DISCUSSIONS

THE PLACE OF J. BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY IN

THE HISTORY OF MODERN LINGUISTICS

Joachim Mugdan, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) - Leben und

Werk. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Miinchen, 1984, 238 pp.
The rise of modern linguistics, which began around the seventies of the last
century, is now generally associated with the names of two of its most
outstanding practitioners: Ferdinand de Saussure and Baudouin de Courtenay. Although both began their careers in the school of comparative
grammar, which reached a high point of perfection in the works of the
Neogrammarians, they soon came to recognize the limitations of the reigning historical method and its piecemeal treatment of linguistic facts. It is
mostly thanks to them that the problem of language as a system of signs
endowed with communicable functions was again put on the agenda of
linguistics and that linguistics itself could define itself, in the words of De
Saussure, as a science "en elle-mSme et pour elle-m~me".
To understand the extent of the change in methods and scientific
outlook, it is enough to compare the programs of some of the leading Neogrammarians with those of their opponents, and specifically with some of
the utterances of Baudouin. As late as 1891 Brugmann and Streitberg
declared that "the true task of linguistics is to describe the total development of the Indo-European languages since their darkest origins and to
discover the laws that determined their direction," whereas Hermann Paul
proclaimed that there was an unbridgeable gulf between linguistics as a
science of "real objects and facts" and the "sciences of law" or of general
principles (Gesetzwissenschaften). The former, according to Paul, could be
studied only by "isolating the individual factors" ("die Faktoren isoliert zu
behandeln"), and by comparing facts of a different chronological order.
Paul's distaste for "abstractions" and "inference" was the dominant attitude of the late 19th century, when the empiricist fascination with the
"bare fact" pervaded almost all humanistic, historical disciplines.
It is to these historical and atomistic ideas that the pioneers of modern
linguistics reacted with singular clarity and vigor. "The comparison of languages", wrote Baudouin de Courtenay (in 1871),l "is but a single phase
in the history of our science" and is "only a means and not an end", while
the quest for laws is stated as follows: "The linguist must not be content
with the registration of haphazard and sporadic facts", but must try to discover "the genuinely distinctive properties of language" and "the laws
Russian Linguistics 12 (1988), 133-145.
9 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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DISCUSSIONS

hidden in the depth, in the intricate combination of various elements"

(1910). This goal could, according to Baudouin, be accomplished only
through "a radical revision of [linguistic] principles and methods" that
would be predicated, on the one hand, on the coining of "a completely new
terminology", and on the other, on "a reformulation of the relations of linguistic elements" (1909). The utterances of De Saussure resemble in a
remarkable way the ideas that were around the same time advanced by
Baudouin.
The fortunes of the two scholars in twentieth century linguistics were,
however, quite different. While De Saussure's writings and lectures have
been repeatedly edited and discussed, Baudouin de Courtenay's work has
remained virtually unknown, even though his basic ideas have trickled
down - mostly in an indirect way - into the mainstream of linguistics. The
silence which has for a long time surrounded his name was, as we now
know, due to a number of factors: to the lack of a single theoretical work
that would match the scope of De Saussure's Cours, to the dispersal of his
writings in obscure or inaccessible Polish, Russian and Slovene journals, to
the suppression of structuralism under the Stalin regime, and to the prevailing ignorance of the Slavic languages in the West. It is noteworthy that
even the linguists of Prague who came closest to his work (in such areas
as phonology, morphophonemics, linguistic diffusion, child language, the
topology and history of languages) rarely cited or discussed it. Thus, for
example, Trubetzkoy claimed to have but a superficial knowledge of Baudouin's morphophonemic theory, while Jakobson did not sufficiently
appreciate his work on distinctive features and on the mechanism of
phonological change. 2
A new interest in Baudouin began in the sixties, and it was connected
with the Soviet recognition of structuralism as the leading trend of contemporary linguistics. The Russian two-volume edition of Baudouin's work (in
1963) may thus be viewed as a milestone in the studies of his thought. The
Russian example was soon followed by a Polish edition (begun in 1974 but
still incomplete) and by an English translation and edition of most of Baudouin's theoretical works (Indiana Univ. Press, 1972). These editions generated, in turn, a spate of critical studies both in the Soviet Union and in
the West, though the ignorance of Baudouin's original writings is still
apparently an obstacle in the full comprehension of his thought.
A significant contribution to the study of Baudouin in the West is the
book under review. It contains twelve chapters (2.1 to 2.13). covering the
various areas of Baudouin's publicistic and linguistic activities and it discusses his impact on contemporary linguistic theories, linguists and schools
(3.1 to 3.6). The text is throughout interspersed with quotations from and

