The prague School

A group of linguists established in Prague in 1926 who developed distinctive feature theory in phonology and communicative dynamism in language teaching. Its proponents developed methods of structuralism literary analysis during the years 1928–1939. It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics. Main Representatives The Prague linguistic circle included Russian émigrés such as Roman Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars Renè Wellek and Jan Mukařovský.


The instigator of the circle and its first president was the eminent Czech linguist Vilém Mathesius. Vilém Mathesius. He founded the Prague School. Independently of de Saussure, he described the principles of function-structural language description in his paper “On the potentiality of language phenomena”. Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy. Was a member of the Prague School. He belonged to a scholarly family of the Russian nobility. His father had been a professor of philosophy and rector of Moscow University. He wrote the book ‘Principles of Phonology’. Roman Osipovich Jakobson. He was born in Russia. He studied and thought in Prage. He was one of the founding members of the Prague Linguistic Circle. He lived in USA since Second World War.


Jakobson represent one of the very few personal links between European and American traditions of linguistics. His ideas had much to do with radical change of direction that occurred in American linguistics over the last years. The most important aspect of Jakobson work is his phonological theory. Here Jakobson is a recognizably member of the Prague School -like Trubetzkoy he is interested in the analysis of the phonemes into their component features rather than in the distribution of phonemes. Contribution. The most significant contribution of this school is the methodological principle of switching, by amending a phoneme for another in a particular place in the spoken chain, producing a paradigmatic opposition, and thus, a change in direction.


 The first results of the members' cooperative efforts were presented in joint theses prepared for the First International Congress of Slavicists held in Prague in 1929. These were published in the 1st volume of the then started series Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. The Théses outlined the direction of the work of the Circle's members. Such important concepts as the approach to the study of language as a synchronic system which is, however, dynamic, functionality of elements of language, and the importance of the social function of language were explicitly laid down as the basis for further research. The new concepts and theories, launched by The Prague Linguistic Circle became key concepts in linguistics so happened with the concept of neutralization and the theory of markedness, which were inherited by generative grammar. Prague linguists innovate the functionalist mainstream in the definition of the language: for them, language is a system of appropriate expression means to an end. In addition, language is a functional system itself: Phonic structures, grammatical and lexical language are dependent of the linguistic functions. Prague scholars provided the first systematic formulation of semiotic structuralism.

 Semiotics emerged from Prague Linguistic Circle structuralism. The Prague Linguistic Circle members were the first to claim that literary history has to be based on literary theory and the first to develop a comprehensive theory of literary history.



Without the Prague School the image of the twentieth century structuralism and linguistics is incomplete both historically and theoretically. They brought innovations and contributions not only to the development of linguistics, but also to the development of phonetics, phonology and syntax.