On the History of Russian Linguistics: the Life and the Work of Simon Boyanus

The life of Simon Boyanus (1871–1952) was so different and fruitful that one could be confused about the number of authors hidden under his name. He has graduated from the St. Petersburg University (the Department of History and Philology), fi nished Drama Course, was an actor and a director, wrote articles on the history of medieval theater, worked at the History of Arts Institute. He was a student of phonetics at L. V. Shcherba`s course, and founded Institute of Phonetics and the Phonetic School with him. In 1920s he studied phonetics in London with D. Jones and L. E. Armstrong. He was a Germanic cycle courses lecturer at Leningrad State University and published his first textbook of English phonetics for Russian speakers in 1926. In 1928–1930 he was a co-author of the famous English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries with V. K. Mueller. In 1934 Boyanus emigrated to the UK where he published a textbook of Russian phonetics for British students, bringing together the achievements of Russian and British phonetic science. Boyanus was the fi rst to suggest a description of Russian intonation in terms of a li mited set of abstract intonation models with the nature and number of phrasal stresses as a key feature. Using the intonational markup, prepared for English, and his pronunciation, Boyanus has transcribed not only phrases, but stylistically diverse texts. At the end of the life Boyanus established his own School of Russian Language, acknowledged throughout the UK.

Keywords

Simon Boyanus, phonetic method, English phonetics, Russian phonetics, sentence intonation

Received

29.03.2019

Publication date

29.03.2019

Number of characters

18582

Cite

GOST	Svetozarova N. On the History of Russian Linguistics: the Life and the Work of Simon Boyanus // Russkaya Rech’ – 2019. – Issue 2 C. 119-128 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/rusrech/s013161170004471-7-1-en (circulation date: 26.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S013161170004471-7
MLA	Svetozarova, Natalia "On the History of Russian Linguistics: the Life and the Work of Simon Boyanus." Russkaya Rech’ 2 (2019):119-128. DOI: 10.31857/S013161170004471-7
APA	Svetozarova N. (2019). On the History of Russian Linguistics: the Life and the Work of Simon Boyanus. Russkaya Rech’ (2), pp.119-128 DOI: 10.31857/S013161170004471-7

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5. Boyanus S. C. A Manual of Russian Pronunciation. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1935. 124 p. (2nd edition: London, 1944; 3rd edition: London, 1946).

6. Boyanus S. C. The main types of Russian intonation // Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. London, 22–26 Juni 1935. Cambridge, 1936. P. 110–113.

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8. Boyanus S. C. Conversational Narratives Illustrating Spoken Russian. Published by Boyanus School of Russian. London, 1943 (2nd edition 1946–1947).

9. Boyanus S. C. Russian Pronunciation: the Russian system of speech habits in sounds, stress, rhythm, and intonation together with a Russian phonetic reader: In 2 vols. London: Humphries, 1955. XI, 322 p.

10. Boyanus S. C. Russian pronunciation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

11. Yokoyama O. Neutral and non-neutral intonation in Russian: A reinterpretation of the IK system // Die Welt der Slaven. 2001. Bd. XLVI. No. 1. P. 1–24.