Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/205

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A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky
191

in a great dictionary of "all known languages" under the direction of Pallas. The study of Indo-European languages began in the same century, from the time of Baier who took some interest in Sanskrit, and was directed especially to Russian grammar. Lomonosov made a valuable attempt to establish the principal groups of Slavonic languages; he distinguished also the Church-slavonic and Russian elements of our language, elucidated its "rational use" and sketched its probable development; and his views were adopted by Barsov and other Russian writers. Later on, comparative linguistics began to be treated in a much more scientific way: Korsh was well versed in European and even Oriental languages, but neither he, nor Böthlingk, the great Sanskritist, was able to found new linguistic schools in Russia : these arose, thanks to the learned activity of Fortunatov in Moscow and Baudouin de Courtenay in Kazan. The late professor Fortunatov made acute investigations concerning the comparative grammar of Indo-European languages and their dialectical-peculiarities in the most ancient periods. The original representative of the neogrammatical movement, Baudouin de Courtenay, studied the physiology and psychology of language: he discovered the laws of reduction of the stems of words in favour of their terminations, and of phonetic change, and was specially interested in the Slavonic dialects. These distinguished linguists had pupils who continued their work. Shachmatov, Ulyanov and others represented the Moscow school; Krushevsky, Bogoroditsky, Bulich and others, the Kazan school of linguistics. At the same time Potebnya, a follower of Steinthal, applied