present edition, p. 103. See No. 112 in the bibliography, p. 106. See No. 1 in the bibliography, p. 106. This work has not been preserved. p. 112. See Nos. 31, 32, and 75 in the bibliography (for the last work, see the present edition, pp. 65-80). p. 112. These works were not published by the Prague Linguistic Circle. The manuscript of the work on Japanese phonology was sent to R. Jakobson and partially preserved. 5. "Zakon perexoda kolicestva v kacestvo v processax istoriko-foneticeskoj evoljucii" [The Law of the Change of Quantity into Quality in the Processes of Historical Phonetic Evolution] (pp. 113-130). Printed according to a typewritten copy with corrections and insertions in E. D. Polivanov's hand preserved in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirghiz S.S.R. (Frunze). p. 113. See commentary to Article 2. p. 114. See pp. 65-80 of the present edition, p. 114. See No. 112 in the bibliography. p. 115. On E.D. Polivanov's addresses with criticism of N.Ja.Marr's "Japhetic theory", see the introductory article, p. 127. See pp. 65-80 of the present edition, p. 128. See No. 112 in the bibliography. 6. "RecenzijanakniguR.Jakobsona"[A Review of R.Jakobson's Book] (pp. 131-136).

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Printed according to the text in the journal Slavia, Part XI, 1 (1932), 141-146. No title in the journal text. p. 135. It was impossible to find such a place in E. D. Polivanov's works although the idea itself is set forth many times. p. 136. See Nos. 28, 31, 32, and 75 in the bibliography. 7. "Odna iz japono-malajskix parallelej" [One of the Japanese-Malayan Parallels] (pp. 139-140). Printed according to the edition Izvestija Rossijskoj Akademii nauk [Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences], Series VI, Vol. XII, No. 18 (1918), 2283-2284. Presented by Academician S. F. Ol'denburg at the meeting of the Division of Historical Sciences and Philology on May 29 (16), 1918. p. 140. H.W.Williams, Grammatische Skizze der Iíocano-Sprache (Munich, 1904). p. 140. H. C. von Gabelentz, Die Melanesischen Sprachen, 2-te Aufl. (Leipzig, 1873). p. 140. See No. 9 in the bibliography. 8. "K rabote o muzykal'noj akcentuacii v japonskom jazyke (v svjazi s malajskimi)" [Toward Work on Musical Accentuation in Japanese (In Connection with Malayan Languages)] (pp. 141-148). Printed according to the edition: Bjulleteri11-go SredneAziatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Bulletin of the First Central Asian Government University], Issue 4 (Tashkent, 1924), 101-108 (Addendum 1). For the same in a French translation, see in the same publication, Issue 8 (Tashkent, 1926), 119-125. E. D. Polivanov's hypothesis on the kinship of Japanese with the Malayan languages, substantiated in this and the preceding work and also in the book: O. V. Pletner and E. D. Polivanov, Grammatika japonskogo razgovornogo jazyka [A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese] (Moscow, 1930), is not generally accepted. However, it has also not been refuted. See on this: V.V.Ivanov, "Lingvisticeskie vzgljady E.D.Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E. D. Polivanov], 66. The work mentioned by E. D. Polivanov (see p. 141) "Akcentuacionnye sistemy japonskogo jazyka" [The Accentuational Systems of Japanese] never appeared in print. Cf., however, the article "Xarakteristika zapadnojaponskoj sistemy muzykal'noj akcentuacii (Akcentuacija v Kioto i Tosa)" [Characteristics of the West Japanese System of Musical Accentuation (Accentuation in Kyoto and Tosa)], {Bjulleteri' 1-go Sredne-Aziatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Bulletin of the First Central Asian Government University], Issue 9 [Tashkent, 1925], 183-194), corresponding chapters of the books: Vvedenie v jazykoznanie dlja vostokovednyx vuzov [An Introduction to Linguistics for Higher Institutions of Oriental Studies] (Leningrad, 1928, 70-84, 120140) and Grammatika japonskogo razgovornogo jazyka [A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese] (166-176), and also the article "Materialy po japonskoj akcentologii. 1. Govor Tosa" [Materials on Japanese Accentology. 1. The Tosa Dialect] (Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i literatury RANION [Scholarly Communications of the

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Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. Ill [Moscow, 1928], 133-149). p. 141. See Nos. 2, 3, 10, 11, 19 in the bibliography. "Akcentuacionnye sistemy japonskogo jazyka" [Accentuational Systems of Japanese] has not been preserved. "Fonetika japonskogo jazyka" [The Phonetics of Japanese] has been preserved, only partially, in manuscript, p. 145. See pp. 139-140 of the present edition. p. 147. See D.Pozdneev, Tokuxon ili kniga dlja ctenija i prakticeskix upraznenij v japonskom jazyke [Tokuxon or a Book for Reading and Practical Exercises in Japanese], Parts 1-2 (Tokyo and Yokohama, 1907-1908). p. 147. See No. 3 in the bibliography. 9. "K voprosu o rodstvennyx otnosenijax korejskogo i altajskix jazykov" [Toward the Question of the Kinship Relations of Korean and the Altaic Languages] (pp. 149-156). Printed according to the edition Izvestija AN SSSR [Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.], Series VI, Vol. XXI, Nos. 15-17 (Leningrad, 1927), 11951204. On Korean and its relation to the "Altaic" language group, see also E. D. Polivanov's article "Korejskij jazyk" [Korean Language] in Literaturnaja ènciklopedija [Literary Encyclopedia], Vol. 5 (Moscow, 1931), 469-471. An analogous theory was advanced later in G.Ramstedt's works, in particular in his Vvedenie v altajskoe jazykoznanie [Introduction to Altaic Linguistics] (Moscow, 1957) (also a bibliography of earlier works); cf. on this Vjac. V.Ivanov, "Lingvisticeskie vzgljady E.D.Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E. D. Polivanov], 66-67. p. 151. See pp. 139-140 of the present edition. p. 152. See N. Poppe, "Türkisch-tschuwassische vergleichende Studien", Islamica, Vol. I, f. 4 (Leipzig, 1925). p. 155. P.P.Smidt, Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki s tekstami dlja upraznenij [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar with Texts for Exercises] (Vladivostok, 1902). p. 155. See No. 30 in the bibliography. p. 156. See A. Schiefner, M.A.Castrens Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und kottischen Sprachlehre (St.-Petersburg, 1858). 10. "Indo-evropejskoe *medhu - obsöekitajskoe *mit" [Indo-European *medhu Common Chinese *mit] (pp. 157-158). Printed according to the edition Zapiski Vostocnogo Otdela Rossijskogo Arxeologiceskogo obscestva [Communications of the Oriental Section of the Russian Archeological Society], Vol. XXIII (1915) (Petrograd, 1916), 263-264. p. 157. See B. Wiklund, "Finnisch-ugrisch und indogermanisch", Le monde oriental, VI, 1906; R. Gauthiot, "Des noms de l'abeille et de la ruche en indo-européen et en finno-ougrien", Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris, Vol. XVI (1910), No. 4; H.A.Giles, Chinese-English Dictionary, 2nd edition (Shanghai, 1912).

