Jerzy Kuryłowicz (; 26 August 1895 – 28 January 1978) was a Polish linguist who studied
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
.
Life
Born in
Stanislawow,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
. He was a Polish historical linguist, structuralist and language theoretician, deeply interested in the studies of Indo-European languages. He studied at the
Vienna University of Economics and Business
The Vienna University of Economics and Business (german: Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, WU) is a public research university in Vienna, Austria, the largest university focusing on business, management and economics in Europe. It has been ranked ...
(1913–1914), and then, after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, continued his studies at
Lwów University
The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...
, where his unusual language skills drew the attention of some prominent linguists. As a result, he was granted a scholarship in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
. This gave him an opportunity to qualify as a university professor of Indo-European linguistics soon after his return to Poland. After obtaining the title, he became a professor at the University of Lwów. Later on, in 1946-48 Kuryłowicz filled in for Dr Krzyżanowski at the Institute of English Philology in Wrocław. Finally, he moved to
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...
, where he took the chair of General Linguistics at
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
. He retired in 1965. Kuryłowicz was a member of the Polish Academy of Learning and the Polish Academy of Science. He died at the age of 83 in Kraków.
He was a member of the
Polish Academy of Learning
The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences or Polish Academy of Learning ( pl, Polska Akademia Umiejętności), headquartered in Kraków and founded in 1872, is one of two institutions in contemporary Poland having the nature of an academy of scie ...
and the
Polish Academy of Sciences
The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society o ...
.
He was the brother of the microbiologist
Włodzimierz Kuryłowicz. His son, also named Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1925–2002), obtained his PhD from the
Technical University of Warsaw.
Work in linguistics
Kuryłowicz did not belong to any of the structuralist linguistic schools. In his views he was close to
glossematics, whose many assumptions he accepted and developed.
He is best known for his works on the Indo-European languages. The most important ones are ''Apophony in Indo-European'' (1956) and ''The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European'' (1964). In the latter, he discussed the inflectional categories of Indo-European languages and later, on the basis of these studies, formulated the so-called Case Theory.
Laws of analogy
Building on prior work by
Antoine Meillet
Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 Moulins, France – 21 September 1936 Châteaumeillant, France) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he wa ...
, Kuryłowicz's is also known for his "Six Laws of Analogy" that have been widely used in historical linguistics to understand how analogical grammatical changes work. The laws consist of six predictive statements about the direction of analogical changes:
# A bipartite marker tends to replace an isofunctional simple marker.
# The directionality of analogy is from a “basic” form to a “subordinate” form with respect to their spheres of usage.
# A structure consisting of a basic and a subordinate member serves as a foundation for a basic member which is isofunctional but isolated.
# When the old (non-analogical) form and the new (analogical) form are both in use, the former remains in secondary function and the latter takes the basic function.
# A more marginal distinction is eliminated for the benefit of a more significant distinction.
# A base in analogy may belong to a prestige dialect affecting the form of a dialect imitating it.
[Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1964. The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg:Winter.]
Case theory
In this theory he proposes the division into grammatical and concrete cases. According to Kuryłowicz, the case is a syntactic or semantic relation expressed by the appropriate inflected form or by linking the preposition with a noun, so it is the category based on a relation inside the sentence or a relation between two sentences.
The category of case covers two basic case groups:
#Grammatical cases: their primary function is syntactic, the semantic function is secondary. If we take the sentence: ‘The boy sat down’ (Fisiak 1975: 59) with an intransitive verb ‘sit’, we may notice that the sentence can be changed into causative construction: ‘’He made the boy sit down’’ (ibid), where the word ‘boy’ is changed from nominative into accusative, with the superior position of nominative. (''Nominativus'', ''accusativus'')
#Concrete cases: they include ''instrumentalis'', ''locativus'' and ''ablativus'', whose primary function is the adverbial semantic function. They answer the questions: with what?, where?, from where?. The syntactic function of concrete cases is secondary. These cases are governed by semantically determined verbs.
For example, the Polish verb ''kierować'' (to drive) governs the direct object in the instrumental case, as in the expression ''kierować samochodem'' (to drive a car) (Fisiak 1975: 60)
Laryngeals
While studying the phonology of Indo-European languages, Kuryłowicz pointed to the existence of the Hittite consonant ''ḫ'' in his 1927 paper "
ə indo-européen et ḫ hittite". This discovery supported
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wide ...
’s 1879 proposal of the existence of ''coefficients sonantiques'', elements that de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European. This led to the so-called
laryngeal theory
The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that:
* The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, th ...
, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.
