Editing Roman Jakobson (section)

==Life and work==
Jakobson was born in Moscow on {{OldStyleDate|11 October|1896|29 September}}<ref name="Kucera">{{cite journal|last=Kučera|first=Henry|author-link=Henry Kučera|year=1983|title=Roman Jakobson|journal=[[Language (journal)|Language]]|volume=59|number=4|pages=871{{ndash}}883|jstor=413375}}</ref><ref name="EB">{{cite web|title=Roman Jakobson|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roman-Jakobson|website=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230308042049/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roman-Jakobson|archive-date=8 March 2023|url-status=live}}</ref> to well-to-do parents of Jewish descent, the industrialist Osip Jakobson and chemist Anna Volpert Jakobson,<ref name="Kucera"/> and he developed a fascination with language at a very young age. He studied at the [[Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages]] and then at the Historical-Philological Faculty of [[Moscow State University|Moscow University]].<ref>Jakobson, Roman (1997). ''My Futurist Years'', pp. 5, 30. trans. Stephen Rudy. Marsilio Publishers. {{ISBN|1-56886-049-8}}.</ref> As a student he was a leading figure of the [[Moscow linguistic circle]] and took part in Moscow's active world of [[avant-garde]] art and poetry; he was especially interested in [[Russian Futurism]], the Russian incarnation of Italian [[Futurism]]. Under the pseudonym 'Aliagrov', he published books of [[zaum]] poetry and befriended the Futurists [[Vladimir Mayakovsky]], [[Kazimir Malevich]],  [[Aleksei Kruchyonykh]] and others. It was the poetry of his contemporaries that partly inspired him to become a linguist.
[[File:Roman Yakobson.jpg|thumb|Yakobson before 1917]]
The linguistics of the time was overwhelmingly [[neogrammarian]] and insisted that the only scientific study of language was to study the history and development of words across time (the [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] approach, in [[Course in General Linguistics#The Synchronic and Diachronic Axes|Saussure's terms]]). Jakobson, on the other hand, had come into contact with the work of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], and developed an approach focused on the way in which language's structure served its basic function ([[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]] approach) – to communicate information between speakers. Jakobson was also well known for his critique of the emergence of sound in film. Jakobson received a master's degree from Moscow University in 1918.<ref name="Kucera" />

===In Czechoslovakia===
Although he was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the Bolshevik revolution, Jakobson soon became disillusioned as his early hopes for an explosion of creativity in the arts fell victim to increasing state conservatism and hostility.<ref>Knight, Chris, 2018.  "Decoding Chomsky: Science and revolutionary politics". London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 85–86.</ref> He left Moscow for Prague in 1920, where he worked as a member of the Soviet diplomatic mission while continuing with his doctoral studies. Living in Czechoslovakia meant that Jakobson was physically close to the linguist who would be his most important collaborator during the 1920s and 1930s, Prince [[Nikolai Trubetzkoy]], who fled Russia at the time of the Revolution and took up a chair at Vienna in 1922. In 1926 the [[Prague linguistic circle|Prague school]] of linguistic theory was established by the professor of English at Charles University, [[Vilém Mathesius]], with Jakobson as a founding member and a prime intellectual force (other members included Trubetzkoy, [[René Wellek]] and [[Jan Mukařovský]]). Jakobson immersed himself in both the academic and cultural life of [[History of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)|pre-World War II Czechoslovakia]] and established close relationships with a number of Czech poets and literary figures. Jakobson received his Ph.D. from Charles University in 1930.<ref name="Kucera"/> He became a professor at [[Masaryk University]] in [[Brno]] in 1933. He also made an impression on Czech academics with his studies of Czech verse.

Roman Jakobson proposed the [[Atlas Linguarum Europae]] in the late 1930s, but [[World War II]] disrupted this plan and it lay dormant until being revived by [[Mario Alinei]] in 1965.<ref>
{{cite journal
  | title=Conference reports / Rapports de congrès / Konferenzberichte 
  | first=Rita| last=Caprini
  | journal=Dialectologia et Geolinguistica
  | year=1996
  | volume=4
  | page=122}}</ref>

===Escapes before the war===
Jakobson escaped from Prague in early March 1939<ref name="Kucera"/> via Berlin for [[Denmark]], where he was associated with the [[Copenhagen school (linguistics)|Copenhagen linguistic circle]], and such intellectuals as [[Louis Hjelmslev]]. He fled to Norway on 1 September 1939,<ref name="Kucera"/> and in 1940 walked across the border to Sweden,<ref name="Kucera"/> where he continued his work at the [[Karolinska Hospital]] (with works on [[aphasia]] and language competence). When Swedish colleagues feared a possible German occupation, he managed to leave on a cargo ship, together with [[Ernst Cassirer]] (the former rector of Hamburg University) to New York City in 1941<ref name="Kucera"/> to become part of the wider community of intellectual émigrés who fled there.

===Career in the United States and later life ===
[[File:Roman Jakobson.jpg|thumb|Roman Jakobson]]
In New York, he began teaching at [[The New School]], still closely associated with the Czech émigré community during that period. At the [[École libre des hautes études]], a sort of Francophone university-in-exile, he met and collaborated with [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], who would also become a key exponent of [[structuralism]]. He also made the acquaintance of many American linguists and [[anthropology|anthropologists]], such as [[Franz Boas]], [[Benjamin Whorf]], and [[Leonard Bloomfield]]. When the American authorities considered "repatriating" him to Europe, it was Franz Boas who actually saved his life.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}} After the war, he became a consultant to the [[International Auxiliary Language Association]], which would present [[Interlingua]] in 1951.

In 1949<ref name="Kucera"/> Jakobson moved to [[Harvard University]], where he remained until his retirement in 1967.<ref name="Kucera"/> His universalizing structuralist theory of [[phonology]], based on a [[markedness]] hierarchy of [[distinctive features]], achieved its canonical exposition in a book published in the United States in 1951, jointly authored by Roman Jakobson, C. Gunnar Fant and [[Morris Halle]].<ref>Jakobson, R., C. Gunnar Fant and M. Halle, 1951. ''Preliminaries to Speech Analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates.'' Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.</ref> In the same year, Jakobson's theory of 'distinctive features' made a profound impression on the thinking of young Noam Chomsky, in this way also influencing generative linguistics.<ref>Knight, Chris, 2018. "Decoding Chomsky: Science and revolutionary politics". London & New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 85–90.</ref> He was elected a foreign member of the [[Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1960.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=authorDetail&aId=PE00001090 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201012193255/https://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=authorDetail&aId=PE00001090 |title=R.O. Jakobson (1896–1982) |publisher=Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |archive-date=12 October 2020}}</ref>

In his last decade, Jakobson maintained an office at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], where he was an honorary professor emeritus. In the early 1960s, Jakobson shifted his emphasis to a more comprehensive view of language and began writing about communication sciences as a whole. He converted to [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Eastern Orthodox Christianity]] in 1975.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Jakobson_Roman_Osipovich |title=YIVO &#124; Jakobson, Roman Osipovich |publisher=Yivoencyclopedia.org |access-date=2014-01-17}}</ref>

Jakobson died in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], on 18 July 1982.<ref name="Kucera"/><ref name="rudy">[http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/research/collections/collections-mc/mc72.html#ref8425 "Roman Jakobson: A Brief Chronology"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160126001813/http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/research/collections/collections-mc/mc72.html#ref8425 |date=26 January 2016 }}, compiled by Stephen Rudy</ref> His widow died in 1986. His first wife, who was born in 1908, died in 2000.