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p. 158. P.P.Smidt, Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar] (Vladivostok, 1902). p. 158. H.Möller, Vergleichendes indogermanisch-semitisches Wörterbuch (Göttingen, 1911); B.Karlgren, Études sur la phonologie chinoise. I (Uppsala, 1915); O. Schräder, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 2-e Aufl., Bd. I-II (Berlin and Leipzig, 1917-1923, 1929). 11. "Indo-evropejskoe *jw[s] - drevne-kitajskoe *cu 'svin'ja'" [Indo-European *sü[s] - Ancient Chinese *cu 'pig'] (pp. 159-162). Printed according to E. D. Polivanov's manuscript, preserved in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (Leningrad) in L. V. Scerba's deposit (f. 770, op. 3, No. 25). On the first page of the manuscript is the superscript: "For publication (even if in a maximally abridged form!). The author entrusts Prof. L. V. Scerba and Prof. A. Dragunov to make all changes, [indecipherable] and abridgments which they consider necessary. E.Polivanov, author. P.S. The dispatch of many more works will follow. E.D." A manuscript of analogous content but of smaller size was sent by E.D.Polivanov to R.O.Jakobson in Prague (it is now preserved in the Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) : from this variant, a translation into French was made which was published under the title : "A propos d'un mot indo-européen de provenance chinoise *(t)sû.s < ancien chinois *cu 'cochon'", Archiv Orientâlni, Vol. IX, No. 3 (Prague, 1937), 405-406. The work mentioned in the text of the article on Japanese names of animals has not been published and has not been preserved in manuscript. Problems of the reciprocal influence of non-related languages always interested E.D.Polivanov, as they did other students of I.A.Baudouin de Courtenay, for example, L.V. Scerba. Following Baudouin, Polivanov in particular advanced the concept of a "comparative grammar of non-related languages" (see: I.A.Boduèn de Kurtenè [I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay], "O smesannom xaraktere vsex jazykov" [On the Mixed Nature of All Languages], Izbrannye trudy po obscemu jazykoznaniju [Selected Works on General Linguistics], Vol. 1 [Moscow, 1963]; E.D.Polivanov, Vvedenie v jazykoznanie dlja vostokovednyx vuzov [An Introduction to Linguistics for Higher Institutions of Oriental Studies], 52). On Polivanov's views concerning these problems, see the article by Vjaö. V. Ivanov, 69-70. After Ivanov's article was published, excerpts from E. D. Polivanov's linguistic dictionary were published, where much attention is given to the same problems (" 'Slovar' lingvisticeskix terminov' E. D. Polivanova" [E. D. Polivanov's "Dictionary of Linguistic Terms"], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1960, No. 4, 112-125). p. 159. See No. 124 in the bibliography, p. 159. See No. 30 in the bibliography. 12. "Dunganskij suffiks mnoiestvennogo cisla -mw" [The Dungan Plural Suffix -mw] (pp. 163-166). Printed according to the typewritten copy with corrections and

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insertions in E. D. Polivanov's hand preserved in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirghiz S.S.R. (Frunze), p. 163. See No. 99 in the bibliography. p. 164. R.Jakobson, Rémarques sur revolution phonologique du russe ... (Prague, 1929) ( = Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, 2). pp. 165-166. See Nos. 9, 124 in the bibliography. 13. "Problema marksistskogo jazykoznanija i jafeticeskaja teorija" [The Problem of Marxist Linguistics and the Japhetic Theory] (pp. 169-170). Résumé of a report read February 4, 1929, in the Subsection of Materialistic Linguistics of the Communist Academy; printed according to a mimeographed copy. A stenographic copy of the report is at the editor's disposal. 14. "Krag ocerednyx problem sovremennoj lingvistiki" [The Sphere of Immediate Problems in Contemporary Linguistics] (pp. 171-178). Printed according to the edition Russkijjazyk v sovetskoj skole [Russian Language in the Soviet School], 1929, No. 1, 57-62. In the journal text the article is erroneously entitled "Krug sovremennyx problem ..." [The Sphere of Contemporary Problems ...] (the same mistake is also in Vjac.V.Ivanov's bibliographical listing): the correct title has been reconstructed according to the contents and other indirect data. The note "Printed by way of discussion" was added to the title by the journal. This article of E. D. Polivanov's and especially the assertion contained in it of the possibility of a system of communication in the "man - dog" "collective" evoked a very large number of attacks during the years when the Marrists were criticizing Polivanov. p. 173. "The production of an isolated person outside of society ... is the same sort of absurdity as the development of language without individuals living together and conversing among themselves" (See K. Marks [K. Marx], "Vvedenie (iz èkonomiòeskix rukopisej 1857-1858 godov)" [Introduction (From Manuscripts on Economics of 1857-1858)], K.Marks and F.Èngel's [K.Marx and F.Engels], Socinenija [Works], 2nd edition, Vol. 12, 710). p. 175. V. P. Vaxterov, Predmetnyj metod obucenija [The Subject Method of Instruction] (Moscow, 1907; 5th edition, Moscow, 1918). p. 175. He is speaking of I. A.Baudouin de Courtenay. p. 176. A. A. Saxmatov, Mordovskij ètnograficeskij sbornik [Mordvin Ethnographical Collection] (St. Petersburg, 1910). p. 176. F.de Sossjur [de Saussure], Kurs obscej lingvistiki [Course in General Linguistics] (Moscow, 1933). p. 176. I.A.Boduèn de Kurtenè [I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay], "O smesannom xaraktere vsex jazykov" [On the Mixed Nature of All Languages], lzbrannye trudy po obscemu jazykoznaniju [Selected Works on General Linguistics], Vol. I (Moscow, 1963).

