Roman Jakobson

Manfred Bierwisch
Humboldt University, Berlin
Table of contents

Jakobson was one of the dominant figures representing the theory of language in the 20th century. Together with Trubetzkoy, he developed a new orientation in dealing with the problems of natural language, especially its sound structure, essentially by enriching the conceptual framework of phonology. Jakobson’s particular emphasis in this endeavour concerned the nature of distinctive features as the minimal elements of phonological structure. Extending the structuralist approach to problems of the linguistic content, Jakobson made ground-breaking contributions to morphology as the framework of grammatical structure, notably with regard to the theory of Case, and by rethinking the traditional verbal categories. A further breakthrough resulted from his application of basic linguistic principles to the analysis of data from aphasia. Linguistic insights were also the guideline in his fascinating analyses of poetry, taking the poetic function of language as one of its integrated aspects. Arguing against Saussure’s principle of arbitrariness of the sound-meaning relation of language, Jakobson finally came very close to establishing the combinatorial principle as the essence of language.

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References

[SW = Selected Writings of Roman Jakobson, Volumes I–III – see below]

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1936 “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre.“ TCLP VI. Reprinted in SW II.Google Scholar
1941 “Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze.“ Reprinted in SW I.
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