Syntactic transformation
In 1936 Kuryłowicz introduced the idea of syntactic transformation, pointing at the same time that this syntactic (transformative) derivation does not change the meaning of syntactic form. Therefore, if we take the sentence like:
''Kate washes the car.''
and change it into passive:
''The car is washed by Kate.''
we can notice that the second sentence has the same meaning as the first one. They differ just in terms of style. The idea of transformative derivation proves that Kuryłowicz was ahead of his times, because what he described resembles one of the main assumptions of Chomsky’s Transformative – Generative Grammar postulated several years later.
Foundation concept
Kuryłowicz was also interested in the element hierarchy and the function of the language system. Analyzing the problem of hierarchy he introduced the concept of ''foundation'', which is the relation between two forms or functions in a language. One of the forms or functions, so-called ''founding'', always results in the presence of the ''founded'', not conversely. For instance, in Latin, the endings ''-os'' and ''-or'' in the
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
singular both always correspond with the ending ''-orem'' in the
accusative
The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
singular. This does not work the other way round, because the ending in the accusative does not allow one to predict the ending in the nominative case: it can be either ''-os'' or ''-or''. (Fisiak 1975: 56)
Publications
* ''Traces de la place du ton en gathique''. Paris: Champion, 1925.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1927a. “Les effets du ''ə'' en indoiranien”, ''Prace Filologiczne'' 11: 201–43.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1927b. “''ə'' indo-européen et ''ḫ'' hittite”, in ''Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski'', vol. 1. Edited by W. Taszycki & W. Doroszewski. Kraków: Gebethner & Wolff, pp. 95–104.
* ''Études indo-européennes''. Kraków: Skład Główny w Ksiegarni Gebethnera i Wolffa, 1935.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1936. “Derivation lexicale et derivation syntaxique”. In Kuryłowicz, J., 1960, 41–50.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1938. “Struktura morfemu”. In Kuryłowicz, J., 51–65.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1949a. “La nature des proces dits ‘analogiques’”. Acta Linguistica 5: 121–38.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1949b. “La notion de l’isomorphisme”. In Kuryłowicz, J., 1960, 16–26.
* Kuryłowicz, J., 1949c. “Le probleme du classement des cas”. In Kuryłowicz, J., 1960, 131–154.
* ''L'apophonie en indo-européen''. Wrocław: Zakład im. Ossolińskich, 1956.
* ''L'accentuation des langues indo-européennes''. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1958.
* ''Esquisses linguistiques''. Wrocław–Kraków: Polska Akademia Nauk / Zakład Naroldowy im. Ossolíńskich, 1960.
* ''The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European''. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1964.
* (with
Manfred Mayrhofer
Manfred Mayrhofer (26 September 1926 – 31 October 2011) was an Austrian Indo-Europeanist who specialized in Indo-Iranian languages. Mayrhofer served as professor emeritus at the University of Vienna. He is noted for his etymological dictionar ...
) ''Indogermanische Grammatik''. Heidelberg 1968 ff.
* ''Die sprachlichen Grundlagen der altgermanischen Metrik. Vortrag, gehalten am 3. Juni 1970 in Rahmen einer Vortragswoche d. Univ. Innsbruck aus Anlass ihrer 300-Jahr-Feier''. Edited by Jerzy Kuryłowicz. Innsbruck: Institut für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1970.
* ''Studies in Semitic grammar and metrics''. Wrocław: Wydawn. Polskiej Akademii Nauk / Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich; London: Curzon Press, 1972.
* ''Studia indoeuropejskie''; or, ''Études indo-européennes''. Edited by Jerzy Kuryłowicz et al. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1974.
* ''Metrik und Sprachgeschichte''. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1975.
* ''Problèmes de linguistique indo-européenne''. Wrocław: Zakład narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1977.
* ''Studia językoznawcze'', vol. 1: ''Wybór prac opublikowanych w języku polskim''. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawn. Nauk., 1987.
Decorations and awards
* 1965: Honorary doctorate from the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hi ...
* 1973:
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system.
History
The "Austrian ...
References
* Fisiak, J., 1975. Wstęp do współczesnych teorii lingwistycznych. Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne. Warszawa.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurylowicz, Jerzy
1895 births
1978 deaths
Writers from Ivano-Frankivsk
Indo-Europeanists
Linguists of Indo-European languages
University of Lviv alumni
Victims of post–World War II forced migrations
Jagiellonian University faculty
Members of the Polish Academy of Learning
Linguists from Poland
Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
20th-century linguists
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Recipients of the State Award Badge (Poland)