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p. 177. V.I.Lenin, "Uspexi i trudnosti sovetskoj vlasti" [Successes and Difficulties of Soviet Power], Polnoe sobranie socinenij [Complete Collected Works], Vol. 38, 55. p. 177. See the note to p. 58. 15. "Revoljucija i literaturnye jazyki Sojuza SSR" [Revolution and the Literary Languages of the U.S.S.R.] (pp. 179-194). Printed according to the edition: E.D. Polivanov, Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931), 73-94. p. 185. See No. 64 in the bibliography. p. 189. The article remained unpublished and was lost. 16. "O foneticeskix priznakax social'no-gruppovyx dialektov i v castnosti russkogo standartnogo jazyka" [On the Phonetic Features of the Dialects of Social Groups and, in Particular, of Standard Russian] (pp. 195-210). Printed according to the edition: E.D.Polivanov, Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931), 117-138. 17. "Fonetika intelligentskogo jazyka" [The Phonetics of the Language of Intellectuals] (pp. 211-219). Printed according to the edition :E. D. Polivanov, Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931), 139-151. These works of E. D. Polivanov on questions of the relations between language and society, and in particular on social dialectology, are connected with his theory of evolution. The topic itself was very popular in Soviet linguistics of the 1920s: we shall name such publications of these years as M. Ja.Nemirovskij, "Jazyk i kul'tura" [Language and Culture], Izvestija Gorskogo pedagogiceskogo instituía [Proceedings of the Gorskoe Pedagogical Institute], Vol. 5(1929), 107-157; M. N. Peterson, "Jazyk kak social'noe javlenie" [Language as a Social Phenomenon], Ucenye zapiski Instituía jazyka i ¡iíeratury RAN ION [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Russian Association of Institutes for Scientific Research in the Social Sciences], Vol. 1 (1927), 5-21; R. O. Sor, Jazyk i obscesfvo [Language and Society] (Moscow, 1926), etc. (See also pp. 58-59 of the present edition.) E. D. Polivanov's views on questions of social linguistics were polemically opposed to the simplified conception of representatives of the "new study of language" and other vulgar sociological tendencies in Soviet linguistics. Denying the attempt to connect directly phonetic and grammatical phenomena with the influence of socioeconomic factors, he simultaneously emphasized the significance of these factors for the direction and tempos of language evolution. Along with this, E.D.Polivanov, as was correctly noted in Vjac. V. Ivanov's article ("Lingvistideskie vzgljady E. D. Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E.D.Polivanov], 58), in large part interpreted too schematically and in too direct a line the connection of processes of integration and differentiation of languages with socio-economic factors, and likewise incorrectly understood in some works the standard language (koine) and the literary language

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as class languages. However, this last point of view was very widespread in those years. Besides the articles published here, E. D. Polivanov devoted the following works in particular to the problem of language and society: "O literaturnom (standartnom) jazyke sovremennosti" [On the Literary (Standard) Language of the Present Day], Rodnoj jazyk v skole [Native Language in the School], Book 1 (Moscow, 1927), 225235; "Zadaci social'noj dialektologii russkogo jazyka" [Tasks of Social Dialectology of the Russian Language], Rodnoj jazyk i literatura v trudovoj skole [Native Language and Literature in the Workers' School] (Moscow, 1928), No. 2, 39-49, and Nos. 4-5, 68-76; "Russkij jazyk segodnjasnego dnja" [The Russian Language of Today], Literatura i Marksizm [Literature and Marxism], 1928, Book 4, 167-180. The last article evoked sharp polemical comment in the form of an article by R.O.Sor ("Parodoksal'naja ortodoksal'nost'" [Paradoxical Orthodoxy], Literatura i Marksizm [Literature and Marxism], 1929, Book 2, 139-149), where it was asserted that the "social arbitrariness of the system of language in statistical as well as in diachronic aspects needs no limitations" (149), i.e., the role of non-social (psychic and physiological) factors in the evolution of language was fully denied. Besides this, several articles, not reprinted here, were included in the collection Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics]. 18. "Sub"ektivnyj xarakter vosprijatij zvukov jazyka" [The Subjective Nature of Perceptions of Language Sounds] (pp. 223-237). Printed according to a typewritten copy with corrections and insertions in E. D. Polivanov's hand preserved in the Archive of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Prague). This copy, sent by E. D. Polivanov to R. O. Jakobson, is evidently the original of the French translation of the given work which was published in Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, 4 (Prague, 1931), 79-96, under the title "La perception des sons d'une langue étrangere". The French variant of this article received wide renown and is often cited in contemporary foreign literature on general and applied linguistics. The ideas which E. D. Polivanov developed in it are reflected also in other works (see pp. 119-121, 148, etc., in the present edition). Of the works of E. D. Polivanov not reprinted in the present edition on this and related topics, we point out the Opyt castnoj metodikiprepodavanija russkogo jazyka uzbekam [An Experiment in Special Methodology for Teaching Russian Language to Uzbeks], Part I (Tashkent-Samarkand, 1935) (partially reprinted in 1961 in Tashkent under the title Opyt castnoj metodiki prepodavanija russkogo jazyka [An Experiment in Special Methodology for Teaching Russian]) and Russkaja grammatika v sopostavlenii s uzbekskim jazykom [Russian Grammar in Comparison with the Uzbek Language] (Tashkent, 1933), and also the article "Ctenie i proiznosenie na urokax russkogo jazyka v svjazi s navykami rodnogo jazyka" [Reading and Pronunciation in Russian Language Lessons in Connection with the Habits of a Native Language], Voprosy prepodavanija russkogo jazyka v nacionaVnoj skole vzroslyx [Problems of Teaching Russian in the National School for Adults],