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135

references to recently published and unpublished papers on Baudouin, 3 and

it concludes with a detailed bibliography of works by and about Baudouin.
But let us note at the outset that a major lacuna of the book is the lack
of discussion of the historical background, i.e., of that tradition of linguistics which shaped Baudouin's interests and ideas, but which he soon learned to surmount, and which became in time the target of his incisive and
many-sided critique. It is this omission of the historical context which may
partly account for the author's puzzling conclusion concerning Baudouin's
"position in the history of linguistics" (3.2) and which is worth quoting in
full: "So gibt es verschiedene Antworten auf die Frage, ob Baudouin den
Junggrammatikern zuzurechnen sei, je nachdem welchen Aspekt man
betont. Einseitige und zum Teil fragwiirdige Interpretationen haben hier
einen Gegensatz aufgebaut, der sich bei n~iherem Hinsehen als Scheinalternative entpuppt" (p. 153). Thus we are, in effect, told that the view of Baudouin as a pioneer of modern linguistics (a view shared by most linguists
from De Saussure up to today) appears to be (entpuppt sich) only a "Scheinalternative", for in the final analysis Baudouin was a Neogrammarian!
This assessment is somewhat qualified by the observation (on p. 152) that
because of his "functional" and "systematic" approach Baudouin arrived
at "a somewhat different view-point". But after a 152 page exposition we
should, one would hope, have learned that the so called "functional" and
"systematic" approach implied a whole cluster of problems which were
either alien to or programatically proscribed by the Neogrammarians (e.g.,
the conception of language as a semiotic system; the distinction between
language and speech; the redefinition of "phonetic laws"; the problem of
linguistic convergence; the study of mixed and artificial languages). If this
is not the case it is because Mr. Mugdan provides a one-sided and superficial reading of Baudouin and because he fails to discriminate between what
was profound and innovative in Baudouin's thought and what was marginal or a part of received opinion. I shall attempt to justify these statements
below.
The first chapter of the book gives a detailed account of Baudouin's life
and publicistic activities. Baudouin's defense of national minorities, his
antimilitarism and the fight for social justice, his defiant atheism are retold
with due objectivity and respect. Nevertheless, one must guard from overstating Baudouin's political sophistication. Like other biographers of Baudouin, Mr. Mugdan fails to note that some of Baudouin's pronouncements
on politics and morals were idiosyncratic and naive; e.g., his opinion that
most modern literature (including War and Peace) is erotic and should not
be given to youth, that the human body is a worthless vessel, that the Old
Testament with its stories of lust and deceit is largely responsible for the

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DISCUSSIONS

persecution of Jews, that military service should be replaced by universal

compulsory work.
The second chapter, which deals with Baudouin's "theoretical foundations" gives rise to more serious objections, despite the numerous quotations that are adduced to support the author's claims. But taken out of
context and apart from Baudouin's overall theory the quotations can easily
be misconstrued. A case in point is Baudouin's approach to the problems
of synchrony and diachrony. According to Mr. Mugdan, Baudouin believed that "truly scientific" is only the study of history, whereas "descriptive
linguistics offers no explanations" (p. 48). However, in the very next sentence he quotes Baudouin's well-known dictum that "one must not force
upon language categories that are alien to it" by which Baudouin specifically underscored the significance of a synchronic approach and the dangers of confusing synchrony with diachrony. Noteworthy in this respect
was also his statement (of 1909) that "the study of any subject must proceed from the known to the unknown and not vice versa". The primacy of
synchrony as a method of description and a source of explanation was
underlined by Baudouin in most of his writings, though unlike the Saussure, he did not posit an unbridgeable gap between synchrony and
diachrony. It is in fact only by uncovering the structural relations which
obtain in the synchronic state of a language that Baudouin was able to
arrive at a novel interpretation of historical change. No less questionable
is Mr. Mugdan assertion (p. 52) that Baudouin identified the existence of
"a uniform and indivisible language" only with individual language, with
the "idiolect". In truth Baudouin defined languages and even individual
dialects as "collective individuals", while some of his studies (especially the
studies of Slovene) dealt explicitly with the coexistence of different historical layers and styles and with the capacity of speakers for code switching,
a subject which was later resumed by g~erba and the Circle of Prague.
A broader interpretation should have also been given to Baudouin's
functional view of language and the correlated idea of "language as a
system" that are touched upon in 2.18. According to our author Baudouin
pursued the former only "to some extent" (in gewisser Weise), while the
question of "system" allegedly involved for him only the recognition of the
two-fold relations of similarity and contiguity, and of the arbitrariness of
the linguistic sign. But Baudouin's concept of structure must not be reduced to such simple terms, for it entailed a whole complex of problems, such
as the nature of phonological and grammatical oppositions, the interdependence of levels, the hierarchy of phonemic entities and the difference between lexical and grammatical forms.
A fairly detailed section (2.1.9) is devoted to Baudouin's distinction of

