Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba (commonly Scherba) (; ; – December 26, 1944) was a Russian and Soviet
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
and
lexicographer
Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines:
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary, dictionaries.
* The ...
specializing in
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
and
phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
.
Early life and education
Born in Igumen (
Minsk Governorate
Minsk Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Minsk. It was created from the land acquired in the partitions of Poland and existed from 1793 until 1921. Its territory covered th ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
,
[In his ''Curriculum Vitae'', Scherba gave his place of birth as St. Petersburg.] now
Chervyen,
Belarus
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
) to the family of an engineer.
[ Shcherba went to secondary school in ]Kiev
Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...
, where he graduated in 1898, and briefly attended Kiev University
The Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (; also known as Kyiv University, Shevchenko University, or KNU) is a public university in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The university is the third-oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and ...
before he moved to the capital and entered St. Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...
.[Shcherba's ''Curriculum Vitae'' i]
"Три автобиографии Л.В. Щербы"
There, he studied under Jan Baudouin de Courtenay
Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay, also Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay (; 13 March 1845 – 3 November 1929), was a Polish linguist and Slavic studies, Slavist, best known for his theory of the phoneme and allophone, phoneti ...
and graduated in 1903. In 1906 he traveled abroad, first to Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
and then to northern Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
, where he studied Tuscan dialect
Tuscan ( ; ) is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties of Romance spoken in Tuscany, Corsica, and Sardinia.
Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the language of culture throughout Italy be ...
s.
Career
During the autumn holidays of 1907 and 1908, on the advice of Baudouin de Courtenay, he studied the Sorbian languages
The Sorbian languages (, ) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavs, West Slavic ethno-cultural minority in the Lusatia region ...
and wrote a description of the Mužakow dialect (spoken in the east, near Muskau). In late 1907 he went to Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, where he worked in the experimental phonetics laboratory of Jean-Pierre Rousselot studying the phonetics of a series of languages using experimental methods; on his return to Russia he began setting up an experimental phonetics laboratory, paying for equipment from his own stipend, and this became th
institution
that now bears his name.
As early as 1912, basing himself on the ideas of Baudouin de Courtenay, he elaborated the concept of the phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
, defined by him as the grouping of sounds into "sound types". In 1912 he defended his master's thesis and in 1915 received his doctorate from St. Petersburg University, where he was a professor from 1916 to 1941. He became the founder of the so-called " Leningrad school" of phonology, which included M. I. Matusevich and L. R. Zinder among others and carried on a polemic with the " Moscow school."[Peoples.ru bio](_blank)
/ref> However, he spent the last few years of his life in Moscow, where he died. He became an academician
An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life.
Accor ...
of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
in 1943.
Beyond phonology, Shcherba made significant contributions to the wider fields of linguistics and lexicography. In contrast to Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 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 wi ...
, he recognized three rather than two objects of study: speech activity, language systems, and language material. He placed emphasis on the question of the capacity of the speaker to produce sentences never previously heard, a question which would become important to the linguistics of the later twentieth century. He also emphasized the importance of experiments in linguistics, particularly that of negative results, developing methods which became important for field study. He was the teacher of the lexicographer Sergei Ozhegov, author of the most widely used Russian dictionary.
Shcherba is the author of the '' glokaya kuzdra'' sentence, which consists of words whose roots do not exist in Russian, but has correct construction in terms of Russian morphology and syntax — similar to Chomsky's ''Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
''Colorless green ideas sleep furiously'' was composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book '' Syntactic Structures'' as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical. The sentence was originally used ...
''. He invented this sentence to illustrate the distinction between grammar and vocabulary.
Selected works
* 1912.
Russkie glasnye v kachestvennom i kolichestvennom otnoshenii
' ussian vowels in their qualitative and quantitative relationships
* 1915. ''Vostochnoluzhitskoe narechie'' n Eastern Sorbian dialect
* 1957 928
O chastyakh rechi v russkom yazyke
n the parts of speech in the Russian language Originally published in a journal. Reprinted in the collection, ''Izbrannye raboty po jazykoznaniju i fonetike''.
* 1936. Russko-francuzskij slovar’ — Dictionnaire russe-français, 1st edition.
* 1937. ''Fonetika frantsuzkogo yazyka'' honetics of the French language
* 1940. Opyt obshchei teorii leksikografii. ''Izvestiia Akademii Nauk SSSR'', Otdelenie literatury i iazyka. 3: 89-117
English translation 1995, Towards a general theory of lexicographyPrefatory article to the English translation
Notes
References
External links
Peoples.ru bio
(in Russian)
(in Russian)
* (in Russian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shcherba, Lev Vladimirovich
1880 births
1944 deaths
Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925)
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Linguists from the Russian Empire
Linguists from the Soviet Union
People from Chervyen
People from Igumensky Uyezd
Saint Petersburg State University alumni
Russian scientists