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Issue 2 (Moscow, 1928), 31-43. See A.A.Leont'ev, "E. D. Polivanov i obucenie russkomu jazyku v nacional'noj skole" [E. D. Polivanov and the Teaching of Russian Language in the National School], Russkij jazyk v nacionaVnoj skole [Russian Language in the National School], 1966, No. 2. p. 229. See No. 72 in the bibliography, p. 230. See Nos. 3, 9 in the bibliography. p. 230. E.R.Edwards, Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise (Leipzig, 1903). 19. "O trex principax postroenija orfografii" [On Three Principles of Constructing an Orthography] (pp. 238-244). Printed according to the edition Voprosy orfografii dtmganskogo jazyka [Problems of Orthography in the Dungan Language] (Frunze, 1937), 59-71 (an extremely rare edition). E. D. Polivanov always paid very great attention to problems of writing systems and orthography. His works on these topics are divided into two groups : (a) works on Russian writing and orthography and (b) works in some way connected with problems of "language construction" and first and foremost with Latinization. We mention here only the most significant of Polivanov's works on questions of writing systems and orthography: Problema latinskogo srifta v tureckix pis'mennostjax [The Problem of Latin Script in Turkic Written Languages] (Moscow, 1923); Proekty latinizacii tureckixpis'mennostej SSSR [Projects of Latinization of the Turkic Written Languages of the U.S.S.R.] (Tashkent, 1926); "Itogi unifikacionnoj raboty" [Results of the Unificational Work], KuVtura i pis'mennost ' Vostoka [Culture and Literature of the East], Book 1 (Moscow, 1928), 70-80; "Osnovnye formy graficeskoj revoljucii v tureckix pis'mennostjax SSSR" [Basic Forms of the Revolution in Graphics in the Turkic Written Languages of the U.S.S.R.], Novyj Vostok [The New East], Books 23-24 (1928), 314-330. On Polivanov's work on the Ail-Union Central Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet, see the introductory article, pp. 19-20. p. 244. See No. 69 in the bibliography and also pp. 149-156 of the present edition. 20. "O russkoj transkripcii japonskix slov" [On the Russian Transcription of Japanese Words] (pp. 245-265). Printed according to the edition: Trudy Japonskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Obscestva Vostokovedenija [Transactions of the Japanese Section of the Imperial Society of Oriental Studies], Issue 1 (Petrograd, 1917), 15-36. Afterwards, Polivanov's transcription became generally accepted in Soviet Japanese studies. E. D. Polivanov also had other works on problems of transcription, for example, Posobie po kitajskoj transkripcii [Textbook of Chinese Transcription] (Moscow, 1928), (with N. Popov-Tativa). p. 247. D.Pozdneev, Tokuxon ili kniga dlja ctenija i prakticeskix upraznenij v japonskom jazyke [Tokuxon or a Book for Reading and Practical Exercises in Japanese], Parts 1-2 (Tokyo and Yokohama, 1907-1908). p. 247. See No. 3 in the bibliography.

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p. 254. L.V. Söerba, Vostocno-luzickoe narecie [The Eastern Lusatian Dialect], Vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1915). p. 258. P. P. Smidt, Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki s tekstami dlja upraznenij [An Experimental Mandarin Grammar with Texts for Exercises] (Vladivostok, 1902). p. 260. L.V.Scerba, Russkie glasnye v kacestvennom i kolicestvennom otnosenii [Russian Vowels in a Qualitative and Quantitative Respect] (St. Petersburg, 1912). p. 264. E.R.Edwards, Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise (Leipzig, 1903). p. 264. Ja. K. Grot, Russkoe pravopisanie [Russian Spelling] (20 editions have been published). 21. "I matematika mozet byt' poleznoj ..." [Even Mathematics Can Be Useful ...] (pp. 266-272). Printed according to the edition Za marksistskoe jazykoznanie [In Favor of Marxist Linguistics] (Moscow, 1931), 173-181. According to some information (a report from M. S. Kardasev), this article was published earlier in an expanded variant. However, this publication has not been found. p. 266. He has in mind the article: A. Bréal, "Etymologies", Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris, Vol. 18 (1913), No. 3. The exact text of the epigraph: "Tircis il en est temps : il faut faire retraite", p. 267. He probably has in mind the monographs: J.Poirot, Phonetik (Leipzig, 1911); Recherches expérimentales sur le timbre des voyelles françaises (Helsingfors, 1912). p. 270. A. Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2-te Aufl. (Heidelberg, 1910). 22. "Po povodu 'zvukovyx iestov' japonskogo jazyka" [Apropos "Sound Gestures" in Japanese] (pp. 275-284). Printed according to the edition Sborniki po teorii poèticeskogo jazyka [Collections on the Theory of Poetic Language], I (Petrograd, 1916), 31-41. The same is in the publication Poètika. Sborniki po teorii poèticeskogo jazyka [Poetics. Collections on the Theory of Poetic Language], I-II (Petrograd, 1919), 27-36. pp. 283-284. V. P. Vaxterov, Osnovy novoj pedagogiki [The Bases of the New Pedagogics] (Moscow, 1913; 2nd edition, Moscow, 1916; 5th edition, 1918); W. Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, Bd. I. Die Sprache, t. I-II (Leipzig, 1900) (Aufl. 4 - 1921-1922). 23. "Formal'nye tipy japonskix zagadok" [Formal Types of Japanese Riddles] (pp. 285-288). Printed according to the edition Sbornik Muzeja antropologii i ètnografii [Collection of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography], Vol. V, Issue I (Petrograd, 1918), 371-374. p. 286. D. M. Pozdneev, Grammatika razgovornogo japonskogo jazyka. Konspekt lekcii, citannyx v Voennoj Akademii RKKA i v Institute Vostokovedenija v 1922/23 ucebn. godu [A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese. Synopsis of Lectures Read in the

