Authors

Discussion

From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, experimental phonetics rapidly developed in the fields of articulatory and acoustic phonetics, using new technologies such as X-rays, the kymograph, artificial palates, manometers, and laryngoscopes, as well as scientific theories like Fourier theory of sine waves, Helmholtz theory of resonance and so on. These advancements enabled quantitative observations in phonetics. Later, phonetics advanced further by using of new precision instruments such as the spectrograph and oscillograph, driven by the demand for acoustic research spurred by the developments of telephones, radios, and talking films.

In Russia, for example, L. Shcherba stayed in Paris from the late of 1907 to 1908, working in Jean-Pierre Rousselot's Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics at the Collège de France, where he learned the basics of experimental phonetics. After returning to Russia, he became the administrator of the Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics at St. Petersburg University, which had been established in 1899 but was not functioning properly. Shcherba improved the equipment and resources related to experimental phonetics, revitalizing the laboratory's activities. His achievements using the kymograph are evident in his famous work ‘Qualitative and Quantitative Relations of the Russian Vowels’ (1912).

Simultaneously, the development of the quantification, objectivization and materialization of speech sound through experimental phonetics and the recording and analysis by phonographs revealed gaps between speech sounds from articulatory, acoustic and auditory perspectives. This led to the emergence of phonology (R. Jakobson) based on the standpoint of listening and understanding, which abstracted empirical data, differing from phycological acoustics.

However, this is not all. In the subsequent history of Soviet linguistics, a trend emerged that could be called the linguistics of parole or linguistics of “voice”, with figures such as L. Yakubinsky, V. Voloshinov, and M. Bakhtin. In this paper, we will consider this trend as a reaction to the quantification, objectivization and materialization of the ‘voice’ using acoustic measurement equipment and speech-sound reproduction technology, such as the phonograph. To clarify this, we will also refer to the poetics of the, as it is called, formalists and issues such as the recitation of poetry, besides linguistics in the narrow sense.