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Part of
History of Linguistics 2021: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS 15), Milan, 28 August – 1 September
Edited by Savina Raynaud, Maria Paola Tenchini and Enrica Galazzi
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 133] 2024
► pp. 31–46

Chapter 2
Type or descent?

The philosophical, romantic, and biological sources of typology in Soviet linguistics of the 1920s–1940s

| Université de Lausanne
Either science aims at universal validity, or it is no science. The idea that science can be culturally or nationally determined is unanimously considered as an outdated Romantic cliché. Nonetheless, it is usual to speak of the Western thought, without wondering where its Eastern limit is to be found. In the history of linguistics, Russian science of language is often proclaimed by Russian thinkers as being “fundamentally different” from Western linguistics. This paradox is examined here after R. Jakobson’s works in the interwar period and their links to Goethe’s and Naturphilosophie research in biology: idealistic morphology appears to be a way towards typology.
Keywords: function, Goethe, Jakobson, metaphor, metonymy, Naturphilosophie, Russian linguistics, teleology, tradition, typology, Western thought
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Absolute Russian specificity
  • 3.The enigma of similarity
  • 4.On the sources of typology: Similarity without a common ancestor
  • 5.The theory of types
  • 6.Metaphor and metonymy
  • Notes
  • References
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References (31)
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