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Military Academy of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and in the Institute of Oriental Studies in the 1922-23 Academic Year] (Moscow, 1923) (lithographed). 24. "O metriceskom xaraktere kitajskogo stixoslozenija" [On the Metrical Nature of Chinese Versification] (pp. 289-291). Printed according to the edition Doklady AN SSSR [Reports of the Academy of Sciences], Series V [3], 1924, October-December (Leningrad), 156-158. E. D. Polivanov's works on poetics are rather numerous. Besides the articles printed here, the following are relevant: "Alliteracija" [Alliteration], Literaturnaja ènciklopedija [Literary Encyclopedia], Vol. I (Moscow, 1930), 85-88; "Obscij fonetiöeskij princip vsjakoj poèticeskoj texniki" [The General Phonetic Principle of Any Poetic Technique], Voprosy jazykoznanija [Problems in Linguistics], 1963, No. 1, 99112; "O prieme alliteracii v kirgizskoj poèzii v svjazi s poèticeskoj texnikoj i jazykovymi faktorami drugix 'altajskix' narodnostej" [On the Method of Alliteration in Kirghiz Poetry in Connection with the Poetic Technique and Language Facts of Other "Altaic" Peoples] (manuscript in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirghiz S.S.R.). On his views regarding questions of poetics, see: Vjac. V.Ivanov, "Lingvisticeskie vzgljady E. D. Polivanova" [The Linguistic Views of E. D. Polivanov], 64, 65 ; A. A. Leont'ev, "Vstupitel'naja stat'ja i kommentarii k rabote 'Obscij foneticeskij princip ...'" [Introductory article and Commentary to the work "The General Phonetic Principle ..."]; I.V.Al'tman, "Stixovedceskie vzgljady E.D.Polivanova i nekotorye osobennosti poètiki aruza" [E. D. Polivanov's Views on the Study of Versification and Some Features of the Poetics of the Aruz], Materialy konferencii "AktuaVnye voprosy ..." [Proceedings of the Conference "Current Problems ..."], 162-164. p. 289. See V.M. Alekseev, Kitajskaja poèma o poète. Stansy Syxun Tu [A Chinese Poem about a Poet. Stanzas of Sihung T'u] (St. Petersburg, 1916). p. 289. He probably has in mind first of all: B.Karlgren, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (Paris, 1923), and also: Études sur la phonologie chinoise (Uppsala, 1915-1924); "Problems of Archaic Chinese", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1928, etc.

COMMENTARY II*

p. 60. G. Ramstedt should more accurately be called a Finnish scholar, p. 67 An idea of economy of pronunciational efforts, close to the one developed by E. D. Polivanov, was later laid down as the basis for A. Martinet's phonological theory of language evolution; see A.Martine [Martinet], Princip èkonomii v foneticeskix izmenenijax [The Principle of Economy in Phonetic Changes] (Moscow, 1960), 64if., 127-198 (see also in the same work a critique of previous works in this field, in particular of Zipf). p. 69 The difference between convergences, more often called phonological merger or the fusion of phonemes in recent works, and divergences, more often called phonemic split, is accepted at the present time in all works on diachronic phonology; see J. W. Marchand, "Internal Reconstruction of Phonemic Split", Language, Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 1 (1956) (see the reference to Polivanov in the same place, p. 2, note 10); H. M. Hoenigswald, Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960); M.I. Steblin-Kamenskij, "K teorii zvukovyx izmenenij" [Toward a Theory of Sound Changes] in the book: M.I.Steblin-Kamenskij, Ocerki po diaxroniceskoj fonologii skandinavskix jazykov [Sketches on the Diachronic Phonology of Scandinavian Languages] (Leningrad, 1966), 16. p. 70 By "pre-Greek" *k", Polivanov means Indo-European *kw (labiovelar). As has been established as a result of deciphering Creto-Mycenaean Linear B, where labiovelars are transmitted by special symbols, Indo-European labiovelar phonemes were still preserved in Greek of the second millennium B.C. ; see M. Lejeune, Mémoires de la *

Compiled by Vjac. V. Ivanov.

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philologie mycénienne, Première série (Paris, 1958), Chapter XIV "Sur les labiovélaires", 283-318. qetoro- (in the structure of a compound word), where q gives kw, corresponds to Attic tstpa- and other Greek reflexes cited by Polivanov of the IndoEuropean numeral "four" in the Greek of the Creto-Mycenaean inscriptions. p. 71 The development of *kwi>u in Greek can be explained by a phonological "chain reaction" : after the change *t'i >ai (connected, in turn, with the development *s > h), an "empty square" was created in the system for t'i, which was filled by means of the development *kw' > t ; see W. S. Allen, "Some Problems of Palatalization in Greek", Lingua, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1958), 122-123. As a typological parallel, the elimination of labiovelars in Twi can be pointed out, where before front vowels kw' > tw, gw' > dw (while kwa>ko, gwa>go); see D. Westermann, Sprachbeziehungen und Sprachverwandtschaft in Afrika (Berlin, 1949), 11-12, 19, Anm. 24. p. 72, Note 9 With regard to labialized back consonants in Nagasaki dialects and in Japanese vocabulary from Chinese roots, cf. N. A. Syromjatnikov, "Sistema fonem japonskogo jazyka" [The System of Phonemes in Japanese], Ucenye zapiski Instituta Vostokovedenija [Scholarly Communications of the Institute of Oriental Studies], Vol. IV (Moscow, 1952), 313-314 (with reference to Polivanov). p. 72 Polivanov proposes the etymology of Latvian strëgele (variant str'ègele) 'Eiszapfen', 'icicle (on a roof)', based on the semantic similarity with Latin frigus 'cold', 'frost', Greek i»ïyoç 'cold'. Usually this Latvian word is explained on the basis of its affinity with Lith. stregiù 'erstarre', 'I am getting numb with cold' ; K. Mühlenbachs, Lettischdeutsches Wörterbuch, III. Band (Riga, 1927-1929), 1085 and 1087. In agreement with Polivanov, Latin membrum 'member' goes back to the same Indo-European name for "meat" as Gothic mimz (the graphic transcription of Gothic mims). The generally recognized connection of Lat. consobrinus 'cousin, second cousin', 'relative' with the name for "sister" can be explained by the role of the husband's sister in the Latin kinship system, explained as a system of the omach type (F.G. Lounsbury, "The Structure of the Latin Kinship System and Its Relation to Roman Social Organization", Trudy VII Mezdimarodnogo kongressa antropologiceskix i ètnograficeskix nauk [Transactions of the Seventh International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences], Vol. 4 [Moscow, 1967], 264). Lat. tenebrae < *temebrae < *temesra- 'darkness' (cf. temerë 'in the dark') is usually compared (A. Thumb - R. Hauschild, Handbuch des Sanskrit, II. Teil [Heidelberg, 1953], 230) with Old Indie tamisrâ- with the same meaning, Lith. timsras 'blackish red with a white mane' (of a horse) (on the last form, see K. Buga, Rinktiniai rastai,