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137

statics and dynamics, but here, too, the author overlooks the essentials,
namely Baudouin's rejection of the identification of synchrony with statics
and of diachrony with dynamics. Characteristic in this respect was Baudouin's remark that the formula "something is constantly being changed"
should be complemented by the formula "something is constantly being
preserved, something remains stable" (1910). He illustrated the complementary relation of stability and change in two of his most original
diachronic works, i.e., in the monograph on Latin Phonetics (1884-92) and
in his Surrey of the History of the Polish Language (1922).
The second chapter (2.1) deals with Baudouin's theory of phonology and
phonetics. This chapter also includes a section on alternations (2.2.9),
though Baudouin, together with Kruszewski, was, as we know, the first to
recognize that the phonetic variants of sounds must be distinguished from
the variants of morphemes, and that the study of the latter belongs in fact
to morphology and not to phonology (1922).
Baudouin's major contribution to modern linguistics lies, no doubt, in
the field of phonology inasmuch as he formulated most clearly - and despite some changes in his views - the fundamental issues of synchronic and
historical phonology, such as the functional value of sounds, the nature
and hierarchy of phonological oppositions, and the direction and limits of
phonological change. Mr. Mugdan touches on some of these matters, but
his focus is mostly beclouded and misplaced. Thus he concentrates above
all on Baudouin's teminological innovations (e.g., "anthropophonetics" vs.
"psychophonetics"; "comparents" vs. "divergents") and on his hesitations
concerning a psychological vs. physiological definition of the phoneme.
But singularly misleading is his conclusion (repeated in several sections of
the book) that "die Bestimmung von Phonemen mittels des Kriteriums der
Distinktivit/it findet man bei ihm nicht" (p. 77; cf. also p. 179). The fundamental insight of Baudouin's phonemic theory, namely that the sounds of
a language are not brute noises, but units endowed with a semiotic and, in
particular with a diacritic function, is thus denied, and with it Baudouin's
contribution to our modern, functional approach to phonology. A closer
reading of Baudouin shows that the distinctive value of sounds was emphasized by him in all phases of his career; e.g., "The distinctive properties [of
sounds].., are intimately connected with the meaning of words and their
parts" (1875-76); "only in the language of a talking machine or phonograph [do we encounter] naked, semantically irrelevant sounds" (1889);
"By means of analysis and abstraction the Hindu grammarians tried to
establish the sounds and sound complexes that serve to modify meanings"
(1909); "in linguistic thought articulatory-auditory representations exist
only to the extent that they are semasiologized and morphologized" (1927;

