Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich - an outstanding Russian linguist, considered the founder of the St. Petersburg phonological school. Every philologist knows his name. This scientist was interested not only in the Russian literary language, but also in many others, as well as their relationships. His activities contributed to the active development of linguistics. All this is an occasion to get to know better such an outstanding scientist as Leo Shcherba. His biography is presented in this article.
Studying at the gymnasium and university
In 1898, he graduated from the Kiev gymnasium with a gold medal, and then entered the University of Kiev, at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. The following year, Lev Vladimirovich moved to St. Petersburg University, to the historical and philological department. Here he was mainly engaged in psychology. In the 3rd year, he attended lectures on the introduction to linguistics of Professor Baudouin de Courtenay. He became interested in his approach to scientific issues and began to study under the guidance of this professor. Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich in his senior year wrote an essay awarded a gold medal. It is called the "Psychic element in phonetics." In 1903, he completed his studies at the university, and Baudouin de Courtenay left Shcherba at the Department of Sanskrit and Comparative Grammar.
Business trips abroad
St. Petersburg University in 1906 sent abroad Lev Vladimirovich. He spent a year in northern Italy, studying independently Tuscan dialects. Then, in 1907, Shcherba moved to Paris. He became acquainted with the equipment in the laboratory of experimental phonetics, studied French and English pronunciation by the phonetic method, and worked independently on experimental material.
Learning the dialect of the Luga language
In Germany, Lev Vladimirovich spent the autumn holidays of 1907 and 1908. He studied in the vicinity of Muskau a dialect of the Luzick language. Interest in this Slavic language of the peasants aroused in him Baudouin de Courtenay. Studying it was necessary to develop a theory of mixing languages. Lev Vladimirovich settled in the vicinity of Muskau, in the village, not understanding a single word in the studied dialect. Shcherba learned the language, living in his host family, participating in field work with her, sharing Sunday activities. Lev Vladimirovich filled out the collected materials in a book, which was presented by Shcherba for a doctoral degree. In Prague, he spent the end of a foreign trip, studying the Czech language.
Cabinet of experimental phonetics
Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich, returning to St. Petersburg, began to work in the office of experimental phonetics, which was founded in 1899 at the university, but was in a state of neglect for a long time. This office is Shcherba's favorite brainchild. Having obtained subsidies, he wrote out and built special equipment, constantly replenished the library. For over 30 years, under his leadership, research has been continuously conducted on phonological systems and phonetics of languages of various peoples of the Soviet Union. For the first time in Russia, in his laboratory, Leo Shcherba organized training in pronunciation of Western European languages. Lev Vladimirovich in the early 1920s created a project of the Linguistic Institute with the involvement of various specialists. For him, the connections of phonetics with many other disciplines, such as physics, psychology, physiology, neurology, psychiatry, etc., were always clear.
Lecturing, speaking
Beginning in 1910, Leo Shcherba gave lectures on introducing subjects such as linguistics (linguistics) at the Psychoneurological Institute, and also taught phonetics at special courses for deaf-mute teachers. In 1929, a seminar on experimental phonetics was organized in the laboratory for a group of speech therapists and doctors.
Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich made several reports at the Society of Otolaryngologists. His connections with voice and diction specialists, with singing theorists and with the artistic world were no less lively. In the early 1920s, the Soviet linguist Shcherba worked at the Living Word Institute. In 1930, he gave lectures on the Russian language and phonetics in the Russian Theater Society, and also read a lecture at the Leningrad State Conservatory, at the vocal faculty.
Laboratory development
In 1920-1930, his laboratory became a first-class research institution. New equipment was installed in it, the composition of its employees gradually increased, and the scope of its work expanded. Researchers from all over the country began to come here, mainly from national republics.