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II tomas [Vilnius, 1959], 629). On the. development of *-sr- in Latin, see: I.M. Tronskij, Istoriceskaja grammatika latinskogo jazyka [Historical Grammar of Latin] (Moscow, 1960), 120-121, § 253. p. 73 In modern Indo-European comparative historical linguistics, the existence of one, and not two, types of aspirates is recognized. Therefore, the phonological characterization given by Polivanov with regard to the Italic reflexes of these aspirates can be true with respect to Common Indo-European where the same aspirates could be represented as voiced variants (of the type dh, cf. their reflection as voiced aspirates in Old Indie and Old Armenian), and also as voiceless ones (of the type th, cf. their reflection as voiceless in Greek). Along with the hypothesis that voicing in intervocalic position in Latin and Venetic was later (see E. P. Hamp, "The Relationship of Venetic within Italic", American Journal of Philology, Vol. 75, No. 2 [1954], 183-186), a proposal of the Common Italic nature of the voiced ones is expressed (see V. Porcig, Clenenie indo-evropejskoj jazykovoj oblasti [The Segmentation of the Indo-European Language Area] [Moscow, 1964], 109). p. 76, Note 11 The thought about the meaning of "original phonemes" of the type t, p, a, i in child language and in the evolution of language was later developed in many works by R.O.Jakobson (see especially: R. Jakobson, "Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze", Selected Writings, Vol. I [The Hague, 1962], 356-396; R. Jakobson and M. Halle, "Phonology and Phonetics", ibid., 492-493). p. 77 The conclusion on the reciprocal conditioning of divergence (of phonological split) by convergence (phonological fusion) was used as a basis in subsequent studies on diachronic phonology (see J.W.Marchand, "Internal Reconstruction of Phonemic Split"; H. M. Hoenigswald, Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction, 91-95). p. 78 Regarding divergence isolated from convergence (phonological "split without merger"), see H. M. Hoenigswald, Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction, 89. p. 79, Note 16 E. D. Polivanov's hypothesis on the origin of Slav. *jbd- from Indo-European 2nd person sg. of the imperative mood *i-dhi (see No. 35 in bibliography of works by Polivanov) is discussed by Slavists until the present time (see V. M. IlliS-Svityc, "Sravnitel'naja grammatika slavjanskix jazykov" [Comparative Grammar of the Slavic Languages] in the book Sovetskoe jazykoznanie za 50 let [Soviet Linguistics

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During 50 Years] [Moscow, 1967], 81). Korinek expressed independently of Polivanov a partially similar supposition (see J. M. Korinek, "Presentni tvary korene do- 'ddvati' v jazycich slovanskych a baltskych", Listy filologicke, Rocnik 65, seSit 6 [Prague, 1938], 452, Note 1). p. 80 With regard to "original phonemes", cf. above, commentary to p. 76. p. 84 A fricative (y) in the word gospodi 'lord' is preserved in the speech of many speakers of Russian but is reinterpreted as a special sound feature of an affected word used as an interjection. p. 85 The study of language changes "which seem to pursue the same secret aim" briefly characterized in this article by Polivanov comprised one of the outstanding features of the "teleological" conception of phonological development among scholars of the Prague School (see R. Jakobson, "Retrospect", Selected Writings, Vol. 1, 452 and 677; cf. R. Jakobson, "Razrabotka celevoj modeli jazyka v evropejskoj lingvistike v period meidu dvumja vojnami" [Analysis of the Teleological Model of Language in European Linguistics in the Period between the Two Wars], Novoe v lingvistike [What's New in Linguistics], Issue IV [Moscow, 1965], where there is discussion on p. 373 of E.D. Polivanov in his relation to the Prague School). p. 91 With regard to the study of the "teleological factor of language changes" and the "ultimate goal of the process", see above, note to p. 85. Against the sociological delimitation of the two basic cases of language development, proposed by Polivanov in this and previous articles, speaks the fact that also under conditions of economically primitive organization intensive processes of language integration are possible, for example, in Australia (cf. N.M.Holmer, An Attempt toward a Comparative Grammar of Two Australian Languages [Canberra, 1966], 2 and 9). p. 97 Here Polivanov establishes a connection between the limited nature of the number of phonemes and the psychological characteristics of man, anticipating works of recent times which have been devoted to establishing a tie between several properties of language and the scope of "operative" memory of man. Also the comparison of the phonological system with the musical scale, later repeated by many phonologists, is of interest.

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p. 99 Regarding Greek, see above, pp. 70-72, and the commentary to them. In the CyproArcadian and Aeolian dialects of ancient Greek, there is a significant number of words of the type of Homeric niaopeq 'four' with initial p- (n) before a front vowel. p. 112, Note 28 Concerning "original phonemes", see above, commentary to p. 76. Ancient IndoEuropean *p disappeared (became zero) in Celtic in a pre-literary period in the history of Celtic languages. p. 113 This article by E. D. Polivanov develops the thought, expressed also in his earlier works on the theory of language evolution, on the necessity of differentiating changes concerning the system of phonemes and changes concerning the combination of phonemes. In the article those changes in combinations of phonemes (syntagmatic in modern terms) are considered which lead to a transformation of the system (i.e., paradigmatics). The terminology which Polivanov used in this article hinders, in certain instances, understanding the strictly phonological aspect of processes of this type. p. 115, Note 5 Polivanov objected to connecting purely linguistic conclusions on the distribution of the palatalizedness - non-palatalizedness correlation and exclusively monotonic stress in the languages of Eurasia with hypotheses on the common historical-cultural development of the corresponding peoples. In particular, the presence of only the first (but not the second) feature of the Eurasian linguistic alliance in Dungan seemed essential to him. Strictly linguistic remarks apropos R.O. Jakobson's work on the Eurasian linguistic alliance (in which no extralinguistic conclusions are made from the existence of this alliance) are contained in a positive review by Polivanov, still unpublished (see the list of manuscripts preserved in the Archive of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences). In his own works on the Samarkand linguistic alliance, Polivanov asserted that linguistic alliances are formed on the strength of the historically conditioned contact of speakers of the corresponding languages. p. 120 Words of the type lupus 'wolf', where Indo-European labiovelars are reflected not as labiovelars (which would correspond to the norms of Latin phonetics) but as labials, are considered to be borrowed from another Italic language (perhaps Sabine). In Homeric niaoptq 'four' i goes back to a reduced Indo-European vowel as does Lat. a in quattuor 'four'. p. 121 The group *kw in the Greek name for horse from Indo-European

