Sergei Ignatevich Bernshtein

Bernshtein, Sergei Ignat’evich

 

Born Jan. 2 (14), 1892, in Tiflis; died Oct. 28, 1970, in Moscow. Soviet linguist. Graduated from Petrograd University (1916). Student of L. V. Shcherba.

Bernshtein’s scholarly career began at Leningrad University (1919–29). He was professor at higher educational institutions in Moscow (1935–47) and at Moscow State University (1947–54). In his work Problems in the Teaching of Pronunciation (1937), Bernshtein formulated an original phonological theory according to which not only the distinctive features of phonemes but also the general features of words are important in the recognition of words during speech. Bernshtein recorded the phonetics of poetry as read by various poets at the Phonetics Laboratory at the Institute of the Living Word (1919–23), and later at the Department of Poetic Speech at the Institute for the History of the Arts (1920–30).

WORKS

“O metodologicheskom znachenii foneticheskogo izucheniia rifm. (K voprosu o pushkinskoi orfoepii).” In Pushkinskii sbornik pamiati S. A. Vengerova. Moscow-Petrograd, 1922.
“Stikh i deklamatsiia.” In the collection Russkaia rech’, new series, vol. 1. Leningrad, 1927.
“Opyt analiza slovesnoi instrumentovki.” In the collection Poetika, vremennik otdela slovesnykh iskusstv. Leningrad, 1929.
“Protiv idealizma ν fonetike.” Izv. AN: Otdelenie literatury i iazyka, 1952, vol. 11, issue 6.
“Osnovnyeponiatiiafonologii.” Voprosy iazykoznaniia, 1962, no. 5.

REFERENCES

Trudy uchenykh filologicheskogo fakul’teta Mosk. un-ta po slav-ianskomu iazykoznaniiu: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow, 1960.
Panov, M. V. Russkaia fonetika. Moscow, 1967.