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DISCUSSIONS

this study also has lists of minimal pairs); "Im heutigen polnischen Sprachdenken, wie iiberhaupt in allen Sprachen immer und/iberall werden ausnahmslos alle Unterschiede semantisiert" (1922). The curious thing is that
the last statement concerning the distinctive function of sounds is quoted
by Mr. Mugdan himself (and given here in his translation) who nonetheless
refuses to take it at face value. Baudouin's differentiation of meaning, he
writes, is not to be understood "im heute iiblichen Sinn von Distinktivit~it", because "in seiner Phonemtheorie ging es um andere Fragen" (p. 77).
Unfortunately, he does not bother to tell us what the latter "questions"
were, or in what way our modern concept of "distinctiveness" differs from
that of Baudouin's. That Baudouin's functional approach took into
account not only the distinctive, but also the redundant or integrating
functions of sounds, is well known (e.g., his concept of "phonetic cement"
applied to Turkish vowel-harmony and the Polish stress), but apparently
not to our author, who ignores it.
A fairly detailed account of Baudouin's analysis of the phoneme into
"distinctive features" (i.e., into his "kinemes" and "acousmemes") is given
in 2.2.6. The significance of this analysis is summarized by Mr. Mugdan as
follows: "Baudouin [hat] nicht nur das 'phonetisehe Wesen' der einzelnen
Phoneme andeuten wollen; die dargestellte Analyse findet vielmehr bei der
Beschreibung des Lautwandels Anwendung" (p. 72; the italics are mine).
The structural and synchronic significance of the analysis escapes the
author, for what is at issue is not the phonetic properties of the individual
sounds (a problem long grasped by phoneticians and grammarians), but
the emphasis on their oppositional and relative character. It is the awareness that correlations within a system are not made up of global phonemes
but of their shared and distinctive components which enabled Baudouin to
write that the "distinctive properties of sounds give rise to certain oppositions" (1876/77), that they are "bound and interconnected with each
other" (1910), and that "these terms [the "kinemes" and "acousmemes"]
are indispensable for the greater precision of the abstract concepts of our
science" (1910).
The concept of system also involved another aspect which is ignored in
the book, namely Baudouin's recognition that "some oppositions are basic
and stable, while other oppositions may vary and disappear". It is precisely
this insight which enabled Baudouin to correlate the hierarchical organization of language (in its synchronic state) with its development in time.
The chapter on Baudouin's "graphemics" (2.3) presents his classification
of writing systems on the basis of phonemic, morphological and etymological criteria and his concern with various types of scientific notation. Here
mention could have also been made of Baudouin's interest in pictography

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139

and other forms of visual language (e.g., gestures). But what is incomprehensible to this reviewer is the author's conclusion that "more important"
than the classification of writing systems according to the above principles
was Baudouin's invention of the term 'grapheme' and that the use of this
term reflected his "psychologische Betrachtungsweise" (p. 83). Historically
incorrect is also the final statement (for which Mr. Mugdan credits other
scholars) that Baudouin was the "founder of graphemics".
Baudouin's work on morphology and syntax is discussed in 2.4. In this
section, too, the sins of omission seem to outweigh the sins of commission.
According to Mr. Mugdan, Baudouin's study of these levels was "less thorough" and "penetrating" than his work on phonology, which does not
quite jibe with Baudouin's own observation (in his review of Kruszewski's
work) that the basic thrust of the Kazan' school was "the analysis of the
word" into its ultimate components. One must furthermore keep in mind
that Baudouin's work on alternations and on "morphological absorption"
were capital contributions to the synchronic analysis of the word which
was neglected by the Neogrammarians who operated with the traditional
"roots", "stems" and "suffixes" or who, like Delbriick, questioned its
scientific validity. The chapter in question deals otherwise with only one
aspect of Baudouin's morphological work, namely with the problem of the
"morpheme". Mr. Mugdan is, no doubt, correct in stating that Baudouin
did not satisfactorily resolve the problem of the boundary between the
stem and the ending (p. 87), but he might have noted that Baudouin, as
well as Kruszewski, were aware of it when they pointed out that there was
an unceasing tendency to shift or to blur some morphological boundaries
(especially on the level of derivation). A more serious shortcoming of the
section is that it ignores Baudouin's contribution to the study of grammatical meaning, specifically his study of grammatical categories (primarily of
Russian and Polish). Baudouin's work on these problems has lost none of
its vitality, for it formulated in a pioneering way such fundamental
concepts as the obligatoriness of grammatical meaning, the nature of
grammatical oppositions (including the implied notion of markedness), and
the grammatical differences between genetically related languages. Baudouin's contribution to syntax was, as Mr. Mugdan correctly observes, far
more limited, but the statement that Baudouin "favored the syntactic over
the morphological principle in the classification of the parts of speech"
(p. 90) is not confirmed by the texts.
Baudouin's work on lexicology and etymology is briefly discussed in 2.5.
The author justly emphasizes Baudouin's merit in expanding the third edition of Dal's dictionary of Russion, but it would have been useful to learn
something about the actual content of this expansion. Another important