*ek'wos>*ekwos

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is reflected likewise as a labiovelar, but with gemination (double n). The older form is preserved in Mycenaean Greek iqo (where gemination was not reflected in the spelling). p. 122 Abkhaz a-d°k'dn 'dukhan' (B.N.DZanasia, Abxazsko-gruzinskij slovar'' [AbkhazGeorgian Dictionary] [Tbilisi, 1954], 100), where a- is an obligatory prefix, like an article, of the independent noun form and goes back to the same Arabic word (dukkan) as the name for a wine cellar in many other languages of the Caucasus. For proof of Polivanov's hypothesis on the origin of the phonemes /d 0 / ( = Polivanov's /?), /t°/ ( = Polivanov's 9), /t 0 '/ in Abkhaz, important interest is offered by the morphophonological alternations of the labialized type /t°/ in non-final position and of the nonlabialized type /t/ in absolute ultima in various allomorphs of the morpheme in Ubykh, closely related to Abkhaz: H.Vogt, Dictionnaire de la langue oubykh (Oslo, 1963), "Introduction phonologique", 16 (where it is noted that this phenomenon may be old). Such a historical explanation, as also for Abkhaz "labial-dorsals", can be proposed for Kabardian-Circassian /t 0 '/, which enters in as a special phoneme in the structure of single derivatives from /t'u/ 'two' when the vowel a follows the stem: t"'dle 'pertaining to vershok ( = 1 % inch)', etc. (N.F. Jakovlev, Grammatika literatumogo kabardino-cerkesskogo jazyka [Grammar of Literary Kabardian-Circassian] [Moscow-Leningrad, 1948], 351). Beyond the bounds of Caucasian languages (where labialized consonants of this type are encountered also in Abazin dialects and in Tabassaran) typological parallels (synchronic but not diachronic) are offered by the palatal-labials mentioned above, /t% /d 0 / in the African language Twi, which have developed from labiovelars; see commentary to pp. 70-72. With regard to the comparison proposed by Polivanov of labialized (flat) consonants in Abkhaz and Dungan, cf. also R.Jakobson, G.M.Fant, and M.Halle, "Vvedenie v analiz reci" [Preliminaries to Speech Analysis], Novoe v lingvistike [What's New in Linguistics], Issue II (Moscow, 1962), 201-202. p. 123, Note 22 The asymmetry explained by Polivanov of the reflex *tj in the spirant and *dj in the affricate was later confirmed by investigations in the field of Slavic languages, to which Polivanov refers, as well as by data from the history of other languages (see N.van Wijk, "Quelques remarques sur les mi-occlusives devenant fricatives", Acta linguistica, Vol. II, fasc. 1 [1940-1941]; J. Kurylowicz, "Le hittite", Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists [Oslo, 1958]). p . 1 2 3 , NOTE

The special nature (different from c) of the phoneme (or group of phonemes) which developed from *tj is proven for early Old Slavic by the non-coalescence of the reflexes of this combination in various recensions of Old Slavic and by some other

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data (see N. N. Durnovo, "Mysli i predpoloienija o proisxoidenii staroslavjanskogo jazyka i slavjanskix alfavitov" [Thoughts and Proposals on the Origin of the Old Slavic Language and Slavic Alphabets], Byzantinoslavica, Vol. 1, No. 1 [1929]; N.S. Trubetzkoy, "Die altkirchenslavische Vertretung der urslav. *tj, *dj", Zeitschrift fur slawische Philologie, Bd. XIII [1936], 88-97). The coalescence of *c (from palatalized *kj) and *tj (chronologically from different periods) was realized in the further history of individual Slavic dialects. p. 125 In Sanskrit (Old Indie) diphthongs still preserved in Old Iranian yielded to monophthongization: Old Indie soma- 'haoma', 'juice', 'sacred beverage': Avest. haoma; Old Indie dëva- 'god'; Old Persian daiva-. French fait- 'done' goes back to Lat. fact(um) (read [fakt-] with accessive combination of the consonants kt). p. 131 Polivanov consistently preserved the term "phonetic" in the meaning "phonological", since the ideas of "psychophonetics", which studied the psychological aspect of phonological phenomena, seemed more adequate to him than a strictly phonological approach; cf. infra, p. 176, note 9 and commentary. p. 134 A review of Saxmatov's historical phonetic conception was the point of departure for studies in diachronic phonology both for R.O.Jakobson and N.S.Trubetzkoy (see N, S. Trubetzkoy's letter cited in the book : N. S. Trubetzkoy, Principes de phonologie [Paris, 1949]) as well as for E.D. Polivanov (see item No. 33 in the bibliography, p. 120). Polivanov expressed himself critically here on N. S. Trubetzkoy's theory that Common Slavic ô>ë while û>û, 5>o (see the criticism of this theory also in the book reviewed by Polivanov: R. Jakobson, "Remarques sur l'évolution phonologique de russe", Selected Writings, Vol. I, 25; cf. 35 with regard to the development of diphthongs into a nasal proposed by Trubetzkoy). p. 135 The correction established by E. D. Polivanov to the typological conclusion on the "correlation between two structural types of syllabic intonation" (French la corrélation "l'une ~ Vautre structures de l'intonation syllabique") and the correlation "intensive stress ~ lack of stress" (French "accent d'intensité ~ atonie") can be confirmed by data from other languages. In Latvian the first correlation characterizes the polytonic syllable stress, and the second (although in a limited number of examples) is manifested in word stress (see V.V.Ivanov, "O preryvistoj intonacii v latysskom jazyke" [On Interrupted Intonation in Latvian], Sbornik statej, posvjascennyj Ja. Èndzelinu [Collection of Articles Dedicated to J. Endzellns] [Riga, 1959], 141-142; see ibid, on works of Polivanov). It is necessary to introduce Polivanov's correction into the typological