The period from 1909 to 1916
From 1909 to 1916 - a very fruitful period of the life of Shcherba scientifically. He wrote 2 books over these 6 years and defended them, becoming first a master, and then a doctor. In addition, Lev Vladimirovich conducted seminars on linguistics, Old Slavonic and Russian, on experimental phonetics. He conducted classes on the comparative grammar of Indo-European languages, building his course every year on the material of a new language.
Doctor of Philology Lev Shcherba since 1914 led a student group in which he studied living Russian. Active participants were: S. G. Barkhudarov, S. A. Eremin, S. M. Bondi, Yu. N. Tynyanov.
At the same time, Lev Vladimirovich began to perform administrative duties in several educational institutions. Shcherba was looking for opportunities to change the organization of teaching, to raise it to the level of the latest achievements of science. Lev Vladimirovich steadily fought with routine and formalism in pedagogical activity, and never compromised his ideals. For example, in 1913, he left the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute, because now the main thing for the teacher was not the communication of knowledge, but the execution of bureaucratic rules that supplanted science and hindered the students ’initiative.
1920s
In the 1920s, his most important achievement was the development of the phonetic method of teaching a foreign language, as well as the spread of this method. Shcherba paid special attention to the correctness and purity of pronunciation. At the same time, all phonetic phenomena of the language had scientific coverage and were absorbed by students consciously. An important place in the teaching of Shcherba is listening to records with foreign texts. All training, ideally, should be built on this method, as Shcherba believed. You should choose plates in a specific system. It is no coincidence that Lev Vladimirovich paid so much attention to the sound side of the language. He believed that a complete understanding of speech in a foreign language is closely connected with the correct reproduction of the sound form, up to intonations. This idea is part of the general linguistic concept of Shcherba, who believed that the oral form of language is most essential for him as a means of communication.
Lev Vladimirovich in 1924 was elected to the All-Union Academy of Sciences as its corresponding member. Then he began work in the Dictionary Commission. Her task was to publish a dictionary of the Russian language, an attempt to create which was undertaken by A. A. Shakhmatov. Leo Vladimirovich as a result of this work had his own ideas in the field of lexicography. He carried out work on the compilation of the dictionary in the second half of the 1920s, seeking to put theoretical constructs into practice.
French
In 1930, Leo Shcherba also began to compose a Russian-French dictionary. He created the theory of differential lexicography, which was outlined briefly in the preface to the 2nd edition of the book, which was the result of Shcherba's work for ten years. This is not only one of the best French language books since the Soviet Union. The system and principles of this book were the basis for work on such dictionaries.
However, Lev Vladimirovich did not stop there. In the mid-1930s, he published another manual on the French language - "Phonetics of the French language." This is the result of his twenty-year pedagogical and research work on pronunciation. The book is based on a comparison with the Russian pronunciation of French.
Reorganization of teaching foreign languages
Lev Vladimirovich in 1937 headed the university-wide department of foreign languages. Shcherba reorganized their teaching, introducing their own methodology for reading and understanding texts in other languages. To this end, Shcherba led a special methodological seminar for teachers, demonstrating his techniques on Latin material. The brochure in which his ideas were reflected is called "How to Learn Foreign Languages". Lev Vladimirovich over 2 years of chairing the department significantly raised the level of students' proficiency.
Shcherba was also interested in the Russian literary language. Lev Vladimirovich participated in the then widespread work on the regulation and standardization of spelling and grammar of the Russian language. He became a member of the board that edited Barkhudarov’s school textbook.
last years of life
Lev Vladimirovich in October 1941 was evacuated to the Kirov region, in the city of Molotovsk. He moved to Moscow in the summer of 1943, where he returned to his usual way of life, having gone headlong into pedagogical, scientific and organizational activities. From August 1944, Shcherba was seriously ill, and on December 26, 1944, Shcherba Lev Vladimirovich died.
The contribution to the Russian language of this man was enormous, and his work is relevant to this day. They are considered classics. Russian linguistics, phonology, lexicography, psycholinguistics still rely on his works.