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area of Baudouin's lexicographic work discussed in the book was his

reconstruction of Old Polish toponyms and proper names. The presentation of Baudouin's etymological work is necessarily anecdotal, though it is
important to add that a mine of new and fascinating etymologies can be
found in his Iz lekcij po latinskoj grammatike (1884-92).
The following chapters of the book deal with Baudouin's approach to
the classification of languages (2.7), language policy (2.8), child language
and linguistic pathology (2.9), sociolinguistics (2.10), history of linguistics
(2.11) and Slavistics (2.12). The first of these problems is covered in some
detail and includes Baudouin's critique of the reigning genealogical classifications of languages and his emphasis on the mixed character of all languages that result not only from geographic proximity, but also from
contacts "at a distance". In this context we learn about Baudouin's work
on the Russian-Chinese dialect of Kjaxta and on the mixed GermanSlavic dialects of Slovenia. The author also discusses Baudouin's new and
many-sided approach to the typological classification of languages which
went beyond the reductive typological schemes of his contemporaries. But
here we should note that Baudouin was the first to present a phonological
classification of languages (which the author mentions under 2.12) and a
comparison of languages in terms of their grammatical categories which I
mentioned above.
The section on dialectology deals mostly with Baudouin's work on Slovenian but overlooks the theoretical aspects of this research. Two such
aspects deserve special attention, namely that (1) unlike the Neogrammarians, Baudouin studied the dialects synchronically (and not as a source of
historical reconstruction), and (2) that he treated them on a par with literary languages, i.e., as autonomous "individuals". Baudouin's work on
Slovenian is given considerable attention, but the author's remarks are
antiquated and second hand. Thus Baudouin is faulted for a number of
"errors" about which he has turned out to be far more far-sighted and correct than most of his critics. This concerns his classification of the Slovene
dialects into a Northwestern and Southeastern zone, his description of the
Slovene accents, and the special position of the dialect of Resia (though
not its Turanian origin). The author is altogether on shaky ground when
it comes to Slavic linguistics (touched upon briefly in 2.12) where he
misstates some elementary Slavic facts (e.g. the confusion of Slovene with
Slovincian; the misleading accentual grouping of Kashubian and Polabian
with Polish and Sorbian; p. 139).
Mr. Mugdan's above mentioned tendency to treat on a par problems
which are antiquated or secondary with those that are novel and profound
is nowhere as apparent as in section 2.7., where Baudouin's ideas about the

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origin and progress of language are treated with the same seriousness as his
highly original approach to questions of diachrony and linguistic change.
The author takes no note that the former were long ago taken off the
agenda of linguistics and were discarded by Baudouin himself in his later
works (especially in his History of Linguistics of 1909; pp. 260; 268). The
19th century ideas of "progress" and of "least effort" were likewise given
up by him in favor of a view which assumed "continuous oscillation" between diverse and equally complete linguistic types (1930). Particularly
appealing to Mr. Mugdan is Baudouin's theory (mentioned on pp. 108 and
124) of the "humanization of language" which presumably involved the
gradual shift of the articulation from the glottis to the front of the mouth.
I believe that even the linguists of the 18th century who speculated about
such matters would have found this theory quite extravagant.
Baudouin's views on diachrony and change are, on the other hand, given
short shrift, for what is discussed here in detail are "the tendency towards
least effort", Baudouin's stand in the debate around the "phonetic laws"
and the problems of analogy and change in the formal structure of words.
However, what is ignored is the fact that Baudouin gave a new meaning
to these standard 19th century problems and broadened the entire perspective on questions of linguistic development and change. Thus it is nowhere
made clear that Baudouin rejected the Neogrammarian concept according
to which all forms of the language are affected in the same way, substituting for it the notion of "resistance to phonetic change" (on the part of
certain grammatical forms or words), just as analogy was not for him, as
it was for the Neogrammarians, a mere corrective to "blind" phonetic
change, but a form of "morphological assimilation" that restructures the
basic relations of inflected and derivative forms. But even more important
was his effort to discern broad "linguistic tendencies" (which we now know
as "drift") in the historical development of a given language or group of
languages, as well as his insistence on the complementary character of stability and change alluded to above. It is these seminal ideas that gave a
new turn to diachronic linguistics and that by far outstripped the atomistic
historicism of both the Neogrammarians and of de Saussure.
The discussion of child language (2.9) does not expand our knowledge
of Baudouin, since the study of the speech of his children had never gone
beyond a descriptive stage. Baudouin's general observations on this subject
were scattered, though he was certainly aware of its broader theoretical
import. However, the glottogonic ideas and the misinterpretations of the
Polish examples are the author's. Thus he assumes (without evidence) that
the phylogenic "humanization of language" is reflected in Polish child language in the shift of the pronunciation from the back to the front of the

