Ščerba’s Leningrad Phonological School in the XXI Century

Résumé

It has been commonly accepted that Lev Ščerba’s concept of the phoneme as the smallest unit of the sound structure that can serve to differentiate words (Ščerba 1974: 156-158) has had the strongest influence on the development of general phoneme theory, as it provided a new and widely accepted link between sounds and meaning. At the same time, Ščerba did not regard phonetics and phonology as independent from one another. Rather he emphasized the importance of experimental phonetic studies since the phonetic material obtained from the analysis of real speech events provides the basis for phonological generalizations. Ščerba’s (The Leningrad / St. Petersburg) phonological school has been known for the
combination of theoretical postulates based on the analysis of the language system with careful experimental verification of the features of its sound manifestation.