JOHANN SEVERIN VATER AND SAMOYEDS

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show the process of formatting a new kind of linguistics, a contribution by A. Schlözer and I. S. Vater of their version of modern linguistics based on the Samoyed (Nenets) language research. The article demonstrates the way the researchers have arrived at their conclusions through careful selection of sources, both published and archived. The 18th century, the “age of systematics”, complete with a new division of sciences, arrived at the transformation of ethnography and linguistics into independent disciplines. Those were prerequisites for the emergence of comparative- historical linguistics. Using the Samoyed language studies as an example, the article examines Schlözer and Vater’s solution of the problems arising in identifying linguistic kinship: the lack of grammatical descriptions and the difficulties of reliable fixation of a non-written language. The works by Vater are the most significant precursors for the first grammar of the Samoyed language, i. e. The Samoyed Grammar by M. Castrén (1854). Schlözer insisted that the Samoyeds were an independent people, and that the section of his Northern History devoted to their community was a traditional comprehensive description of history, geography, customs, and language. The author determines the place of the Samoyed language among the neighboring peoples, critically analyzing the sources while offering a thematic Latin-Samoyed dictionary. Schlözer’s materials were later referred to in the Comparative Dictionaries… by P. S. Pallas. I. S. Vater, realizing the need for a new classification of sciences, headed the department of ethnography and linguistics, thus re-defining the object of linguistics. Regularly addressing the Samoyed language, as well as publishing texts, dictionaries and grammar notes in it, both addressing his informants and actively cooperating with the international academic community, Vater placed the Samoyed language into a rich academic context. The activities of the conscientious and impartial authors in their particular academic field demonstrates a long process of introducing their new information into circulation, together with changes of visual description: from a mixed description (by Schlözer) to the distinction between ethnography and linguistics (Vater). Refs 12.