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mouth, and in the replacement of o, e by a, whereas he sees in the Polish

loc. sing. v kakale (from kakao) and in the inst. sing. vodo examples of
Polish child language, though they are quite normal in the speech of adults
(pp. 121; 124).
Another important area of Baudouin's work was the history of linguistics. His book on the subject (1909) is reviewed by the author in a compact
and quite informative way. But some omissions also occur here. Thus the
author might have mentioned that this book offers not only an "evaluation
of the achievements of 19th century linguistics", but also guidelines for
future linguistic research in which his scholarly viewpoints and critique of
the reigning historical method come sharply to the fore; e.g., in the call for
a general science of language, for a greater emphasis on deductive reasoning, in the quest for typological comparisons of languages and in his belief
in cyclic evolution rather than in continuous progress.
The second part of the book (ch. 3) deals with "the position of Baudouin
in the history of linguistics". The author's bizarre conclusion concerning
Baudouin's scientific affiliation was mentioned above. In addition, this
chapter includes a discussion of the "Kazan' School", of Kruszewski and
a comparison of Baudouin with De Saussure. As these matters are fairly
well known, I shall limit myself to a few cursory remarks. The author
dwells at some length (pp. 161-165) on the question as to whether there
was or was not a "Kazan' School" in the full sense of the word, as if this
had any effect on its subsequent influence and renown. It is also puzzling
to me why Baudouin is labeled an "empiricist" (ein Empiriker), while
Kruszewski is called a "philosopher" (p. 159). According to Mr. Mugdan,
the latter's main achievement was in the field of phonology (p. 157),
whereas far more significant were, as Baudouin himself recognized, his
studies on alternations and on the structure of the word (the latter developed
especially in the O(erk of 1883). The author is no doubt right in stating
that a serious comparison of Baudouin and De Saussure is still to be made.
However, those that have been made (by Sljusareva, Heinz, Jakobson or
myself) cover far more ground than the section in question. Highly misleading is also the author's remark (on p. 170) that De Saussure discovered
the distinctive function of phonemes, whereas Baudouin did not. The
quoted Saussurian passage (on p. 170), which is supposed to bear on this
point (namely that the value of phonemes is "oppositive, relative and negative") says nothing whatsoever about their linguistic function. Baudouin's
functional treatment of the problem I have discussed above.
Section 3.5 deals with the impact of Baudouin on the development of
phonology. The subject is, of course, vast, and the book gives but a partial
picture of its scope. Thus we find in it references to S6erba and Trubetz-

