A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

380 Prague School
to do with narrative) to the production and reception of literary texts. Applied
pragmatics focuses on problems of interaction that arise in contexts where
successful communication is critical, such as medical interviews, judicial settings,
counselling and foreign-language teaching.
Prague School The name given to the views and methods of the Linguistic
Circle of Prague and the scholars it influenced. The circle was founded in 1926
by Vilém Mathesius (1882–1946), a professor of English at Caroline University,
and included such linguists as Roman Jakobson (see Jakobsonian) and Nikolai
Trubetskoy (1890–1938). The ‘Praguean’ influence has been widespread and
long-lasting, as the frequent reference to it throughout this dictionary testifies.
Its main emphasis lay on the analysis of language as a system of functionally
related units, an emphasis which showed Saussurean influence. In particular,
it led to the distinction between the phonetic and the phonological
analysis of sounds, the analysis of the phoneme into distinctive features,
and such associated notions as binarity, marking and morphophonemics.
Since the 1950s, Prague School ideas have been received and developed,
particularly with reference to the syntax, semantics and stylistics of English
and Slavonic languages, and illustrated in the work of Josef Vachek (1909–96),
Jan Firbas (1921–2000) and others. Of particular note here is the formulation
of a theory of functional sentence perspective, wherein sentence analysis
is seen as a complex of functionally contrastive constituents. A representative
reader is J. Vachek (ed.), A Prague School Reader in Linguistics (1964), but the
early book by Trubetskoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie (1939), translated in
1969 as Principles of Phonology, is seminal.
pre- A prefix used commonly in phonetics and linguistics, referring to
relative position in a sequence; opposed to post-. In phonetics, it usually refers
to an articulation a little in front of a recognized place of articulation,
e.g. ‘pre-palatal’, ‘pre-velar’. The terms ‘prevocalic’, ‘pre-consonantal’,
however, do not refer to points of articulation, but to sounds occurring in
a specific syllabic position, viz. before a vowel/consonant respectively;
‘pre-head’ has a similar force within the tone group; ‘pre-aspiration’ and
‘pre-nasalization’ illustrate temporal uses of the term. In linguistics, the term
is found in relation to several grammatical contexts, such as predeterminer,
‘pre-article’, ‘pre-verbal’, pre-lexical, prelinguistic, premodification – and,
of course, preposition.
pre-aspiration (n.)
see aspiration
precedence (n.) A term used in generative linguistics to refer to a type of
relationship between pairs of nodes in a phrase-marker. One node precedes
another when it occurs anywhere to the left of the other in the phrase-marker:
if it occurs immediately to the left of a node X, the node ‘immediately precedes’
X. In generalized phrase-structure grammar, linear precedence rules take
the form X < Y (i.e. X must precede Y). The ‘horizontal’ relationship of precedence
should be distinguished from the ‘vertical’ relationship between nodes,
known as dominance. When a node A dominates another node B, neither A
nor B precedes the other.