Prague School of Linguistics (Trubetskoy, Jacobson, Kortsevsky, Skalichka, Matezius)

This is a school of functional linguistics. Participants called for learning the functions of language units. In many ways, the Prague team followed Saussure. Developed phonological studies (important link).

In his work “Fundamentals of Phonology,” Trubetskoy highlighted the following provisions :

1. Delimited phonetics and phonology. He did this on the basis of units of speech (phonetics) and language (phonology).

2. Defined the phoneme as a scientific abstraction realized in its pronunciation variants. Developed a system of rules for distinguishing between sound and phoneme.

3. In phonemes, he identified distinctive (differential) features. They make up the content of phonemes.

Differential features of phonemes are manifested using the opposition method:

1. Relations between members of the opposition: privative, gradual, equipotential. Privatized - when one member of the opposition has a sign, and the other does not. Gradual - one sign may appear to a greater or lesser degree (longitude and brevity of sound). Equipolent - members have a completely different set of features. Opposition members form a correlative pair.

2. The basis for the volume of semantic differentiating force: permanent and neutralized. Neutralized - in a certain environment, phonemes lose their attributes and retain only common features.

These oppositions have been transferred to other levels of language learning. Important is the study of syntax.

Matezius managed to create a theory of the actual division of the sentence. The word order in the sentence helped to study the actual division.

An important place is occupied by the study of the functional side of the language.

Scientists singled out the functions of the language: 1) communication (theoretical and practical language); 2) poetic function.

Identified language styles : 1) conversational; 2) scientific (theoretical); 3) business (practical); 4) artistic (poetic). And they took the poetic language beyond the artistic.