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universal repeated by Trubetzkoy after Jakobson and accepted in the latest listing of language universals: B. A.Uspenskij, Strukturnaja tipologija jazykov [Structural Typology of Languages] (Moscow, 1965), 197 (the second formula from the top, reading: "If in any language there is free stress, then there is no shift of tone which differentiates meaning within the bounds of one mora"). pp. 135-136, Note 2 In agreement with the most recent descriptions of the phonological system of Estonian, there is a quantitative opposition in it of vowels and monotonic word stress (see P. Ariste, "Foneetilisi probleeme eesti keele alalt", Acta et commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, 3, 6 [Tartu, 1947], 9-11). These data from Estonian (and similar data from Latvian) were taken into consideration in the reformulation of this generalization by R.O.Jakobson, about which Polivanov speaks (see B.A.Uspenskij, Strukturnaja tipologija [Structural Typology], 194, the last formula at the bottom). Polivanov's thought on "relative generalizations" found development in the modern study on the statistical (not full) universals (cf. the collection Universals of Language, ed. by J.H. Greenberg [Cambridge, Mass., 1963]; B.A. Uspenskij, Strukturnaja tipologija [Structural Typology], 179). p. 136 Attention to the acoustic side of language phenomena, which has dominated in linguistics in the last 20 years, has been supplemented in recent times by new intensive studies which indicate the importance of the physiological aspect not only for the process of pronouncing sounds but also for their perception (see L. A. Cistovifi, "Tekuscee raspoznavanie reci celovekom" [Continuing Recognition of Speech by Man], Masinnyj perevod i prikladnaja lingvistika [Machine Translation and Applied Linguistics], 1961, No. 6; 1962, No. 7). p. 140, Note 3 Doubling a grapheme for expressing plurality can be considered one of the manifestations of general regularity according to which the "denotatum in the forms of the plural strives to reflect the meaning of the numeric increment by means of increasing the length of the forms themselves" (see R. Jakobson, "Quest for the Essence of Language", Diogenes, No. 51 [1965], 30). This is revealed especially distinctly in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, where the symbols for dual number - two lines, replacing the repetition of the whole hieroglyph in older texts, were opposed to the symbols for the plural - three lines, which replaced writing the hieroglyph three times. The whole sphere of phenomena brought to bear by Polivanov in studying the expression of intensiveness - iterativeness by means of reduplications (parallels to which can be cited from Ewe, Mongolian, and other languages) is connected with the problem of the 'iconic' representation of grammatical meanings by means of the grammatical means themselves. E. D. Polivanov's correctness in drawing the Latin

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perfect into this sphere of comparisons becomes evident after establishing the intensive iterative meaning among the older Anatolian reduplicated verb forms which reflect the more archaic Indo-European forms from which the perfect developed (see N. van Brock, "Les themes verbaux á redoublement du hittite et le verbe indo-europeen", Revue hittite et asianique, t. XXII, f. 75, [1964]). p. 142 The method of comparing quasi-homonyms developed in various works by Polivanov anticipated those methods for establishing the figures for the level of meaning later worked out by European structuralism (in particular, the method of commutation in glossematics; Hjelmslev, its creator, was acquainted with some of Polivanov's works). p. 144 With regard to the correlation of "expiratory" (monotonic) word stress and musical (polytonic) syllable stress in Chinese and Latvian, see p. 135 and the commentary to it. p. 145, Note 5 E. D. Polivanov's hypothesis on the presence in Tagalog of polytonic (musical) stress remains unverified until now, since special works in this field have not been produced. In agreement with the tradition of Tagalog grammars (see Balarila ng wikang pambansa, 4th edition [Manila, 1950]; R. Alejandro, A Handbook of Tagalog Grammar [Manila, 1963]; P. Aspillera, Basic Tagalog, 3rd edition [Manila, 1959]), four types of basic stress are differentiated (in contrast to a fifth - mariin, characterized by the presence of collateral stress) by stress position and the presence of glottal stop. Stress position Glottal stop Absence Presence

On penultimate syllable

On final syllable

malumay malumi

mabilis maragsâ

Since the definition of stress position is properly separated from its strictly phonological characterization, one must recognize this latter in Tagalog as depending on the presence or absence of a glottal explosion. E. D. Polivanov expressed such a thought in 1937 when he wrote: "The interrupted correlation ... in some (polytonic) languages, resp. dialects (among them, for example, also in some Chinese dialects), coexists with polytony and even gets involved in the system of polytonic differences because of some specific element (cf. "zhusheng", i.e., the 5th tone in South Mandarin and other Chin[ese] dialects which have this "5th tone"; and, on the other hand - for example, final coup de glotte in a certain type of Tagalog words and, finally, so-called

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interrupted length in many Latvian dialects)" (cf. E. D. Polivanov, "Glavnejsie osobennosti dunganskogo jazyka" [The Most Important Features of the Dungan Language], Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Kirghiz S.S.R., p. 221 of a typewritten copy). But in the cited assertion by Polivanov, the presence of polytonic differences, in the first place, and the possibility of explaining the final glottal stop as an allophone of a special phoneme, in the second, (cf. the oppositions of the type bata [bata?] 'child' : batak 'stretching') are not completely founded. The traditional recognition of these words as a special accentuational type speaks against the latter interpretation, as does the fact that in all remaining positions a glottal stop is encountered mainly as a border signal (of the beginning of a word or morpheme the first phoneme of which is a vowel) or, on the other hand, for eliminating hiatus in the middle of a word. p. 145 Lexical comparisons, discovered by Polivanov himself and his successors (Nobuhiro Matsumoto, "Le japonais et les langues austroasiatiques. Étude de vocabulaire comparée", Austro-asiatica, Vol. I [Paris, 1928], cf. on the works of Polivanov in the same work, p. 25), as well as certain grammatical similarities, may be cited in favor of Polivanov's hypothesis on the genetic tie between Japanese and the MalayoPolynesian languages. Especially important is the possible equivalence of the Japanese affix of the genitive case no (na) and the functionally synonymous auxiliary morpheme in Malayo-Polynesian (Tagalog na, nang, Fiji ni, etc.). A part of the lexical material is common to Japanese and Austro-Asiatic languages (connected in turn with MalayoPolynesian languages) : Jap. ko 'child' : Viet, con 'child', Mon kon, Khmer ko:n, Kurku khun, Nicobarese koân (in Japanese ko