Higher seminar in linguistics: Vittorio Springfield Tomelleri

This lecture reassesses Nikolai F. Yakovlev’s contribution to the emergence of phonology by examining the intersection of theoretical reflection and practical alphabet construction in the early Soviet Union. It shows how Yakovlev’s functional concept of the phoneme, developed through fieldwork on Caucasian languages, rejected psychologism and defined phonological units according to their role in distinguishing meaning.

The lecture focuses on his “mathematical formula” for alphabet construction and on his analysis of the Russian writing system, with particular attention to the transfer of phonological distinctions from consonant letters to vowel letters (perenos razlicheniya). By tracing the application of these principles from Russian to Kabardian, the lecture argues that early phonological theory emerged not only from abstract speculation but also from the practical demands of language planning and the creation of new alphabets.