Roman Jakobson

Russian linguist (1896–1982)

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Lived 1896–1982, aged 86United States

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Wikipedia
58 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1896–1982
Aged 86
Awards
8
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He gave linguistics the architecture it still uses — a toolkit for breaking language into binary sound features, then applying that logic to grammar, meaning, even poetry and film. His structuralist methods rippled out through Lévi-Strauss and Barthes into anthropology and literary theory, and his early influence on Chomsky seeded the next half-century of th

Biography

About

Born Roman Iosel-Berovich Yakobson on 28 September 1896 in Russia, he worked with Nikolai Trubetzkoy to invent phonology as a modern discipline, building revolutionary techniques for analysing sound systems. He extended those principles to syntax, morphology, and semantics, then borrowed from C. S. Peirce's semiotics, communication theory, and cybernetics to devise methods for studying poetry, music, and visual arts including cinema. His two studies of Russian case and his analysis of the Russian verb became landmarks in Slavic linguistics. Through his influence on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Rola…

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