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koy, but none to Jakobson and the Prague School, to the Polish followers
of Baudouin, or to the actual differences between the Moscow and Leningrad phonological schools (except that the latter is chided for "arrogance"
in claiming closer adhesion to Baudouin's thought; p. 179). The subsequent
elaboration of Baudouin's theory is likewise presented in a one-sided way.
The discussion hinges largely around Baudouin's "psychologism", but
nothing is said about his influence on the theory of distinctive features, of
coexisting phonological systems, or about the relation of variants and invariants. The author is also misleading in matters of detail; e.g., the letters to
Jakobson and Doroszewski (cited on p. 178-9) were not written by Trubetzkoy in connection with phonology, but in connection with his work on
morphophonemics (specifically on his Polabische Studien), and in no way
show Trubetzkoy's greater dependence on ~rerba than on Baudouin.
The book concludes with a survey of contemporary responses to Baudouin (3.6). One cannot blame the author for overlooking some of the vast
literature on the subject, but one is struck by its highly selective treatment.
Thus we are offered a survey of minor obituaries, conferences and secondhand works, but there is hardly a mention of major critical analyses. This
gap is partly compensated by references to recent works which are scattered in the numerous footnotes to the text. But the primary function of the
footnotes is not informative but polemical. Their strident tone can be
gauged from the following examples: Fischer-Jcrgensen's reference to Winteler (regarding the use of a term) is "pure fantasy" (ftn. 71); the studies
by Jakobson and Schogt (on Baudouin's phonology) "are to be used with
great caution" (fin. 74); Jagoditsch "falsified" a quotation from Baudouin
(ftn. 88); [M.] Ivi6 merely repeats the "questionable assertions" of Jakobson (ftn 88).
The author also casts a cold eye at the Russian and English editions of
Baudouin's works which he faults for misapprehensions and mistranslations of the original text. Major shortcomings are found in the English edition (translated and edited by this reviewer). "My joy over its appearance",
writes the author, "was disturbed" because of its "very loose translations",
its use of only "a few works" and its complete dependence on the Russian
edition (pp. 187-8). As for the first point, Mr. Mugdan is partially correct,
though he fails to mention my remarks (on p. 45 of the edition) about Baudouin's "gauche" style (the term is Meillet's) whose literal rendering
"would have been as much a disservice to the modern reader as to Baudouin's basically lucid ideas". His other criticisms are gratuitious. If he has
read the Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology (of 406 pages) he should know
that it contains 22 chapters of Baudouin's major works, that two of its
chapters do not figure in the Russian edition, and that the differences from

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the latter are enumerated on pp. 363-6. He also studiously ignores all
English passages which differ from the Russian edition. "Loose translations" and errors are, on the other hand, by no means uncommon in the
book under review. A few examples should suffice. On p. 73 the author
translates the Polish odwrotny "reversible" as gegensiitzlich ("opposite")
and the Polish zdwojone "split; cleft" as doppelte ("double"); on p. 87 he
translates Polish niewsprlmierne "incommensurable" as unvergleichbare
("incomparable"); on p. 54 he inserts the word ererbt "inherited" in a
context in which Baudouin explicitly speaks of the influence of social life;
in the long passage on p. 47 a number of words are omitted or mistranslated.
A word should finally be said about the author's use of quotations that
are generously distributed throughout the book. Although they are generally used to support his arguments, they tend to become obtrusive and
cumbersome in view of their frequency and length and because they do not
always bear on the subject at hand.
I shall now try to summarize the foregoing remarks. The book under
review is seriously flawed because it offers an incomplete and shortsighted
evaluation of Baudouin's oeuvre and flattens his outstanding achievement.
Thus it overlooks a number of Baudouin's insights into the structure of
language, it misinterprets and minimizes some of his basic ideas, and it
treats on a par what was truly innovative and bold with what was marginal
and antiquated in his work. Despite all this it would be wrong to conclude
that Mr. Mugdan's book is without merit. It is the first book of its kind
which attempts a survey of all areas of Baudouin's research, it pulls together a number of interesting quotations and facts, and it presents a full
bibliography of Baudouin's writings and an almost complete bibliography
about Baudouin. And, last but not least, it is the first book which brings
Baudouin's work and significance to the attention of the German speaking
world.

NOTES
The dates will henceforth refer to the time of publication of the pertinent works. The titles
of these works can be found in the book under review or in my A Baudouin de Courtenay
Anthology, Indiana University Press, 1972. Notice that some of the titles cited in this review
are given in abbreviated form.
2 See my 'Prague School Morphophonemics' in Sound, Sign and Meaning, Michigan Slavic
Contributions, 6, Ann Arbor, 1976, pp. 106-7; 'Roman Jakobson's Work on the History of
Linguistics' in Roman Jakobson. Echoes of His Scholarship, The Peter de Ridder Press, Lisse,
1977, pp. 440-1.
3 The unpublished papers cited in the book come from the 1979 International Conference

DISCUSSIONS

145

held at Warsaw University and must have been obtained by Mr. Mugdan from its organizer,
the late Prof. Szy.mczak. One of the keynote lectures at the Conference, namely my paper
"Baudouin de Courtenay: A Pioneer in Diachronic Linguistics" is not mentioned in the book
nor listed in the bibliography, I draw on this paper in some of my subsequent remarks.

Yale University
Dpt. of Slavic Languages and Literatures,
P.O. Box 1504 A Yale Station,
New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA

EDWARD STANKIEWICZ