| Description |
Before the reader now lies a reprint of four studies, published at different times and in different places, which have proved to be successful not only in their original purpose, namely as scholarly studies on the history of Czech linguistics but also in a second purpose, in which I did not originally intend them, yet I have used them with some success, namely as teaching aids and recommended reading for students of my course Chapters in the History of Czech Linguistics. Primarily to teach this course, I am therefore republishing my four articles, once again overlooked and, in the case of the English-language articles, translated into Czech, in the hope that they will continue to be a practical study aid and source of information on the history of Czech linguistics for my students (and perhaps other interested parties). In all four studies, much attention is paid to the period of the Czech national revival, especially to the persons of the Jungmannian generation, not only to Josef Jungmann himself but significantly to Václav Hanka. He has been known for centuries as the finder and editor (and an unproven forger or a co-creator) of the so-called Manuscripts (the Kralovédvorský and Zelenohorský, plus smaller forgery-supporting monuments); however, his influence on the shape of Czech orthography is generally neglected and underestimated. It was Hanka who worked for (and won) all three orthographic reforms that transformed the older so-called Orthography of the (Bohemian/Moravian) Brethen into the revivalist orthography still in use today. Yes, often he came with the ideas of others, but yes, it was he who bore, especially in the case of the so-called analogical reform, the brunt of the reforms, who engaged in often highly personal disputes and who led the otherwise more hesitant into the heat of the orthographic battle. The person of Václav Hanka, in particular, would deserve a special monographic treatment, which remains a desideratum in the history of Czech linguistics. As for Jungmann himself, it must be added that his contribution on classicality is more than a mere description; it is a manifesto (though not largely original in thought), an application of his principles to the written language, and consequently influencing the organization and social position of the written language both in the first half of the nineteenth century and afterwards. Turning our attention to the history of the phonetic/phonemic plan, it is interesting to note how relatively little phonology, although geographically emerging in the milieu of Czechoslovak structuralism, has been practised by Czech scholars until recently (the situation improved remarkably in 21st century).
|